Having four children under the age of five calls for a life of constant pre-planning, to-do lists, organization, saving money, saving time, working smarter not harder, millions of photos, time passing by so quickly you barely remember what happened in the morning by lunch time and trying to have a bit of fun along the way. These apps are just a few of the tools I use to help combat memory loss that comes with being a mother, time flying by faster than necessary and so much more.
In no particular order...
This app has been a life saver when it comes to remembering how many ounces of milk each baby ate, how many wet and dirty diapers each baby has had and it can do so much more than that! If you're a breast feeding mom you can record the amount of time on each breast, you can record pumping sessions, how much sleep your baby has and their height and weight! It also has areas where you can read articles and connect with other moms. There are several apps out there that can monitor these things for your baby, but why did I choose this one? Well, besides the fact that it was FREE I liked that I was able to add two babies and it is SO easy to toggle back and forth between the two and my favorite part is the option to see their "stats" for the day/week/month. This is extremely helpful in seeing how many ounces each baby is getting every day and throughout the entire week, as well as being able to see the total number of diapers as well. When you go to the pediatrician they always ask these questions and I remember with my first baby I was not prepared to answer them. I was completely caught off guard. Had I known that I needed to record all of these things, this app would have come in so darn handy. *Bonus, Matt has it on his phone and we are logged in to the same account so he has access to record feedings and diapers as well and it updates on both of our phones.
I despise doing things that take up my precious time with my family or even just that crucial Saturday morning couch laying. Going to the grocery store once a week or so used to be something we would dread. Packing everyone up, driving there, spending time searching all over the store, buying way more than we actually needed, checking out and realizing when you get home that you forgot at least three things, putting everything away and then realizing it's past lunch time and you need to get stuff back out and start cooking something and you feel like you don't have anything to cook. Yup, I was there and sometimes I still feel a bit like that, however having online grocery ordering and pick up is a GAME CHANGER. Throughout the week both my husband and I can add needed items to our grocery cart as the week goes along using this app. When we are pre-planning our meals for the next week, we can just look at the ingredients and type them in and add them to our cart to assure we won't forget an item. Other than obvious time saving aspect of this app one thing that it has helped me do is try out cooking new recipes. Before online ordering I would want to try new recipes but would have the hardest time finding specific ingredients that I don't normally purchase in the store. I would then give up because it would take me forever to find the ingredient and I was already spending way too much of my time at the store that I would end up not getting it and just stick to the same recipes week in and week out with an occasional new one here and there. Using this app has helped us budget our grocery bill, I can see my total going up as I click away and then reevaluate before hitting submit and usually take a few things off to get the price back down to where I want it to be. Other than the ease of shopping on my phone, I absolutely love the less than 5 minutes it takes for me to drive to the store, sit in my car, have the worker load the back of my sweet mom van with our groceries, head home, put it away all in under 20 minutes. Thank you to whoever had this brilliant idea and to the workers who are going all over the store to retrieve my order while I get in some extra laughs with my little's at home.
Built in Calendar App
This might seem like something silly to post about, but honestly it helps my husband and I keep on the same page about appointments, reminders, meetings, special events and more. Anytime we have something that the other needs or should know about we always add it to our calendar on our phone and invite the other one so it shows up on their calendar. This is crucial when we are planning things and just knowing where the other one will be on certain days. Matt is a principal of a very large school and has a lot of meetings, evening activities, dinners, training sessions and more that if any of those will interfere with normal family time, I like to have them on my calendar so I know for meal planning purposes, as well as just knowing what days I might be flying solo a bit longer than other days. I also add certain things to his calendar that he just might want to be aware of and/or I need him to attend. We love our calendars and if we ever forget to add something on the calendar it totally throws us off, but we survive and roll with it because that's how life having a such a big family works.
Built in Notes App
This one, oh this one is just for me. It is a life saver in helping my "mom brain" remember things like Christmas ideas, projects that need completed around the house, blog ideas, baby milestones, miscellaneous errand lists, just to name a few. I was finding myself coming up with good ideas for so many different things and then finding that even just a few minutes later completely forgetting what it was. Once I began typing these ideas into my notes app I was so much happier. I have ongoing lists that help me remember things I need to get done the next day, presents I am on the lookout for good deals to order and blog entries I want to write about when I find the time. Another thing I find helpful with the notes app is using the voice text option on the keyboard on your phone to just voice the things I want to type in there to speed up the process. Remember, I am a mom to four children under five so I don't have a lot of time to just sit and type up ideas on my phone. I have to get the idea out and on the app fast before I either forget it or don't have time to write it down. I have even typed out a few almost full blog posts in the app by using the voice text option. Time and memory saver!
So maybe some of you Mom and Dad's out there can help a girl out and tell me a few of the things you've cashed your Pamper's Points in to get. I have been stock piling my points since the very first point I entered and have yet to cash them in. I think way back in the day (five years ago roughly) I thought I would be able to cash these bad boys in for a Bahama cruise or something because they felt so precious and every time I hit a new point total I didn't find a prize worthy enough to cash my points in. In fact, I stopped entering my points for almost a year because I didn't have the time to sit down on my computer and type in the crazy letter/number combinations found on the diapers. Once I found out about this app where you can just scan the sticker/number into the app and it automatically enters your points in I was back. When I first logged on I saw that all of my points had expired and I felt like I had something stolen from me, for some reason I was actually sad about this. Maybe it was because I was stock piling these bad boys for so long and never got to reap the reward of doing so. I like to proclaim myself as the queen of online customer chatting, I do this all of the time and usually end up with some type of coupon code, free shipping or great advice on other saving tips. Anyway. I went right away to customer service and after chatting for just a couple of minutes he reissued all of my previous points! So, here I am just racking them up yet again and no plans on cashing them in until I get that trip to the Bahama's that I apparently think I deserve for buying diapers?
