Apple Addiction

With much fear and trembling, the K-folks have exposed K-bao to technology. This has consisted of letting her play some Fisher-Price games on the desktop, allowing her to monkey around with K-Pop's locked Blackberry, and yes, introducing her to some "educational apps" on the iPhone.

The result? Complete mayhem in the Hu family. A kid asking for - nay, demanding - her screen time 10 - 12 times a day. We are either shaping the next Marissa Mayer or creating a little technology brat emotionally dependent on Apple products.

The K-folks' only comfort is that this appears to be a commonplace problem. K-Pop came across the following GigaOm headline the other day: I Gave My 3 Year Old an iPhone: Have I Created a Monster?

And according to a Stanford University study, 25% of iPhone users reported the phone to be "dangerously alluring" and 41% said that losing their iPhone would be "a tragedy."

In the below video, shot with K-Pop's iPhone, little K-bao chants "iPhone" no less than 8 times before resorting to guilt-tripping her Dad with appeals to natural law and principles of selflessness.

Pompous

For our East coast trip, K-Mum got K-bao a purple hippo stuffy. As you can see, Hippo is fat and has a complacent, self-satisfied smile plastered on his face at all times. K-Pop calls him Pompous the 'Po. K-Mum introduced Pompous a few days prior to our departure, thinking that he would provide some stability and continuity given the many different beds where little K-bao would lay to rest her royal baby head on our trip. That's right - create some artificial dependency.

K-Pop was dubious of this strategy and his skepticism was proved prescient when it soon became clear that the order of affairs on this trip was K-bao first, Pompous second, and K-Pop third.

"Where's her hippo?"

"K-Mum, I was just about to fall asleep."

"She can't sleep without her hippo."

"She looks asleep to me."

"You need to get it, I think it's in the car."

(K-Pop in boxers with eyes half-closed trudges to car. Repeat half a dozen times throughout trip)

One of our smarter friends went out and bought six or seven of the same stuffy and put one in every room, bed, car or closet where the little one might show up. K-Pop has plans to implement that genius strategy immediately.