Monitors

My last blog got me thinking of all of the failed products we have used in this house to try to contain the activities of our older son, our bundle of energy, that boy with the brain that just won't quit.

Audio monitors did not last long in this house. This kid meant business, and we needed more sophisticated equipment! And, that's just the kind of situation that my adorable geek of a spouse loves. He quickly purchased a camera with a hard-wire system that was installed in our attic and dropped down into our munchin's room, ultimately mounted on the wall above his crib.

This isn't the actual camera, but you get the idea...


The plan was that our little sprite's every move was then going to be caught on a tv montior that said spouse had rigged up in our bedroom, a.k.a., Spy Central. In short, that kid was toast. No more catching us off guard. No more feces smearing. No more pealing the wallpaper and eating it. NO MORE!

Also not the monitor, but it looked very similar...


Did I mention that our son started walking at ten months of age?

"No more" lasted about three months before it began its descent into demise. I remember our child toddling into our room and looking at that television screen, seeing the layout of his bedroom before him, and then looking at me as though he'd just outted an undercover agent.

Into his room he went. He walked in circles. Into our room he went. He studied the screen. Into his room. Circles. Until...AHA! He spotted the camera! He then walked into our bedroom and turned off the tv. Lol.

Turning it off turned into unplugging, which turned into disconnecting. You see, disabling the monitor was all he could do since he couldn't reach the camera. What a pain! I got tired of the cat and mouse routine, and, besides, I needed a monitor to travel with me, so I convinced my spouse that his technology was dated--the ultimate insult to a geek. We dumped that system and purchased a portable video monitor.

Look how tiny and portable this one is! I positioned the camera just so that I could see our son's bed in the screen. :) This monitor gave me warm fuzzies...

...until our son walked by and snapped off the antenna.

Not to worry. Husband is a geek, remember? He rigged up some sort of some eye sore thing that made it functional---frustrating, yet functional. We were back in business for a few more months.

You know, the trouble with portable monitors, is that they are, well, portable. Our son started hiding it.

And then, one day, he walked purposefully into the room and stared it down. He studied its picture with intent. Then, with that same intent he marched out of the kitchen and back to his bedroom. He looked at the camera. I watched it all on the monitor like a B-rated movie. His brow furrowed. His eyes squinted.

Then, he left his room and came back to the monitor and studied it again. The next day, when he woke, instead of playing in his toddler bed as he usually did, he deftly moved onto the floor beside his bed, which just so happened to be outside of the camera angle.

From that moment on, our lovely portable video monitor with the broken antenna only caught our darling when he was asleep.

This is the face of the little boy that now has TWO cameras in his bedroom working two DIFFERENT angles in the event that he should be holding a part to the toilet or a tv or something else he shouldn't be dismantling.

And, frankly, we need a camera in EVERY room in our small upstairs to really keep up with him, but that's simply too much for the world of baby monitors to withstand.

I tried audio monitors in the other rooms.

He unplugs them.

Maybe I should somehow rig him with a spy pen...on his vaccuum. Now THERE'S an idea!! Just you wait, my little man. Mommy has not yet made her last move!