Useful Inventions for the Park Slope Parent

A lot of people say their best ideas come to them in the shower, but my inspiration comes while being pelted by the wintery mix that is plaguing New York this winter.

In my , I proposed a handful of micro-niche services specifically for Park Slope parents, but as I attempted to push a double stroller full of my two unhappy, damp children through the puddles/lakes/rivers of slush/snow/ice/ that are waxing and waning at every curb cut in the neighborhood with each fresh snowfall, it occurred to me that there is also a vast untapped market for inventions just for NYC parents. 

Here's a few that come to mind:

Come on, this is the stroller capitol of the city, maybe even the world. In my three and a half years of being a parent here, I have seen strollers outfitted with all manner of accoutrements—gravity-defying drink holders and snack trays, down-filled cocoons, storm shields, mosquito nets, white noise machines disguised as sheep, trash bag dispensers, clip-on fans—but I have never once seen a special attachment to keep the stroller pusher dry. Can’t someone invent a decent umbrella with and extra long handle that clips to the handlebar? 

Never does the cliché that Park Slope kids are coddled seem more obvious to me then when I see a parent pulling a sled full of children over to Prospect Park—in some cases even pulling them up the hills. Why, when I was a child, we carried our own sleds uphill — both ways! Now that I’m a grown-up, we’re all supposed to be human ski lifts? Instead, I’d like to see a specially-designed sled that would allow an adult to sit back and relax while the kids do the hard work of pulling us along in the snow. After all, they’ve been cooped up all winter, they’d probably find the extra activity fun!

Some days are bound to be too frigid to venture out, even for the privilege of towing a parent around with a rope. Lately, taking my three-year-old out into the hallway to play with the neighbor kids counts as “getting out of the apartment.”  And while preschoolers can have fun just running from one end up the hall to the other, a small bouncy castle and slide specially tailored to fit and apartment building hallway would sure sweeten the deal.

Yeah, yeah, the city should be doing a better job clearing the streets, but the fact is, the unholy mix of chilled precipitation that’s lining our streets and sidewalks is probably going to be around for a while longer. On warm-ish days, the puddles are so deep and wide that I feel like a member of a wagon train fording a river when I venture across the street with my daughters. It’d sure be nice to have a wet-dry vacuum cleaner attached the frame our stroller to suck the puddles down to less treacherous level.

With my Shop-Vac at the ready for when the temperature creeps above 32 degrees, I’ll just need something to handle the slippery re-freeze on the sub-zero days. This is when it a special stroller attachment that would sprinkle a little rock salt in our path as we trudge around the neighborhood would come in handy. (This could also eliminate the need for someone to invent snow tires for strollers.)