Bedtime...oh man can that be a challenge some days. However, ever since we started using the Disney Magic Timer Toothbrush App I have had way easier bedtime routines than those crying, fighting and trying everything in the book to stay up later nights. The basis of the app is your child gets to pick a character, brush their teeth with that character for 1-2 minutes (you choose how long in the settings), receive a sticker or two to go in a digital sticker scrapbook for each character and they can see a calendar of how many days and times they've brushed. A few tips I have found to help, have different characters for each of your children BUT also have one character account set up called "TEAM" or something like that. This was important for us on those nights where bedtime got away from you and you need them to brush and be done quickly and/or the mornings we are running late and need to get going. The "TEAM" one comes in handy to have both kids brush at the same time and gives us the opportunity to talk about teamwork. When you have more time, I have them use their own accounts. I also do not let them change their character every time we brush because that takes up more time. I like to think it helps build excitement for when I do allow them to change the character, it makes it a bit more special. A bonus that I did not anticipate when beginning this app was how excited they would be for each other to earn stickers and see what characters they would pick. It's like brushing teeth has become a night time/morning routine pick me up rather than a chore. We dance, sing and have silly moves for each of the characters and are fighting cavities in the process!
I. LOVE. THIS. APP. A few quick things to know about this app, it takes 1 second of video from each day and can compile it anyway you want to a larger video (I choose to make a video at the end of each month and plan to see the video of the entire year come January), you can add videos from your camera roll so it's not something you have to actually do every day to make it work, you can crop the portion of the video you want to save, you can share it on social media, you can add videos from other days if you don't actually have a video from that day, it sends you reminders to take a video if you haven't yet that day and you can add photos as well. What I love about this is that it helps me remember a little bit of every single day for the past month. When I watch the videos compiled together I gain back time that I feel is slipping away ever so quickly. This video allows you to remember those precious moments of everyday life that we tend to forget and it puts it together in a short video format so you are not spending a lot of time scrolling through your camera roll to look back. It is not a free app, but it is worth every single penny I spent to have a bit of my favorite life moments saved all together.
(not an App on phone, but on Google Drive)
I first got into all things Google when my school corporation became a Google Corporation. I was using Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Publisher for my computing needs. At first, we weren't exactly sure what all the fuss was about but man do we love it now. Having all of my documents securely saved and I can access them on any computer, phone or iPad is more than just convenient. I am able to share, edit and create documents from anywhere. Being on maternity leave this school year I have needed to share documents from last year with my kindergarten team and I can get that done from my phone if I am not near a computer and that is so helpful when I am always trying to multitask and save time. But, what do I use Google Drawings for? The answer is just about everything. I create birthday invitations, baby STAT signs, birth announcements, holiday cards, birthday decorations and more. But the thing I get asked quite frequently is what app I use to create the twins monthly milestone pictures where I post the special things about them each month. The answer? I use Google Drawings to create those. I take the photo using my camera, upload using my phone to my Google Drive in a specific folder (creating folders save so much time when searching for specific documents) and edit/add text using drawings. Drawings has a wide range of fonts to choose from and editing tools. I first tried to use an online photo editing website but was only able to do so much before having to pay for a subscription. After messing around for far too long on that website (which will remain unnamed) I realized that everything I was wanting to do but not able to without paying money I was able to accomplish using FREE Google Drawings. I went right over and tried it out and it took me less than ten minutes to get them both completed. Time saver and I am able to save, edit and reuse parts of them for each month without having to recreate the document every time. I don't know all that much about other Google products or devices to be honest with you, but the fact that I can use Google Drive with my computer and Apple iPhone/iPad makes me a fan of both tech big wigs.
There you have it. Just a few of my favorite "tech" things that I use daily/weekly to help me in this busy, crazy but oh so fun life....
Oh wait, I lied...just remembered one more!
Every month I take the photos from my camera roll and upload them to an album on Snapfish for that month/year...for example, "October 2017" was the last album I created. I go through the entire camera roll and select all of the photos that are taken from the first day of the month to the last day. I like to clean up my camera roll as often as possible and doing this ensures that I have saved every single one of my photos somewhere. I have also thought to do this using my Google Drive (y'all know how much I love that) but what I like about just uploading to Snapfish is they are all there for when I want to create our digital family photo album at the end of each year. I do not need to download/upload any photos from any other device or program in order to create the albums or order photo prints. I then have access to all of my photos on my phone as well for any #tbt, birthday collage, photo card or just looking up a specific picture to remember a special time or memory. There are several photo companies out there and I am sure they all would work just as easily as Snapfish.
Okay. I think I am done for real this time. I am sure I could go on and on about tech tools to help your daily life, but I will leave you with these....for now. If you have any favorite apps that you use, please share those with me. I am always looking for ways to successfully multitask, preserve memories, create and share.
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