I have converted all my host (A) records including the parent record to
CNAMES. When I do this I am unable to create an MX record, I get the message
(A new reocrd cannot be created. Node is a CNAME record). It looks like you
cannot have a parent record which is a CNAME and an MX record at the same
time. Any suggestions??

Thanks,
Sol

S> I have converted all my host (A) records including the parent
S> record to CNAMES. When I do this I am unable to create an MX
S> record, [...] It looks like you cannot have a parent record
S> which is a CNAME and an MX record at the same time. Any
S> suggestions??

Yes. Stop using "CNAME"s. You appear to have gone slap happy with them.
Stop it. Your self-inflicted problem will go away when you do.

Avoid using "CNAME" resource records. Several DNS server softwares (both
proxy and content) don't deal with them at all well, and they usually cause
more DNS traffic to occur than not using them would. If there's a choice
between two ways of doing things, and only one way involves the use of
client-side aliases, choose the other way.