Mad Scientist Effort-Saving Baby Inventions

Most babies like the car.  But on the way home from our daily mall walks with our 5 month old twin grandchildren, Jack invariably ejects his pacifier, then starts yelling about it.  We keep hoping that the car will soothe him to sleep, but nothing doing.  When my husband is driving, I’ve gone so far as unbuckle my seat belt, climb in the back seat, and stick the pacifier back in.  It’s on a tether so it doesn’t get lost.  After the third time I give up and use my own “pacifier”, which are earplugs.  When I’m driving alone, I go straight for the earplugs.

When we get home, we hurriedly fix them bottles, and thus appeased, they get activity time on the play mat, then swaddled for their nap.

Activity time for a five month old consists mainly of displaying toys in front of them.  The idea is that they reach for, swat or otherwise manipulate these toys.  Some toys rattle, light up, or wiggle, but it doesn’t take long for them to get bored.  The five month old brain does not have much sticking power.  Kind of like teenagers or old men.  Ellie thinks up new games, like rolling over to examine the underside of the couch, but Jack’s favorite method of handling boredom usually involves singing the lyrics of the most acidic rock music he can think of.  It’s long been known that rock musicians get their musical inspiration from bored five month olds.

Swaddling is another challenging activity for grandparents, especially with the amazingly strong Jack.  He does not want to hold his chubby little arms at his side while we wrap him up like a burrito.  We’ve been told that we may not utilize our knees or legs across the baby when attempting to wrap them.  Furthermore, it has to be T-I-G-H-T or they wiggle their arms out of the swaddle and wake themselves up.  As we know, the most important rule in baby care is Get Them To Sleep.

"I'M NOT SLEEPY NONNI!"

Being smarter than a five month old takes some effort, but we’ve come up with Mad Scientist Labor Saving Baby Inventions.

The Auto-Paci.  This one is a helmet with a retractable arm attached to the top.  At the end of the arm is a pacifier.  Put the helmet on the baby, especially in the car.  It is voice activated, so when the baby cries, the arm comes down and inserts the pacifier in the baby’s mouth.  Boink.  Silence.

The Remote Control Activity Mat.  First suspend the conveyor belt (included in kit) from your living room ceiling with the included hooks.  Obtain any sort of revolving display stand (not included).  You know, like the kind they display sunglasses, earrings, or watches on.  Get several display stands and attach as many dangly toys to each display stand as you can.  Suspend the stands horizontally from a conveyor belt that snakes around your living room.  Both the conveyor belt and the display cases are operated by a remote control.  Grandparents sit in their easy chair, baby lies on mat.  Baby gets tired of toys hanging over their heads.  Grandparents use remote control to operate the conveyor belt of display stands, each containing many dangly toys.  Presto, new toys appear in baby’s reach.  You don’t need that many toys, they are happy with, roughly, 346.  Your mileage may vary.  Some need more.  There is an exersaucer adapter, sold separately.

The Zippity Slide Swaddler.  Get a short plastic toddler slide.  At the bottom is one of those Christmas tree wrapper things, only instead of netting, it’s got a swaddling blanket attached.  At nap time, hold the baby at the top of the slide and let go.  Whoosh, down the slide they go, through the Christmas tree wrapper, and out they come the other side all wrapped up and ready for a nap.  Easy peasy.

Great inventions, right?  Marketable even.  Not sure what our daughter and son-in-law might think.  I may have to get out the earplugs again.

I Hope I Get This Grandparenting Thing Right

My daughter and her husband are expecting twins!  Our first grandchildren, and I’m worried.  Oh, the babies are fine.  Expectant mama is fine.  But am I going to make a good grandmother?  There’s room for doubt.  Just look at our dogs.

We never, ever have been able to have one of those dogs that lies around and thumps his tail.  Oh no.  Our dogs launch themselves at us when we come home, they hop like kangaroos, they go mad with delight when the doorbell rings.  The current one yaps his head off, other dogs have gone nutso in their own peculiar ways.  One chased his tail, one wagged his tail like a propeller, one barked down the heating vent because it made a loud echo noise and made us laugh. 

I see young moms with sweet little babies that idly pass the time gazing at their hands, watching the trees blow.  Even moms I know with twins seem to be able to manage keeping their wee ones quiet and peaceable at restaurants.  How do they do that? 

We’ve decided that what we must be doing wrong is paying too much attention to the babies or dogs.  It hasn’t helped that we ourselves go into frenzied yapping whenever we see a baby or dog.  The cry of “BABY ALERT” when my daughters and I are out shopping causes us to react as if we are Labradors and someone has thrown a ball. 

Same thing happens when we see a dog.  “Look at that Bernese Mountain Dog!”  All heads turn, and we pant and yank at our social leashes in order to go pet it. 

I just gotta stop doing that.  I don’t want the babies copying me, and I mean to have orderly, well-conducted little grandbabies.  I’m practicing a slow tempo and calm demeanor.  I’m considering signing up for yoga.  I’m asking everyone for their advice on how they keep their little ones soothed and calm.  My daughter and her husband live close by and I imagine we will be seeing a lot of them. What are your favorite ways to raise quiet children? 

I promise to take all your suggestions under consideration.

But what do I think we are we going to do when our little sweetums arrive?  Talk about little teapots!  I bet I’ll be like a little teapot myself, with steam squealing out of the whistle hole.  Yippee!  “Thar she blows!” the neighbors will say about me as I turn handsprings down the street.  Newspapers will go unread, blogs won’t get written, gardening won’t get done.  And housekeeping?  Forget it!  There are BABIES!  Wheeee!