6 APPS THAT MAKE MOM’S LIFE EASIER

Whole Foods Market Recipes

Peekaboo Barn

Cardstar

The Little Red Hen

Grocery IQ

Symptom MD

I’m at the age when friends get married and maybe start a family.

It’s that age when people are just finishing school or just starting school again, discovering the inner core of themselves and of others. We fall truly deeply in love and finally mature, toss aside that streak of youthful impermanence, choose a partner in life and settle into that new stage of life. I have been especially sensitive to the knowledge that six of my friends are now either pregnant or already in the throes of motherhood, and it’s been an amazing and – I’ll admit – daunting experience meeting these new sons and daughters.

At first, fledgling adoptee to adult society I was, I was only witness to those joyful moments of motherhood, where the sky would change into colors of crimson and gold whenever one of my boyfriend’s nieces would run with arms open wide, popsicle sticky mouth riddled with giggles, into her mother’s proud embrace. I saw the tinkling luster on each child’s smile, the perfect Kodak family scenario playing out before my eyes in some rosy image of what could be. Those sunny nieces and nephews that, obviously, could never morph into the terrible two’s or toddler tantrum chronicles.

But seeing only the terrific and fun-filled sides of parenting, and keeping on the blinders to those less-than-chummy moments of screaming and never-ending caretaking would be paying a great disservice to motherhood. Until you become a mother – and I am not one yet – it’s really hard to understand the arduous effort parenting takes. Being a mom can mean being tired, feeling helpless, administering punishment, feeling guilty, and feeling overwhelmed with the unending rounds of feeding, diapering, playtime, bedtime. Every decision you make as a mother – from discipline to extracurricular activities – has repercussions, some momentous, some not, and this is the giant labyrinth mystery of being a parent.

Babysitters and daytime cartoons are just two things that help a mother maintain her sanity and privacy, but thankfully mothers can now have several helpers conveniently coalesced right onto her phone. There are literally hundreds of iPhone apps that can assist mothers in their parenting duties, from kid-oriented gaming and educational apps, to grocery and cookbook apps to give mom some leeway in the creative dinner department.  Some of these apps are better than others – some truly bad – and I’ve recently been on a quest to siphon out the truly beneficial and cute from the less stellar, all with mothers in mind.

The following iPhone apps all provide mom some breathing space, whether they help her cook dinner that night, educate her children, or streamline her shopping time.

1. Whole Foods Market Recipes – Just when mother is at the end of her tether after finally getting little Sammy and Johnny to settle down from their new Transformer toys, the last thing she needs to do is surmise the energy to create a fresh and healthy dinner for the whole family. With Whole Foods Market Recipes, an entire dinner can be looked up in a matter of seconds, or a choice from one of your previous night’s favorites can be cooked up. Pantry a little sparse tonight? No problem. Whole Foods Market Recipes lets you search according to what ingredients you have on hand, to make a delicious meal out of that those leftover sweet potatoes and canned beans. Anyone in the family lactose intolerant or following a vegan diet? The app includes every special diet under the sun to restrict which recipes are summoned. Mothers can rejoice in knowing that every single recipe in this app is nutritionally well rounded, for a healthy child to grow strong. Read more about Whole Foods Market Recipes here.

2. Peekaboo Barn – Just a few weeks ago, my friend asked if I knew of an app that would show pictures of animals and their accompanying animal sound to entertain her 2 and 3 year old sons while familiarizing them with words. So, voila, I present Peekaboo Barn, a cute animated children’s app that has your child guess what common farm animal is behind the closed barn doors, based on the sound it makes. As your child plays, he will learn to associate squeals and grunts with pigs, neighing with horses, meowing with cats, and so forth. Since the animal’s name is also presented alongside its image – narrated even, by a little girl’s voice – your child will also begin to associate and remember the letters and words that match particular animals. Mostly, however, your child won’t realize the educational benefits he reaps as he merely laughs and claps his hands at the cute, sad, puppy dog eyes and the big merry cow. Read more about Peekaboo Farm here.

