Fun Apps

Completely unrelated picture, but doesn't Claire look so grown-up here? What happened to my baby? Good thing there's another one on the way! 

Although I know I have a ways to improve on disconnecting myself from it, I love having a smartphone. I love that I no longer have to copy down directions, recipes, or addresses ahead of time. I love that we can find the nearest anywhere-but-McDonald's on road trips and that we can occupy Claire with an episode of Curious George for just a few minutes of quiet on long flights. It really has fulfilled all of my wildest dreams.

But, really, my absolute favorite thing about owning a smartphone is how much easier it is to get pictures and videos of Claire into the hands of her adoring fans. Aka her grandparents and great-grandparents. 

When Claire unexpectedly arrived, in our poor college student days, I threw our camera in my purse as we headed to the hospital, just in case. Adam went home to grab our bags and laptop later, but of course, the wireless on the laptop had to break at that exact moment. So, we had to ask a hospital visitor to bring a wireless adapter with them. Finally, more than twenty-four hours later, we were able to send our families a picture of Claire. Let me tell you, twenty-four hours is pretty long in grandparent years. If we had smartphones back then, it would have been more like ten minutes! 

Without further ado, my favorite apps for giving the grandparents what they want:

- Postagram.  Claire's great-grandparents are all over the place when it comes to technology {from also owning an iPhone to not owning a computer at all} but they all like to get mail. In my pre-smartphone days, I tried to send them pictures of Claire every other month. I had to choose the pictures, have prints made, buy the albums, put the photos in the albums, and mail them at the post office {always a fun place to take young children}. I would estimate it cost about $40 each time. For that very same price, I can send them each a Postagram every single week. It's a postcard with a little message and a pop-out photo from your Instagram feed that costs $1.00 to mail in the US and $2.00 to Canada. The app saves your addresses and payment info, so it only takes a few minutes to spread some snail-mail cheer. All from the comfort of your couch! 

- YouTube Capture. As you can probably guess from the above paragraph, I am pretty lazy. Before discovering this app, I would take lots of videos of Claire before finally getting around to connecting my phone to the computer to upload them to YouTube. Because that's obviously too much work, right? But, thanks to this app, when I catch Claire doing something new/funny/cute, I can upload the video to YouTube right away, straight from my phone. And then email Adam or my parents to check it out when they have a chance. 

I really think if they made a sixth love language it would be pictures, don't you?