Wednesday, December 3, 2008

If these exist, I want them. If they don't, make them!

Registering at Babies R Us before Kaylani was born was a fun event, as any registry building event usually is. What's not to love about walking around a store with a laser scanner and pointing it at each and every thing in the store in case your friends and family decide to get carried away and buy it all.


All in all, we got most of everything we asked for, and definitely got all the necessities to get us started. And anything we didn't get, we purchased ourselves shortly after the baby shower. To date, I think the most useful thing we have is the bottle warmer (at least to me it is). Sure I could have said car seat, or crib, or pack and play, maybe even the great books, or even the bottle of whiskey we drank at the shower, but it's the Avent iQ Bottle Warmer that tops my list.


Yes, it's completely unnecessary and does the same thing as boiling some water or running the bottle under hot water for a few minutes, but the fact that I can put a refrigerated bottle of breastmilk in this machine, turn it on, go change Kaylani, use the bathroom, even check my email, all while this is heating to the exact temperature that I need it to be, and have it work between the hours of 1 and 3am, make it the most useful gadget we have.


Our friends Rob and Jen (Sofie's parents) recently told me their baby tub has a shower head attachment, which sure beats the plastic cups that we've been using over here during bath time. Well, that got me thinking: what other gadgets could there, or should there, be to make life with a baby easier? Here's some thoughts that I've had:


-A baby cry interpreter. I think they actually have these but there's no way they could work. I know they had one on the Simpsons at least...

-A car seat swinger. Babies like to be swung back and forth in their car seat, so there should be a machine you could hang a car seat from and it would swing for you. It'd almost be like an infant swing, but also be a car seat.

-A baby feeder. No, I'm not thinking something like the automatic pet food dispensers, but if there could be something you could sit her in (before she can sit herself), and then have it hold the bottle at the right angle and even know when to stop, that'd be nice. As a companion product, that leads me to...

-A burper. I don't know what this would look like, but I do know that patting her on the back for up to 10 minutes gets kinda tiring.

-An auto swaddler. They make the SwaddleMe, or MiracleWrap blankets that have the right dimensions and velcro to make things easier, but they don't work as well as an old fashioned swaddle in a 3'x3' blanket. If I could put Kaylani in the middle of a blanket and have her be swaddled right away, man, I'd get a second job to afford that (as long as the second job required no more than 1 hour of work a week).

-A parent swayer. This is my golden idea, and one that I've been dreaming about for as long as I can remember (my memory only goes back 3 days now by the way). There should be something that I can stand in, and it would sway me side to side. I picture it as a tall bar stool, but not a full seat so I'm still kinda standing, and it's able to completely hold me up. Then, it moves side to side (or front to back depending on preference). It also has something that wraps around me and Kaylani so that I don't have to support her myself (maybe a solid arm rest would do). This way, I can essentially sleep while standing up, and Kaylani could sleep in my arms. Wow. Anyone who invents this would be a millionaire. I'm telling you, it would sell. And I'm also telling you that if you invent it and become a millionaire, I want money. And I want it to play La Cucaracha when I honk the horn. Oh wait, that's Homer's invention. Nevermind.

Alright, well that's my list for now. It also doubles as my Christmas wish list, so if you run across any of these items and feel like you want to buy a new dad a present, I'm more than willing to accept them. Thanks in advance!

5 comments:

Unknown said...

The baby patter/burper has actually been invented!! My buddy, Dan, a biomedical engineering student, designed one and won an award at a national conference for it (in 2003, I think). This was to assist nurses in hospitals who were taking care of a large number of babies. No one ever bought into it, and the general safety of a device like that was questioned. Maybe we can get him to work on a Beta version.

Taryn kelly Sweeney said...

haha maybe someday babies wont even need parents at all, and we can just have robots do EVERYTHING for us so we can sit and get fat:) come on jonnytam, you know you love doing all that stuff, like holding her and swaying side to side, or feeding kaylani....:) ps i think i want a swaddler tho for myself:) how awesome would that be?!

JonnyTam13 said...

Rob, you so have to get your hands on one of those burpers. And since safety seems to be an issue, we'll have to find another baby to try it on first!

And Taryn, if you know of a robot that can do everything so I can sit around get fat, could you send it my way? I'll even let it swaddle you every night...which I think is kinda odd that you would want, but whatever.

Julie Thompson said...

they do make a car seat swing...graco makes it, you plop the car seat into this portable swinging machine

http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2583976

JonnyTam13 said...

Hmm, she hates her other 2 swings right now, but I think this one might do the trick! Thanks Julie! Now if only I could find that swayer, I think I'd be all set...