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Y’all! Being a new mom, I learned quickly that I
need to be very efficient with my time. So I partnered up with Cox to put together
this new smart home tech video for all the mamas out there! Hey y’all hey it’s Ashley Renne and welcome
to my sustainable lifestyle and tech channel. I post videos about my smart home, electric
car, and other topics related to eco-conscious living so if you’re into that, just hit
the subscribe button and turn the notification bell on so you never miss a new video.

Now today’s video is all about smart home
tech for moms. I gave a tour of my smart home before I had
my baby, so this is an update that shows you how I use some of those devices, plus some
new ones, strategically as a mom. First of all if you’re new to this topic,
what is a smart home exactly? Simply put, it just means that you use Internet
connected devices like your phone or tablet to remotely monitor and manage different systems
and appliances in your house. Alright now, let’s get into what I do at
my house. Here are all the ways I use smart technology
throughout my home to make my mom life easier. 1. Mesh Wifi
Okay so when it comes to using smart technology, none of this would be possible without reliable
Internet connection right, so I encourage you to up your WiFi game by utilizing what’s
called a Mesh network, which you could easily do with Cox.

If you haven’t heard of mesh wifi, let me
put you on game! So with traditional wifi routers, the reach
of their signals is rather limited. Mesh routers, on the other hand, help to eliminate
dead zones. So for example, you could use Cox Panoramic
WIFI which delivers high level connectivity in areas that would traditionally suffer from
low internet speeds. My mesh wifi Routers come in particularly
handy when the baby is taking a nap in his room and I’m down here in my basement office
working, and it's a space that would traditionally have a poor signal. And I can’t afford to have a bad signal
anywhere in my house, because if my baby wakes up, I need to be able to see or hear him in
the app that I use to monitor him.

Now you can go to cox.com/smarthome to learn
the different ways Cox can help make sure your internet connection is reliable for your
smart home. 2. Smart Assistant
Now at the heart of any smart home ecosystem is a virtual assistant. Your smart assistant is a voice-controlled
device that connects you to the smart devices in your home. You give it a command, and it responds accordingly. Now two of the most popular assistants are
Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. I use Google Assistant, and the speakers I
use the most for our voice commands are these Google minis. I have these Google mini speakers in several
rooms throughout my house so I can use them to my advantage whenever I have Baby Beyond
with me. As a first time mom, I have tons and tons
of questions and Google is honestly the first place I turn to when I need a quick answer. And since my arms are usually full and I just
can’t pull Google up on my phone, I just ask my question out loud.

Google will hear my question and respond out
loud with an answer. Now also, I use it to play lullaby music and
nursery rhymes. So for example, when we’re winding down
right before bedtime, I tell my Google Mini device to play “Super Relaxing Baby Music”
which plays peaceful music while I’m getting him ready for bed. Now whatever you want your speaker to play,
just ask your smart assistant and it’ll play it.

3. Smart Item Trackers
Now if you’re a mom, then you’ve probably heard of the term “mom brain” – we have
a lot of things to keep track of every day, and naturally it can be easy to lose track
of things. For you, maybe it’s your wallet and keys. For me, it’s my phone. You can use smart tracking devices to quickly
find the things you lose. I have 3 ideas for tracking. One is the Tile Bluetooth tracker –you can
buy a few of these trackers and stick them in items you typically misplace.

Like you can attach it to your keyring or
put it in your diaper bag. The second option that follows the same concept
is Apple Airtag. If you have an iPhone 11 or later, it offers
not only direct navigation to your lost items within range if you have an iPhone but also
tracking worldwide using Apple's existing FindMy network. And the third option which is what I use is
an Apple Watch.

I don’t lose track of my keys, wallet, or
anything like that—the only thing I ever lose is my phone, which happens like several
times a day. I have an apple watch that I use for other
things, but one of the features it has is an iPhone locator. Very helpful for moms with mom brain. 4. Smart Doorbell
How can a smart doorbell be helpful for a mom? By silencing itself when your baby is sleeping. I’ll never forget the time I put Beyond
down for a nap, only for him to wake up 10 minutes later from the sound of our doorbell. After that I started utilizing the feature
in my Google Nest Hello Doorbell app that lets you turn the indoor chime on or off. Simply open the Nest app, tap on your Nest
Hello feed, tap the settings icon in the top right corner, and toggle the Indoor Chime
on/off.

5. Smart Monitoring
Speaking of naps, you’ll want to make life easier as a new mom with a multi-functional
baby monitoring system. Now there are tons on the market, but the
one I personally think is the best for first-time moms is the Nanit Pro Smart Baby Monitor & Wall
Mount. On top of the basic features like audio and
video monitoring, this takes it a step further with technology that can track sleep patterns,
breathing, and growth. See these little patterns on this band, they
send a signal to the camera which then updates in your Nanit app so you can see the data
in real-time. Now the Nanit app sends sleep advice tailored
to your baby’s sleeping patterns, which can sometimes be annoying if the advice doesn’t
align with your parenting style. But, other than that, it has helped me a lot
with getting Beyond to sleep through the night finally, like the whole night and that's a
huge milestone for both babies and sleep derived moms. So for us, it finally happened on his 7-month
birthday.