3. Cardstar – My mother, and many a mother I’m sure, makes sure she totes around numerous membership and benefits cards, coupons, redeemable values and the like. For mothers strapped financially or who are simply looking for extra savings, membership cards at shopping centers like Safeway and Raley’s can really reap extra benefits and are thus a good thing to have in one’s purse. Gym IDs, library cards, and maybe even school IDs for the mother going back to college also clout space in a wallet, leading to that overstuffed wallet and exploding purse syndrome many mothers seem to suffer from. With Cardstar, mothers can enter in all the information on these various membership cards or coupons, so they may use their iPhone rather than the plastic card, itself. Not only does this save them tons of space, it prevents them from losing one of these important cards, which, suffice to say, is fairly likely to happen (I’ve probably spent a good $50 replacing Gym Membership cards). On a last, but very important note, using your iPhone instead of a plastic card is so, so cool. Read more about Cardstar here.

4. The Little Red Hen – When I was a kid, I thoroughly enjoyed my mom reading to me, but sometimes mom is just not in the mood to read, or just doesn’t have the energy from being so time strapped with others things to do. In times like this, and when young Isabella is still too young to read on her own, The Little Red Hen is a true lifesaver. This app is a narrated and animated storybook of a classic tale, with beautifully rendered graphics and a lovely child happily narrating the story aloud. To replace the sensation of flipping a book’s pages, the app has a dynamic interface where your child must use his finger to drag a digitized image of a page to read the whole story. Having the story read aloud, having the characters move onscreen, and having your child flip pages makes this app incredibly fun and interactive for your child. Having fun while reading will only incite your child to read more often, and in a society of plopping kids in front of daytime cartoons, The Little Red Hen and other animated storybooks will make reading seem fresh, new, and and exciting again. Read more about The Little Red Hen here.

5. Grocery IQ – I happen to be one of those people who enjoy getting lost in the supermarket haze of packaged goodies and the outskirt produce jungles. Many moms, however, simply want to get in and out as quickly as possible, getting only the prescribed and prosaic as memorized on a list of prior successful meals with the kids. However, even if a mom may purchase the same general items during each market run, she may still forget to pick up those weekly eggs if she has a quick chat with a familiar face, of if her son gets carried away throwing unnecessary cookie bags into the shopping cart. Or, she may even feel like spicing it up a bit and getting some collard greens for the kids to try out instead of your run-of-the-mill broccoli (based on a babysitting job from nightmare street, I do not recommend this). In either case, Grocery IQ saves mother the hassle of a food list memorization game or a scribbled note crumpled somewhere in her purse, in favor of a useful iPhone app that categorizes her list and checks things off as she get them, and even finds items through Google, should she add something on the spur of the moment. Grocery IQ will also save frequently purchased items under a Favorites list, and will save a store’s layout so finding items in aisles simply becomes a matter of following the app and not a Lara Croft style dungeon of treasure hunting.

6. Symptom MD – It’s happened to all moms. Little Xavier will plunder through the woods happy and full of prideful immortality when suddenly he’ll kowtow through the bushes back to mom, tears running down his cheeks and a big red welt on his arm that could either be from rough bushwhacking or a fearsome encounter with a defensive insect. For the new and inexperienced mom, not only will she feel helpless and confused, she’ll have to grapple with diagnosing the symptom at hand and taking the best course of action all on her own. Symptom MD will help alleviate any stress over these beginning efforts as Dr. Mom by cycling through symptoms with you, checking those that correlate and those that don’t, leading you on the path to a correct diagnosis. Unlike iTriage and WebMD and other medical apps, Symptom MD specifically searches for children-related ailments, and treats the user on a very pedestrian level, stopping the user from getting incredibly stressed out from all the medical jargon of Colonic diverticulitis and Inguinal hernia. With Symptom MD mothers can search by the body part currently under duress – making it more instinctual – and in a Yes/No format, the app will act as a guide, informing the need of either emergency critical care or at-home self care, then prescribes very clear descriptions on how to treat the injury or affliction. Read more about Symptom MD here.