Must be something in the water

Somewhere in the world right now, some mom or dad is reaching into the fridge to grab their kid a juice box filled not with juice but - get ready for it - water. Wateroos were invented by a mom who just couldn't get her daughter to drink water any other way. No, that's not quite true. She claims to have created water-filled juice boxes because she was tired of toting around water-filled sippy cups which leaked into her purse.

Okay, I am a water-filled-sippy-cup-toting mom and have never had a spill. (However, I have managed to spill about eight million other food and drink items in my very forgiving diaper bag). Back to my point, I've also had a little bit of experience with juice boxes. Are they ever not leaking? They leak if you squeeze them, drop them, hold them at a slight angle or even just leave them sitting unattended in some weird straw air pressure situation. You moms know what I'm talking about. So, the very last thing I want to tote in my purse is a juice box filled with water. But I'll bet you anything that mom is going to pay her kid's way through college with such a simple idea.

And speaking of water, I'm adding on to my growing list of "why didn't I think of that?!" items: the aquadoodle. It's like a magna doodle, kind of. It's actually a thin piece of fabric (think white sheet) over top of a heavy dark piece of fabric (think blue slip 'n slide). When you draw on it with water-filled pens, the white sheet gets wet and shows the blue underneath. Doodle to your heart's content, watch it dry and disappear, repeat. Genius.

I've often thought if you're going to invent and market a new product, it should be for kids, or better yet, babies. Is there anything we parents won't buy to make our children healthier, smarter, happier, better sleepers, less whiny, etc? And the simpler, the better. I remember how important it was to me that before the little noodle was born we had ample supplies of a particular swaddling blanket. It was bigger than the rest of 'em and much more hip looking. So, roughly $75 later we had three big, hip-looking swaddling blankets. Now, I was right about needing ample size since our noodle came in size extra large; however, I'm pretty sure a trip to the fabric store for some similar fabric cut into big squares would have only set us back about $5. But only the best for our little noodle, right?

I need to come up with some new product for wee ones. I have been thinking about making local, organic baby food for home delivery (marrying my love for babies with my love for cooking), but that sure seems like a lot of effort. I would really rather come up with a concept like water in a box or gigantic pieces of fleece to market to the world. If only it were so simple!