iBaby

How did people ever raise babies before the iPhone?  I really don't know.  It turns out there really IS an app for just about everything.  We've already used the baby name app to help narrow down our list of choices.  There are also apps for things like timing contractions, keeping track of when you fed the baby last, and analyzing baby poo (we wouldn't have thought we needed this one until we started reading baby books.  Apparently baby poo is a BIG DEAL).  If my iPhone had opposable thumbs it could pretty much raise the baby for us!

I actually did find a cool app for learning baby sign language.  We were kind of on the fence about the whole baby sign thing until we saw it in action.  Our friends in Palo Alto taught their baby several of the signs and when we saw them last weekend he used them a couple of times.  Usually he used them to indicate that we were a little slow on replenishing his supply of goldfish crackers, but still, he was able to communicate what he wanted without throwing a fit.  We're not going to go over the top, we don't need the kid to be able to write a dissertation before she can speak, but it would be nice for her to be able to communicate her basic needs.  Plus our daycare uses the signs too, so she'll get reinforcement from the teachers there.

Our friends' baby knows: eat, water, more, milk, cheese, and hat.  That seems like a pretty good list.  We mostly got to see him demonstrate his emphatic use of the more sign, but we also saw an extremely cute use of the eat sign combined with a huge sad baby look when it became apparent that while we were all getting ice cream, he was not.  While "hat" is not necessarily that useful, it is adorable since the sign is to pat your head.  We'll probably add a few signs of our own as well.  Clearly, any baby of Jeremy's will need to know how to signal a touch down (we've already had the conversation about how we need to check if the hospital has free wireless internet just in case the baby is born during the fantasy football playoffs).  We also had a bit of fun coming up with our own signs for "mommy" and "daddy" although we probably won't teach those to the baby, just in case she repeats them in public :)