Best Apps for Parents on Road Trips
It’s hard to say how much the age of smartphones and tablets has changed life for families with young children. It has certainly made life very different for new parents, and generally in a good way. That’s because so many apps make things easier for parents. They give you new tools to raise and protect your children, and they help you optimize your time as well. Time is at a tremendous premium when you’re a parent. Your baby will be the center of your life, but, if you’re like most people, you’ll need to work and maintain the house while raising your child. These apps help you use your time more efficiently.
White Noise Baby
White Noise Baby is an iPhone app to help with one of a new parent’s most frustrating tasks – getting the baby to sleep. The app, which is only 99 cents, offers a variety of soothing music and sounds, which can play on repeat, to help lull the baby to sleep. That’s right: it’s a lullaby app. There’s nothing like some white noise, ocean sounds, or gentle music to get an infant to sleep.
Total Baby
Total Baby is perfect for parents who like tracking, data, and analysis. If you’re the kind of person who tracks calories or graphs their weight, Total Baby is a dream come true. It’s a comprehensive tracker for different aspects of your baby’s life. You can track meal times, diaper changes, when the baby goes to sleep, and almost a dozen other variables. Whether you like data or just want to figure out your baby’s schedule, Total Baby is great for tracking. It’s available for iPhone and iPad for $4.99.
DirecTV
Some apps help your baby directly. Others help your baby by freeing up time from other tasks so you can spend more time with your baby. The DirecTV app for iOS and Android is like that. It dramatically improves the way you can watch television, especially with the newly added voice search (out now for iOS, coming this summer to Android). It’s not just the ability to ask, in normal human language, when the next episode of a show is. That saves a few seconds, and it’s great. Using this app requires that you are a DirecTV subscriber. You can save a few dollars when starting a new account using www.SaveonTVDirect.com. Once you have an account you can truly get the most out of DirecTV for your family using their updated App.
But there’s more than that. You can watch tons of programming right in the app, and you can use the DirecTV app to record shows on your DVR, so instead of fiddling with the remote and scrolling to your show, you can stay with your baby and just say, “record the next Game of Thrones,” and it will. Don’t watch it with your baby, though! That show is confusing enough as it is.
Baby Monitor
Nothing could be more classic than a Baby Monitor. Also $4.99, also for iOS, Baby Monitor is similar to Total Baby. What Total Baby does for schedules, Baby Monitor does for meals and sleeping patterns. Track exactly what your baby eats and when it sleeps, how long, and how much. Compare data over various time frames using built-in graphs and charts, and act based on the patterns.
CareZone Mobile
A free iOS app, CareZone Mobile reduces your stress by getting all your emergency and other critical contacts in one place, so you can get in touch quickly if you need to. The app is still under active development, and keeps adding new features like the ability to record what medications your children need, add to-do list items, and more. This app isn’t quite there yet, but it’s a great idea. Keep an eye on it as it continues to improve.
