Review: E-thos baby monitor

We’ve had the E-thos baby monitor for a while now and thought it was about time I share my experiences. If you don’t plan on buying a monitor any time soon…feel free to leave now.

Here’s the short version: It’s great! Buy it!

…And the long version: Getting it the first time, it was easy to set up. The monitor is in two parts – the camera and the screen. Plug them both in, make sure they’re both set to the same channel (a choice of 4) and you’re good to go. Easy peasy. 

The screen is 5.6″ in colour and the image quality is pretty decent. You do get a bit of static/interference occasionally, but it is quite good on the whole. It’s quite nice to have a big screen – apparently you can even record the images on to a video/DVD, although we haven’t tried. One caveat (which I noticed someone put in another review) – the screen MUST be connected to a power socket. It’s not a deal breaker for us, but If you want full portability, this probably isn’t the one for you.

The camera can run on batteries or directly plugged in – we keep ours plugged. The one hassle we had was positioning it correctly – the camera doesn’t swivel enough to get the angle we needed from the top of a cupboard, so we ended up taping it to the side of the cot. Silly solution, I know, but from what I can tell a lot of these baby monitor cameras don’t swivel enough.

When we first switched it on, it picked up the Sky TV signal – so you could actually use it as a mini TV! Why watch the baby when you could watch Sky Movies? And did I mention it has a 5.6″ screen?

Ok, before I’m accused of advertising, it is by no means perfect. When we first used it, it wouldn’t adjust to nightvision mode, so the screen just got darker and darker. Luckily, this was only for the first day – it seems to be fine since then. We sometimes get this annoying static noise, but you can usually resolve it by changing the position of the monitor. It is also, to be fair, a bit pricey. Argos and Mothercare are currently selling it at £199.99 (we bought it at a discount) – so look out for offers.

Overall, though, I would highly recommend it – it’s great to be able to see what you baby is up to – even if it does involve watching him sleep. When we first got it, we spent ages just staring at the screen, watching him. Hey, at least he’ll be used to the Big Brother society we are heading towards! PS….did I mention it has a 5.6″ screen?

PROS – Big screen, night mode, record to video/DVD. Can also get a Sky signal and watch TV!

CONS – Screen must be connected to power source, occasional static interference, camera does not rotate enough, quite expensive.

Our son’s not a dog

Baby A has been sitting up quite a  bit now (nope, still not by himself). Of course, as a result he falls over an awful lot too. It’s very important to keep him protected, otherwise he’ll bang his head all the time.

We were in doing a bit of shopping today and I saw this great mat. It was quite a large circular one and quite padded like a mattress. Perfect! Baby A could sit on that – if he fell over, he wouldn’t hurt himself. So I showed it to Mummy A.

She looked at it, looked at me, then looked at it again.

“Our son’s not a dog, you know!” She said sternly.

Er…what?

I looked at the mat again…and suddenly noticed the picture of a bone on it. Then I looked around me – and realised we were in the Pets department. Hey, how was I to know they make it so comfortable for dogs?

Oops.

My baby crawls…kind of

It’s a special moment, Baby A has started crawling!

Actually, I think I need to put a few caveats in that:

• His crawl speed is more tortoise than hare. I’m pretty sure if he raced against a snail….the snail would win.
• He can cover a distance equivalent to 100 times is body length….well, if he was an ant that is. The most ground I’ve seen him cover so far is about a metre. 
• Baby A only has one gear….reverse. Yep, he can’t actually crawl forwards yet!

It’s quite comical watching Baby A attempt to crawl….he moves like a caterpillar, lifting his bottom up and then shifting his body. Unfortunately, this serves to push him backwards rather than forwards. 

He’s a really impatient kid though, and will usually start moaning after a while. Then obviously we have to pick him up to calm him down. He’ll never learn to crawl at this rate. Although….that has benefits. Once he learns to crawl properly, managing him will be ten times harder….

