I just read a CNN blog post by Jeff Pearlman encouraging dads to “wake the hell up.” Surprisingly, I agree with every point he makes. Especially the one about dads golfing for five hours on weekends after being gone all week for work. That may be an unpopular opinion among dads, but shit, we have to pull our weight. Turns out many of us dads aren’t doing our fair share and thus probably don’t deserve that gift mug this father’s day.

Below is an excerpt from the story, but I encourage you to read the full text here.

Really, wake the hell up. Now. I understand that most of you have 9-to-5 jobs, that you leave tired and come home tired and just wanna chill in front of SportsCenter with a bowl of chips. But, seriously, you have no remote idea: Being a stay-at-home parent is exhausting. At the office, you can hide. You can take lunch. You can pretend you’re working while scrolling the Internet for Yankees-Blue Jays and, ahem, Lindsay Lohan news. You have genuine social interactions with folks over the age of, oh, 12. People ask questions about your day — and listen to the answers.I

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no “perfect dad” and I would never claim or try to be. However, I do my damnedest to make sure that many of the child-rearing responsibilities are shared. Yeah, it’s hard as hell. And do I always want to be doing these things (changing diapers, going to the park, etc.), no, I don’t. But when we as fathers admit that there’s more we could do, that’s a start. I, for one, will try to get up with my child in the morning on more days so my wife can get some extra Zs. Guess I’m taking this whole “wake the hell up” thing literally.

by regular contributor Brian Hoover

Newborns come with “stuff,” you’ve no doubt realized. Boppys and Bumbos and Soothies and Pack ’n Plays; blankets and onesies and bottles and books. Don’t even get me started on breast pumps and everything those entail.

When we brought our daughter home, my wife and I found ourselves thrust into an all-fronts war with “stuff” that we’d never anticipated, even as the spoils from the baby shower accumulated alongside the gifts that other gracious folks had sent. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful; quite to the contrary, we were blessed by this extraordinary show of generosity from family, friends, and colleagues. It’s just that we had, until then, lived a relatively simple, mostly clutter-free existence. Now we had more stuff than we could manage with our combined four hands.

Which got us thinking.

We were often asked by friends who were expecting what we thought was essential: Do we need the video monitor, or will a regular monitor do? Do we need a monitor at all? During one such conversation with a friend, my wife was asked what product, if she could choose just one, she felt would be the most helpful thing for a new parent to own.

Without missing a beat, she replied, “Robotic third arm.”

This had been a matter of regular conversation in our house since very nearly the beginning of our tenure as parents. What could be more useful than a third arm? Consider:

You have a wailing, hungry baby on your shoulder who will only cry harder if you put him down. Preparing a bottle is a two-handed task and your partner is not home—Help!

Robotic Third Arm™ is ready to assist.

At the changing table, your kid’s diaper is filled with “banana soup,” and you realize you forgot to refill the wipes after the last change. The refills are across the room, and but you can’t leave the baby unattended, even for two seconds. What to do?

Try Robotic Third Arm with Extension Fingers™.

You’re holding a sleeping baby in one arm, rubbing her forehead in that way that for whatever reason is the only thing that keeps her asleep—Man, she’s beautiful and all, but how are you supposed to read a magazine?

Robotic Third Arm with LED Book Light™ (two AA batteries not included).

Twins?

You get the picture.

In order to operate at peak function, I imagine that Robotic Third Arm™ would need to somehow be wired into the user’s brain, but also easily removable for those times when your regular complement of arms is sufficient. In terms of motion and texture, it should be as natural as possible. And, most importantly, prospective manufacturers should always strive to keep the consumer in mind, especially in these uncertain economic times: we’d like to keep the price tag at or under $400,000 per unit. We put families first.

And so petitioning all inventors: We claim the intellectual property rights, but we just don’t have the technological savvy to pull it off alone. Interested parties should kindly leave their information in the comments section beneath this post, and I’ll be happy to be in touch regarding formal proposals. On behalf of parents everywhere, I thank you.

And, parents everywhere—You’re welcome.

Now I know most dads idea of cooking for their kid means pre-heating the oven to 450 for a batch of Fish Styx, but if you cook and cook well for your kids, the new food site foodrepublic.com wants to hear about it. Just enter a comment with what you cook for a chance to win the book “Man with a Pan.”

One dad actually pounds out chicken breasts and uses cookie cutters to make dinosaur shapes and breads them. Take that you lazy bastards.