If you haven’t yet justified the purchase of an iPhone, let me make my case. Sure, you may love your current phone. But can it let you know when your baby is crying? Tell you where you parked your car? My iPhone has become an indispensable resource for tasks both big and banal. Here are my top five picks for essential iPhone apps.
Leave your bulky baby monitor at home next time you travel. Simply place Baby Monitor from Code Goo ($4.99) near your sleeping baby. When it detects noise, it places a call to the number of your choice, where you can then listen in to your baby’s activity. Absolutely brilliant—I use this app both when I travel or just when I’ve managed to get baby down for a nap at a friend’s house.
Before I was a mom, I could get away with writing my grocery list once a week. Now—with my family of four—my grocery list is a continuous work in progress. Grocery iQ ($.99) allows you to enter items on the fly—with predictive search that allows you to easily add specific items from a database of more than 130,000 items. This app automatically categorizes your entries into “aisles,” and saves favorite items and your shopping history.
If you know what your child’s head circumference is and where it falls on the charts, chances are you’re going to love the BabyGrow ($.99). You simply enter measurements as often as you like, and the app will give you where your child falls in the percentile rankings using data from both the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
With all the schlepping mothers do with their children, it’s easy to forget whether you’re coming or going. If you’ve ever found yourself blankly trying to recall just where your car is parked, get yourself a copy of G-Park ($.99). Just hit the “Park Me!” button and if you like, take a photo or add notes about where you’re parked. To find your car, just hit the “Where Did I Park?” button and choose directions for turn-by-turn directions back to your car.
Few moms have time to make it to yoga class as much as they like with small children. Yoga Instructor ($4.99) allows you to sneak in a session whenever you have a few minutes. Using guided audio and visual poses, Yoga Instructor provides instruction for six different salutations which you can completely customize in length and sequence.
Find more helpful apps at apple.com/iphone.
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