Like most parents, we believe our child is already a genius. "Very Advanced" as my wife says. Ironically, this belief makes us suckers for any product that will guarantee to unleash our child's brain. Meet "Baby Einstein."

This line of videos couldn't be better named for its prey. We saw the videos on the Toys R Us shelves. We got the videos. And without a further thought we plopped our child in front of them for hours. Never mind that Einstein never had a television set. If he had, he'd certainly have watched videos like these.

Have you seen them? They are wonders.

Disembodied hands arrange blocks and press buttons on jack-in-the-boxes as synthesized music bubbles in the background. Voiceovers in various languages say things I could only imagine.

They are the play school equivalent to Pink Floyd's "The Wall."

Here is my favorite sequence. White background. A toy cow slowly and mechanically pads onto the screen. It seems to chew as it walks, or at least its mouth flaps with each step. In the middle of the screen, it moos. Eventually it has left the screen, all but its twitching tale.

Will this turn our baby into a child prodigy?

I think so!

Yet somehow, as we watch the plastic sheep and goats rising up the escalator toy and listen to the Japanese alphabet song, I can feel my intelligence sinking in direct proportion to hers increasing.

"Is this helping?" I ask her as we stare at the TV. When I look over at her, JB is drooling on the video tape box.

Why do we even want our children to be like Einstein? Misunderstood geniuses who walk around without their pants. Now that I think of it, JB is closer than I thought.

The Wonders of Breast Feeding.

Breast feeding is natural, nurturing, and normal. My wife compares it to having your testicles sucked by a jellyfish. I was about to tell her that jellyfish don't suck when I caught a look in her eye that suggested more harm to the family jewels.
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