The First Years Home & Away Portable Digital Monitor

August 17, 2011

Tenille

I have never been away from my kids as much as I have been this summer, due to media trips for Feisty Frugal & Fabulous. It’s been especially hard being away from Everleigh because she is so tiny and I’ve wrestled with the guilt of being a working-stay-at-home-mom (contradictory, much?)

Thankfully, we have technology on our side and my husband and I have found ways for me to connect with the kids while away that I’d never have imagined 7 years ago when I had my first. For the most part, we use Facetime on our iPhones so that I can see the kids and have a chat in the evenings and it makes it so much easier on all of us to connect that way.

Still, I wonder what it’s like for parents that have to travel for longer periods or grandparents who are yearning to find a way to connect with the grandkids on the other side of the country. Products like The First Years Home & Away Portable Digital Monitor take a useful product within the home and add another element to it, in this case Skype, to make this happen.

Other benefits of this monitor include the ability to talk to baby through the monitor to reassure her (sometimes that magic shhhhhhh is all a baby needs) or, in our household, to chat with the person in the room when baby is awake (I can ask my husband to grab something when he’s in the room since the monitor’s always on.) A minor feature, you’d think, until you actually start using it and then realize how helpful it is.

The photo posted here is detailing the image on the monitor in a darkened room. I noticed that all the photos on The First Years site are in color and in bright light conditions and I’ll agree the image is fabulous then, but I don’t know many babies that sleep in daylight so I wanted to show what the screen image looks like when baby is in a dark room. When in a dark room, the monitor goes into night mode which makes the picture black and white only. Here’s another one:

The remote parent unit also allows you to pan the area (generally from one side of the crib to the other) and zoom in as well (I love this feature). The generous 3.5″ screen is a nice feature too (our other video monitor is a 2.5″ screen).

The Home & Away Digital Portable Digital Video Monitor by The First Years is available at Toys R Us, Babies R Us, Amazon.com, Best Buy and Target.

1 of my readers is going to win The First Years Home & Away Portable Digital Video Monitor! To enter, just leave me a comment here telling me which of the features of the Home & Away Portable Digital Monitor you’d find the most useful.

For additional entries:
~ Follow me (join this site with Google Friend Connect)
~ Subscribe via email or Reader
~ Grab my button
~ Blog about this giveaway and leave me the link
~ Follow @FeistyFrugal on Twitter and Tweet this giveaway (RT 1x per day) Enter to #win @TheFirstYears Home & Away Digital Video Monitor: 3.5″ screen, Skype enabled and 2-way communication! @FeistyFrugal
~ Like Feisty Frugal and Fabulous on Facebook (please leave your first name and last initial so I can find you as a fan)
~ Like The First Years Brand on Facebook

This giveaway will end on September 7th at 9PM CT . Giveaway is open to Canadian and US addresses.