Just to get us started...

On a very late June morning in 2011, Terran woke up my houseguests by wandering into the living room and asking for a cookie. This is pretty typical for any 3 year old, especially if said cookies are already on the table and said child had already been munching on them for the past 10 minutes before anybody woke up. Frankly, I was surprised he asked. Even used “please.” I came into the living room to the rather impressive sight of my son playing with my guest’s Android tablet PC. “We thought Angry Birds might distract him from the cookies,” they said. “He just got three stars.”
I was pretty impressed by this point, watching my young son using multitouch features to zoom in and out on his little birdies-vs-piggies battlezone, articulating usage of those little dashing yellow birds, and getting a better feel for physics than I had in high school. He then hit the “home” button, I thought by accident. “Oh no! Let me put that back on the Birds for you,” and I reached for the tablet. “Nope!” he replied, and kept the screen out of reach. He then activated the camera. I thought this was a further accident, until he lifted the G-Slate to eye-level and said “SAY CHEESE!” taking a picture of our friend Paul.

Do what now?!

We were a little floored and figured he just understood because he saw the picture of the camera. I’m a photographer, so he’s been seeing/ being photographed by cameras since he was in infancy. I mean, this kid can’t even read yet.

He also found the flash.

Then he saw the icon to change to the forward-facing camera and switched to it. He then leaned back and began to take “Facebook-Style” photos of himself with everyone. 

Some turned out better than others.

Despite the quality, we are all pretty impressed by this point, and I was inspired with what I felt was a pretty neat idea.

Not my best picture, but I can't blame him.

I wondered what the world looked like to my three-year-old. 

UNCLE PAUL YOUR FEET ARE AWESOME
THEY ARE SO MUCH CLOSER TO ME THAN YOUR FACE

It’s widely accepted that most children at his age have a deeper understanding of their surroundings than they display, or speak of. Most times this is for a lack of being able to show us, or explain what they see, or feel. Communication is a learned skill, which many of us take for granted these days. Terran is incredibly observant, and frequently points things out to me that I didn't even see, or think about.

There's Zombie food on this T-Shirt!

So what if I gave him a cheap, user-friendly digital camera? What if I saved some of these pictures to give to him when he’s older? “This is what you were thinking about when you were three. This is what was important to you as you developed your ability to communicate with the rest of the world.”
I found a camera on Amazon for 20$ including shipping, and I had a 10$ gift card. No skin off my nose, that’s cheap for ANY toy for Terran. And for a piece of insight into my child’s developing mind, that’s priceless to me.

Pretty Aunt 'Relli

This is the product. We’ll see how this turns out.

Eye see you!