If you feel your uses would be limited to that, you would probably be fine with the Fire. Where the camera and mic come in handy is video chat - which is becoming more common. You mentioned you have a little'un coming - imagine if the grandparents lived a ways away and they had an iPad - you could establish a FaceTime session and grandma could see her daughter with the newborn. That is where the added functionality of the camera and mic comes in.

Other than that, the well-established app store opens the iPad up to a whole bunch of added functionality - and the apps are safe. I did find out this afternoon that the Amazon tablet will be limited to their own app store. This means that app developers will need to get their Android app on yet ANOTHER store to sell to Fire users. I don't know if Amazon plans to monitor content in their app store (I would hope so), but if they don't, there will be malware apps that end up in it. You don't need to worry about malware with the iOS store since Apple checks each app before it is allowed in. Also, with the iPad you will get the latest updates to the operating system when they become available. With Android, it is anyone's guess if or when updates come through. Keep in mind too that all of the same Amazon content you will get with the Fire is also available on the iPad with the Amazon app. Soooo, I suppose you can consider these things and decide from there whether paying the extra $$ would be worth it for the iPad or not.