Alexa…

We have an Amazon Echo in our kitchen. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s a black cylinder that does things when you ask it questions starting with the word, “Alexa…” Alexa can do many amazing things and we don’t even begin to take full advantage of her, but she does do a few things we do all the time in our house.

The top three are asking Alexa to play some song or music. My children don’t quite have the vocal range for Alexa to understand them but sometimes they get lucky. I also use Alexa to play my audio book from Audible. I get in the car and play my book over Bluetooth and then come in the house and say, “Alexa, play my audio book.” She knows what my current audio book is, figures out the last location I was listening to and picks up where I left off.

The third thing we use Alexa for is to add things to the shopping list. Anyone—including the children—can ask Alexa to add something to the shopping list. That list is available whenever my husband or I go to the store and as a result, we’re always on top of our shopping needs.

Alexa has become pretty useful as far as I’m concerned. I sometimes even forget where I am and don’t remember that the radio in the car does, in fact, respond to voice commands when I press the button, but isn’t named Alexa. I was driving along with my daughter in the back seat, held down the voice command button in the Tesla and said, “Alexa, play Piano Man by Billy Joel”. The car did nothing, not understanding me. My daughter said from the back seat, “Mom, Alexa isn’t in the car.”

The Big Boy Update: At dinner two nights ago we were asking my son about his day at school. After too many questions he said, “can we just not talk about that right now?”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: I reminded my daughter to wipe her mouth after finishing her meal and she could be excused. She wiped and then said, “do I look clean and shiny?”