Category: Family

Eric posted about his daughter’s Child Development class this semester, and how the old egg “baby” the student cared for back in our days, has been replaced by a highly realistic electronic doll. The doll keeps track of feeding, diaper changing, rocking, head support, etc., and the statistics are downloaded from the doll by the teacher for grading.

As I was reading, I found myself wondering if a little “wired” onesie with data recording/download capabilities would be possible for paranoid parent baby-sitting sessions. Heck, you could easily tie it into a home wireless network with monitoring software running on a workstation, which would send an SMS message to said paranoid parent’s Crackberry, if the baby was not burped to their satisfaction. Percentages of the hourly rate could be deducted based on the baby-sitter’s grade… Or the county Child Protective Services department could require such an outfit full time in questionable parental situations…

We have a few more years than Eric, until we get to the “worrying about being a grandparent” stage – I feel for you, my friend, but I sometimes fear where technology will be taken to Big Brother extremes… Someone may stumble upon my meandering thoughts, patent the idea, and we end up seeing technology used in invasive monitoring of human imperfections.

I say run with scissors – regardless if you have a GPS tracking device is your jammies. 😉

Tim found a movie he took when Roxane spent the night at their house, years ago. This was right when Roxane was learning to walk, so she was right about 1 year old – must have been January 2003, because Roxy took her first steps Christmas 2002.

Paige has a great post and photos of Volcán Concepción erupting on February 9, 2007. I think it was spring 2006 that my mom and Paige visited Isla Ometepe together, while Paige was compiling some notes for her latest book, Lonely Planet Nicaragua & El Salvador. I have been reading Paige’s “Slog” for several months, and I find her well researched political commentary quite a refreshing change from typical US mass media.