Newsflash: baby drinks milk

For the last few weeks it has been very common for him to wake up at about 1am. Then 2am, then 3am….you get the idea. We can’t understand what has changed…although he seems to be farting less. Maybe he has an uncomfortable stomach? Maybe we should be pressing his belly to get the air out?!

Mummy A decided to try giving him some milk when he woke up at 1am and….he drank it. Let me say that again – Baby A drank milk. And no, the world has not come to an end. It’s made us realise that at least part of the reason he is not sleeping well is that he is actually hungry.

The other reason is that he’s just a brat. An adorable brat, mind you.

Feelin’ chilly

Baby A was acting like a normal baby yesterday. He was very calm, hardly cried…very soft. In short, not at all his normal behaviour. 

He slept a fair bit as well. We thought it was fantastic…we relaxed and managed to watch TV. But then…what if something was wrong with him? Typical isn’t it…just when he is giving us peace, we immediately think something must be wrong. 

He had been sleeping for almost 2 hours…so we woke him up. No, we’re not crazy – it just seemed like an awful long time to us. He was very placid, and we reckon he has somehow caught a cold. He was quite the sore throat and can barely whimper. We gave him some Calpol when he went to bed, so hopefully that will help. 

Actually, i just thought, he might have a sore throat ‘cos he cries so much at night…

Just the two of us

Guess what I did today? I looked after Ayaan for the day…all by myself. Would you believe this is the first time I’ve had to do that?

Before you think I’m just a layabout dad, I have taken care of him before…but this was the first day it would be just the two of us alone. Usually I have Mummy A about to do everything help.

Mummy A had to leave the house early, so no Saturday lie in for me. Although…since Baby A was born, a lie in is a bit of a distant dream. Mummy A had given me detailed instructions about his routine (which I had written down…just in case), so I was armed and ready for anything. Unless it wasn’t on the list.

First things first…the nappy change. I reckon I’ve become a dab hand at this, so no problem. I would’ve been quicker if Baby A would stay still for a moment.

Then downstairs for breakfast. He’s not a huge fan of breakfast, rather like me. For once, though, he ate well. Must have decided to take pity on me.

I found it helped to turn on the TV to help distract him. There’s this hilarious children’s programme called Captain Mack, which he watches. All the shows are pretty generic, but each one ends with the phrase “I’ve got to go…my monkey needs me!”. Hehe.

Then…up again for another nappy change – he’d done a poo again. It was very solid and looked like he had laid an egg!

10am (according to my list) was time for banana. I took half a banana and mashed it up in his bowl. It looks disgusting, and touching it isn’t exactly pleasant. In the past it would have made me retch…having a baby clearly  changes all that.

He’s fussy about his banana – only the best will do. Luckily I’d been to Marks and Spencer. He ate well, but it was a struggle to get him to finish. He was too busy falling asleep in the high chair.

I just about managed to feed all of it before he dozed off. In the meantime, I got a text from Mummy A checking how I was getting on. No problems of course….Superdad can handle anything.

The next couple of hours were great – he slept like a…well, a baby I guess. I felt very chilled out. Managed to feed him some milk as well. He finally awoke at midday, so I picked him up…and he stank. Yep, Baby A had just done his third poo of the day. And it was a monster. Where has he got space to keep that much in his body?

My parents dropped by to visit and I took him out for a bit as well – it was a lovely sunny day. Everything was working out nicely for me. For once.

I managed to comfortably feed him lunch (his favourite, mixed vegetable medley), and – shock, horror – he even had dessert. Thanks for looking after me, Baby A.

We had quite a fun day together, playing with his toys and jumping up and down. Well…he jumped, I just held him. Let’s hope all days with just the two of us goes just as well…

Foot in mouth disease

I often have a habit of saying the most inappropriate things. I can’t seem to help it – my mouth opens and I blurt it out. One of my worst ones is where I asked a guy I hadn’t seen for a few months “So how’s the wife?”, only to find out he’d been kicked out of the house a couple of weeks before. Oops. 

Baby A, unfortunately, seems to have inherited this ability…