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Main Page Site Index Getting Pregnant Pregnancy Parenting Pregnancy and Parenting Journals Fertility Nutrition Pregnant Moms Morning Sickness Women's Health Child Health	by Jonathan Kronstadt Every few days our mail carrier slips through our slot some brightly colored, cheery looking catalog of products designed to make our lives as parents easier. These catalogs have upbeat names like Right Start, Fresh Start, Smooth Start, Start Again, and Gentlemen Start Your Engines. Inside is page after page of incredibly versatile, attractive, overpriced and ultimately unnecessary stuff with which to outfit the properly outfitted child of the late 1990s. None of these products serves merely one function. Everything doubles as something else. There are car seats that turn into strollers, art tables that turn into math tables, playpens that turn into window boxes, and snugglies that turn into no-load mutual funds. As a novice parent I pored over the pages of these catalogs, trying to imagine how we could possibly cope without each and every item. Now as a two-kid veteran, I don't even have the energy to shop by mail. Besides, you can't buy what parents really need--sleep, solitude, and a video of Barney being strip-searched and led off in chains. Absent those things, I have come up with a few items that, while hardly necessities, are better than a poke in the eye with a pointed stick. The Tell-All Diaper. We live in the age of information, and diapers give us everything but. We get bunnies and bears on the front and miracle fabrics that will absorb Lake Michigan when what we really want to know is: is there or isn't there? The Tell-All Diaper would feature either a strategically placed window or perhaps a pH strip that would change color depending on the type and level of deposit. So, Huggies and Pampers, quit monkeying with the tape ends and leg holes and give parents a diaper that's a no-brainer. One would think that in a world where a woman can find out whether or not she's pregnant by peeing on a chemically treated piece of paper there would be a diaper that could tell you whether Junior had gone ya-ya or not. The Red Light-Green Light Remote. We've been lucky with our two children in many ways, one of which is that they are both outstanding car travelers. As infants, however, they shared a white-hot hatred of red lights. As long as the car is moving at an appropriate--or higher--speed, they were both perfectly content to ride backwards without a clue where we were going. But hit a red light and you'd think you'd just run over their toes with a backhoe. The geniuses that developed the fuzzbuster should be able to come up with some remote device that would, quite simply, turn lights green from up to 200 feet away. I suppose it would have to be restricted from rush-hour use to prevent traffic mayhem, and you should have to turn it in when your child is six months old. But it would surely prevent some accidents caused by parents trying to stick their pinky in the mouth of a screaming, rear-facing, back-seat infant. The String Cheese Dispenser and Wrapper Removal System. In the past year my three-year-old has eaten enough string cheese to stretch from here to Palermo. I find it an odd but acceptable food item, better than gummi worms yet not so good as carrot sticks. The problem is you need the jaws of life to open the #@!* things. Have you seen the infomercial for that thing that sucks the air out of absolutely everything so that you can fit all of your worldly belongings into your glove compartment? That's what they use to seal string cheese. Then they give you an alleged flap at the top that pulls apart, unveiling the precious rod of cheese. Me, I couldn't find the flap if I were Leonard Nimoy (not when he was Spock; when his career was in the toilet and he did that awful In Search Of show). What I need is a refrigerator-based dispenser that holds maybe a gross of string cheese, and which with the press of a button delivers into my hand a naked cheese wand ready for consumption. Also, once a week it should empty itself of the wrappers and automatically shuttle them to a local recycling plant. The Sleep Psychic. Of all the aspects of parenting, none is so continually frustrating as sleep management. As sleep goes, so goes household happiness. (By the way, isn't it one of life's great ironies that when you're a kid you avoid sleep at all costs, yet as soon as you become an adult it's all you want to do? Can you imagine not wanting to take a nap? If, that is, your imagination hasn't been paralyzed by lack of sleep.) This device would take the form of a bracelet perhaps, and provide a digital readout of approximately how long your child's nap or night's sleep would be. It would predict dream topics and beep in the event of a monster-related nightmare. Should the sleep period be unusually short it would identify the reason and provide an appropriate course of action, such as letting him or her spend the night at your parents' house. Neat, huh? Inventors of the world take note. Parents of the world stand ready, wallets open, credit card numbers at hand. Give us some peace and quiet, and you can rob us blind. Just don't eat all the string cheese. This work is copyrighted by the author, Jonathan Kronstadt. Reproduction of any kind is prohibited with out the express consent of the author. Please feel free to let Jonathan know what you think of his work by sending him an email.