Mother Sees All

It is dark. Quiet. Not too quiet though, as my kids are in bed and supposed to be sleeping. Quiet is good. Quiet means that they are in their respective beds, trying to drift off to dreamland. Quiet means that I can finally just stop the daily grind and veg for a bit. Quiet means sleep, and if you ask any parent, sleep is always a good thing.

And then I hear it. First a giggle. Then a full-blown belly laugh. And then, of course, an annoyed scream.

I used to be in and out of my kids’ room every two minutes, it seemed. Someone was out of bed. Someone needed to pee. Someone needed more water. Someone was stealing someone else’s sleep toy. Someone was whacking someone else over the head with a board book. Someone was tickling someone. Someone was biting someone. Someone needed their blankets on again and again and again.

Any sound, good or bad, would have me running. I didn’t know what was an emergency and what was just brothers being brothers. But when I heard that annoyed scream after the giggles the other night, I grabbed my phone and opened up my Dropcam app. There was Cameron over by Gavin’s bed, pushing him around, tickling him, but ultimately, annoying his brother who just really likes to sleep at night.

This is one of those situations that really only warrants a nice, loud, “In your own beds, please!” instead of a trip into the bedroom.

There are some products that I am asked to review that I just get so, incredibly excited about because I know how great the product will fit into our family’s life. Dropcam is one of those products. In fact, my husband has been talking to me about the Dropcam long before it was released in Canada earlier this month.

Dropcam, in parenting terms, is a really awesome video monitor. (To be clear, there are so many more uses for a Dropcam, but this is a parenting blog, and without a doubt, this is what we use our Dropcam for). We have ours installed in the upper corner of the boys’ room so that their beds and the door to the bedroom are visible. Up until we moved, we hadn’t really needed a baby monitor, video or otherwise. Our apartment was so compact that the children could be heard from anywhere. But since the move, I have often found it difficult to keep the same watchful eye on my kids. Now, checking in on them usually means zipping up a flight of stairs two at a time or leaving the office when I am finally scraping out a minute to get some work done. Sometimes, I’m not even sure if I hear them, or if I’m going slightly crazy. (Sometimes, both are true). I love having a quick and easy way to just check in on them, both visually and audibly.

Dropcam is a wifi video monitor that works with any of your internet devices. You can watch the feed on an iOS app or an Android app, or log in on your computer and watch from there. It provides great quality video during daylight and surprisingly good images when the room is completely dark. (In fact, while I have the original Dropcam, the new Dropcam Pro is supposed to be even better in low-light). As a parent, my favourite feature on the Dropcam is the ability to get alerts when there is sound and movement in the room. This is what fully takes Dropcam from video monitoring system to baby monitor. Because, let’s face it. Sometimes a parent really needs to be alerted to the fact that a bedroom needs attention.

Recently, the boys were home with Dan while I was at work. I was feeling particularly forlorn knowing that my family was all together without me, so I tuned into our Dropcam through my work computer. I was able to hear the goings on in my house, watch Gavin nap, and even speak to my boys through the camera’s microphone. Because we had a free trial of the feature that records all the footage from the past week, I even was able to backtrack to see how long Gavin napped and to figure out what some crying I heard was all about.

My biggest concern about the Dropcam was security. I have read horror stories of video monitors being hacked. I absolutely do not want anyone to have access to my kids without my knowledge. When my husband first told me about the awesome Dropcam, I told him that I wanted nothing to do with it, because I valued the safety of my children and their privacy too much (says the Mommy blogger.) But Dropcam is actually really secure. The camera sends encrypted video to the cloud which then securely streams the video to your devices. All video is private by default and is encrypted so it can’t be accessed by anyone else, even on an open wifi network. And that definitely helps everyone sleep better at night.

Needless to say, the Dropcam is one of our favourite household technologies. If you’ve ever visited, we’ve probably shown you our “cool video monitor”. And Dan is already talking about how we need one for the playroom downstairs, and possibly one to monitor the van in the driveway ever since someone rummaged through our change the other day.

Dropcam was finally released in Canada on October 10th and is available in the regular model that we have as well as the Pro version which has a wider field of view, better low light vision, and a few other perks. Rest assured American readers, you’ve had access to the Dropcam for some time already, so you too can run out and grab one. I was given a Dropcam for the purposes of this review, but all opinions are completely my own, especially because I loved this product before I was even asked to review it. Find out more about Dropcam by visiting dropcam.com.