Yes! 6. Smart Lighting
Whenever you have to make a nighttime visit to your baby’s room, it helps to have some
kind of light source that’s not jarring in the middle of the night. I have 3 suggestions for that. The first one is if you get the Nanit Monitoring
system I mentioned earlier, it comes with a night light that you can turn on right in
the app.

So that’s what we currently use, and it’s
perched right above his crib. Another option is you could use the Hatch
Baby Rest, which is a sound machine that doubles as a night light. You can change the colors of the nightlight,
adjust the light intensity, and pick a soothing sound to create the perfect sleep environment
for your little one. The white noise option works like a charm. It drowns out all noise outside his bedroom
and helps him sleep through the night. And the third option is to use smart dimmable
lighting. We have Philips Hue lightbulbs installed that
we can dim using our app or Google assistant.

No matter which smart lighting option you
choose though, just make sure it’s one that will help you see in the middle of the night
without jolting you or your baby awake. 7. Smart Fridge
Okay so a smart fridge is going to be more on the expensive side so this one is a nice-to-have,
but it’s not necessary. I just thought I’d mention it because I
have one and I’m going to tell you the random way that I use it with my baby. I have the Samsung Family Hub. When I was a kid, our fridge was the place
we’d put notes, grocery lists, photos, artwork, etcetera etcetera. But with this smart fridge, you can use the
smart screen which is basically like a giant tablet to display those same things, but just
in a much sleeker way.

Sometimes when I’m in the kitchen with Beyond,
we walk over to the fridge and we pull up the white board so he can doodle on it. It’s just a very simple, cutesy little thing
we do, and it’s an easy way to keep him engaged when we’re in this area of the house
– like I said, not a necessity, but if you happen to be in the market for a new fridge,
then why not consider buying a smart one? 8. Smart Vacuum
I never appreciated my smart vacuum as much as I do now that I’m a mom. I don’t have the same kind of time that
I used to, so any smart tech devices I have that can help me get chores done quicker,
I will take advantage of.

And my smart vacuum is one of those things. We have the Samsung power bot, it’s an older
model that we’ve had for a few years now but it still works like a charm. It mapped out all of our rooms and finds the
best path to clean each one. And it's set
it to automatically come on regularly during times when Beyond is least likely to be taking
a nap and when it's done doing its thing it returns back to its docking station to recharge. 9. A Smart Scale
So if you’re like us and into multi-use products to sustainably cut down on your consumption,
then you might like this smart scale and it doubles as a diaper changing pad. So the one we have is by Hatch Baby and we
use it to keep track of Beyond’s weight.

When he was newborn, we used this scale as
a part of our bath time routine. Now before we gave him a bath, we’d place
him on the scale to capture his weight. And in those early days of my breastfeeding
journey I was always wondering if I was producing enough milk and if he was gaining enough weight,
so using this to weigh him always gave me peace of mind. Now I’m a lot more confident in my breastfeeding
nowadays so I’m not obsessively weighing him anymore like I used to back in the day,
but I still like to do weight checks occasionally. Now when I’m not using it to weigh him,
I’m using it as a diaper changing station. So I just put him on this and I change his
diaper.

I like that it has multiple uses, because
it’s just one less thing to keep track of. 10. Smart Locks. And last but not least, if you’re a new
mom, you might have family or friends coming to stay with you to help out. My mom helped me during the first several
months of Beyond’s life and I will be forever grateful. My sister and her kids were also here a couple
times. Smart locks gave them the autonomy to get
in and out of the house without me having to make several copies of keys to hand out
or to stop what I’m doing to open the door for them, cuz you know, always gotta baby
in my hand. They were easily able to get in and out of
our house whenever they needed to. Cox also offers some of the smart devices
I mentioned. For example if you want a Smart Assistant,
they have the Cox Voice Remote with Contour TV. For smart lighting, they have Cox Smart Bulbs
with Cox Homelife and for smart locks, they have the Cox Smart Lock with Cox Homelife.

So to make your life easier as a new mom,
consider getting your smart devices from one place like Cox. Alright, that’s it! I hope you enjoyed seeing the different ways
I use smart tech to my advantage as a mom. If you’re looking to turn your house into
a smart home, I highly recommend you look into Cox to see how they can best support
you and your smart home. They can help you create more free time, me
time, and we time with your kids. I hope you liked this video and if you did,
make sure you give it a thumbs up and subscribe for more smart tech videos just like this.

And if you want to buy anything I mentioned
in this video, just peep the description because I put links to everything down below. I’ll catch ya next week in a new video and
until then, stay green y’all. Say bye Beyond! Bye!.