A few years ago when the Droid Eris first came out, there was a buy one get one free and the first Eris would also get a huge discount. With that, my husband convinced me I wanted a smart phone because he wanted one with the discount. I looked at him with a “what do I need one of those for?” looks, but agreed because it was cheaper to buy both for the price of one and I did need a new phone. The first week all I heard from him was “how great this phone was” or “look at all this cool stuff you can do”. Much like every other time he did this, I pretended to pay attention and nodded in agreement.

I never quite appreciated that phone until our son started baseball and I realized that tee-ball was as exciting to watch as a chess game, and I could play games on my phone. Admitting that doesn’t make me an awful parent, it makes me an honest one. Then I realized I could easily put his schedule on the phone to keep track of games, practices and doctors appointments. Maybe this smart phone idea wasn’t so bad, but I didn’t understand those people who couldn’t live without smartphones.

That is, until now. I can send a grocery list to my husband’s phone so he can stop by the store on the way home. I can read the news while waiting at the bus stop for my son, and avoid conversation with the other mothers. I can manage my blog from it. There’s basically an app for everything: games to entertain your kids with while they wait for appointments to ordering a pizza so you can stop and pick it up on the way home. Personally, I love the pregnancy apps that give me daily bits of information. Today, I even discovered an app for Babies ‘R Us that I can scan items from my phone to add to my registry. This leads me to a question of what did we do before smartphones?

I take back everything I mocked my husband for in his excitement over the smartphones. I can’t go anywhere without it, and I find use for it everywhere whether it’s to prove my husband I was right about something or to get an address to a place we forgot to look up on the way out. The newest app to my collection is an app that tracks the infant feedings and changes, making it easier than the old-fashioned paper and pen way and less likely to lose it. Though since I’ve been pregnant I even lose my phone. With everything else being difficult and confusing, it’s good that we have our handy phones to make it a little more manageable.