Equipment Change Proposal

I've been trying really hard to not be so negative lately, but the bitterness. . . .it BURNS!!!!

The ingenuity in the baby care department is seriously lacking.

At approximately 0'dark thirty this morning I was up with CTone the youngest, cursing under my breath as usual as I was navigating those shitty monochrome buttons on the pajamas, when I realized that I hated the next part of the event before it had even happened--making a bottle.

Everyone's technique is basically the same: grab a clean bottle, turn the water on full hot, keep a hand under the water to tell when it gets warm, fill the bottle when it gets to the proper temperature, and then you have to add baby formula to finish the deal. Simple enough, except that you have to measure the formula using the provided measuring scoop, which being clear in color buried in white powder makes it a pain in the ass. I mean, the engineers at the baby formula factory might as well make the scoop out of the fucking camouflage from Predator.

So it's dark, because any light whatsoever makes baby think that it's time to play, and you have a wet hand, and you have to fish around in the jug of formula for a scoop that you can't possibly see, so you end up trying to delicately find the end of the scoop without getting the powder all over your hand. And if you get that shit under your finger nails, you're done son. Baby formula and water is what they use to make Gorilla Glue.

Huge pain in the ass.

Does Enfamil get a better deal on clear plastic scoops? Are engineers these days even smart enough to engage their brains and make scoops for white powdered formula out of a colored plastic that disgruntled dads can see at night? Would it be asking too much to make the scoop handle out of red plastic? Fuck! It's not rocket surgery! Fix it!

While we're still on the subject of stupidity, clear plastic, and baby stuff, perhaps the engineers at NUK and other companies that make pacifiers would be so kind as to make them in readily seen colors as well. After the bottle/formula incident this morning, I found something else to bitch about.

Pacifiers were sent to the earth by Satan himself to torture working moms and dads, and if you're going to use them, at some point you should know that it means nightime hourly trips cribside to give screaming baby the plastic thingy that he can't find for himself in the dark, inches from his face. The plastic ninny is a fucking addiction, so you would think that making them blaze orange, or maybe putting some tritium inserts in the damn things would be wise so that you don't have to be the one swirling your hands around in the crib trying to detect them without swatting little Johny in the face.

They're made in either clear, white, baby blue, light green, light pink, or light yellow plastic. Stop right now and think about the sheets on your little precious' bedding -- that's right, white, baby blue, light green, light pink, or light yellow. Don't Soldiers wear clothing that blends into their surroundings so that they cannot be seen? What do you jackasses think you have done when you make baby's pacifier in those colors? You've made them camouflage. Why do we even have to be stuck with those colors anyways? There's a whole pallet of thousands of colors to chose from, and you idiots pick the same ones every time?

While I'm thinking about it, when the hell is Magpul going to make a pacifier in foliage green or flat dark earth, so that I can see it in the crib at night?

You don't have to conform to the same theme that everyone else has done for years. It's like an ant line, where every ant follows the one in front of it because that's just how it's done. Oh yeah, I'm calling you engineers ants! You're ants! Mindless little worker ants, who have to stay in line or they get lost and hose the whole line of ants up behind them! You go get a degree so that you can do the same shit that everyone else does! Can't you think for yourself?

Seriously though, I can't stand the pacifiers; I never used them because I have thumbs, and because those thumbs are attached to my hands, I didn't drop them on the pitch black dirty floors at Outback, run them over with the stroller in Wal-Mart, or lose them in a dark crib. They were always there when I needed them, and I quit sucking my thumbs when I was four, so the whole "you can't take away their thumbs; they'll suck them until they're thirty" argument is moot.

The pacifier will eventually become a major issue when you have to take it away from your rugrat. I'm not kidding about the addiction part; if you take them away for the day to only be issued out at night, your kid will wander around the house aimlessly, mumbling over and over about "ninny; where is my ninny?"

I realize that baby equipment is new territory, not like, say, parachutes, where the learning curve was way more steep and required advancements that pretty much took everything off the table early on.

Before you build something, sit back for a minute and picture yourself as a dog-ass tired dad, scooting out of bed at 2 a.m. to attend to screaming Johnny, dried out contacts, brain disengaged, you walk out into the hall barefoot and step on those annoying little plastic animals that might as well be steel spike strips, cursing under your breath; do you really want to be trying to find a white plastic thingy on a white sheet in the dark?

You would think that y'all would learn some of this shit in school, and not be getting it from a no name blog. It's alright though, my advice is free. Now, what are you going to do with it?