We have two baby monitors in our 900 sq. ft condo. One monitor in the master bedroom, where our baby’s basinet is. The other is in the nursery, where Babs’ crib is. The receivers for both are in the living room.
We bought one baby monitor, which I thought was amazing and high tech, until we were given our second monitor, which I’m pretty sure has both a human brain and 80 gigabytes of RAM inside of it.
As I write this, it is 6:20AM. Babs still sleeps in our room overnight, but in the early AM, after her feeding, I’ll usually put her to sleep in the nursery. This way baby mama can get some uninterrupted sleep. This means I watch the baby on our pimped out Safety 1st monitor.
This particular monitor is a combination of a video camera, security system, magnifying glass, thermometer, cell phone, calendar, laptop, and Bill Nye. When I look at this thing, I feel dumb, because it is so smart. In contrast, I feel very smart when I look at a pear, because they are so dumb. Pears are very tasty when they are fully ripe, but a little nasty if you wait a day to long to eat them.
Just by looking at the monitor, I can tell you that the temperature is 79º F in the nursery, we have two bars of baby monitor reception, the baby has just done a 180º turn, and my coffee is completely brewed. I’m not kidding about this. The microphone is so good on this thing that I can hear my coffee brewing in the room that I am already in, through the microphone in the other room. It’s surround sound coffee brewing. If you like coffee, you’ll love this sound.
By the way, that last paragraph I wrote was an unprecedented one for me. I have never used the “º” symbol while typing, and in that paragraph, I used it twice. And now once in this one. I love degrees. Fahrenheit or Celsius, but particularly Fahrenheit. I still get somewhat confused with Celsius degrees, unless the temperature is 0º C, which means it is freezing.
One of the great things about the Safety 1st monitor is that it has its own private channel. This way the neighbor who is using their baby monitor, or trying to get their transistor radio working again, doesn’t break into your signal.
My only problem with the video monitor is that I’m not sure if it is okay to ever look away. I do…I’ll be checking email, doing push-ups, or yodeling, but there is always a little bit of guilt, thinking I should be staring at the monitor.
For this reason, I’ve realized that they are a blessing, and a curse. A blessing, yes, because they can absolutely save a baby’s life. A curse because when you yodel, you want to give it 100 percent. If you don’t, well, it just sounds terrible.
What have I learned? I would rather be an average yodeler, and have my baby safe. Coffee’s ready.
What came first, the Baby Monitor or the egg?