Science Officer Lt. Commander Logan Hawkins reports for duty aboard the USS Pioneer.
Sitting at the Science Station on the bridge, he is responsible for monitoring all sensor scans and identifying anomalies near the vessel’s course.
Category Archives: Bean Gear
Further evidence of the decline of milkman as an avocation.
This is a picture of me taken when I was just over a year old. The contraption I’m imprisoned in is an early model of the car safety seat. It’s made out of what appears to be stainless steel tubing and vinyl. I’m sure it was intensely uncomfortable, which is why I’m attempting to escape.
My mother tells me that his is a maneuver I frequently engaged in. I would lift one leg far past its current range of flexibility and thrust it out of whatever restraint I was strapped into. Evidently I was quite good at it.
This is a picture of my son taken a few weeks ago.
It would seem that not only has Logan inherited my extraordinary good looks and roguish charm, but also, my genetic disposition for a distaste in restraints. Until this moment, I was unaware that escapism was an inherited quality. With any luck he’s also managed to inherit his mother’s good sense with money as well as her study habits.
Easter
My cousin Lindsay turned 21 the same week my mother turned, I don’t know, she’s been telling me she’s 29 for more than 20 years. This all collided with Easter weekend, so all the Stoltz’s came to town and we had a big Happy Birthday To Ladies And Easter And Lets See Baby weekend.
The Stoltz’s are all nice people and we don’t get to see them terribly often, so it was pleasant to have them around. We had a nice dinner out at Nobu, sans baby, one night during the week and everyone came over to our house for a big production meal on Saturday.
We’ve gone to some trouble to socialize Logan as much as we can. Letting other people hold him and play with him in an effort to prevent the kind of separation anxiety so many children suffer from. For the most part this has been successful, although as he’s gotten older and more socially aware it gets more difficult. In the first three months I’m not sure he was really aware there were more than two people in the world. There was Mommy With Breasts, and Not Mommy. Not Mommy was everyone else in the world, including me. Now that he’s starting to catch on that Not Mommy is actually many different people, he’s starting to get a little picky about who he hangs out with.
He’s still good with other people, but I think sometimes he finds it disconcerting to be receive such high affection from people who’ve never given him breast milk. I suspect this is why he doesn’t appear as thrilled to see the Stoltzs as they are to see him.
Easter brought a lot of gifts, some from us, and some from Grandma and Grandpa, and some from the Stoltzs. The gifts were all wonderful, and he enjoys them. Babies are like cats in some regard though, you can buy them the best gift in the world and what they’ll really want to play with is the box it came in.
Logan determined that of all the gifts he received, the card was the tastiest one.
Some of the gifts came in a basket. The basket was really an upside down hat with handles attached to it. The hat did not fit me. It was too small.
The hat did not fit Logan either. It was too large.
Some of the gifts were hidden, and Logan needed help finding them.
Sometimes I even talk like I’m narrating a children’s book.
Nearly Christmas
We’ve already been to our first Christmas party. Three more to go. Logan slept through most of it, but that’s okay. It’s certainly preferential to the alternative. No one likes a grumpy crying baby.
The ladies at the party all loved Logan. I suspect this will be a trend that will last well into his later years. He received a number of “oohs” and “aahs” from his appreciable audience. He seemed particularly taken with Clara.
I’m glad he was so popular, it provided me an opportunity to do my dad thing; drink a lot of beer and eat a lot of sausage appetizers.
Logan has become adapt at holding his head up, and he even has the strength to stand. He lacks the coordination to maintain his own balance, but he definitely has the strength part down pat. It’s sometimes easy to forget he’s less than 3 months old.
I couldn’t resist buying him this gift for Christmas, even though he’s far too young for it. I also couldn’t resist opening it. When Thinkgeek featured the Tauntaun sleeping bag as an April Fool’s joke, I was one of the thousands who attempted to order it. When they announced that it was a real licensed product, I was one of the first thousand to order it.
Logan won’t be able to use it for some time, but I couldn’t resist. He didn’t seem to really like it much, even after I demonstrated that the zipper pull was a plush lightsaber and pulling it opened up the guts of the Tauntaun. I’m sure he’ll come around.
We had another trip to the pediatrician’s office to meet with our lactation consult. Tami Schollser has been something of a god send for us. When Logan was underweight and having trouble eating, she was able to quickly identify several problems and work with us to correct them. In the six weeks or so that we’ve been seeing her, Logan has put on more than 5 lbs and while he’s still small, he’s growing at a healthy pace.
As a parting shot, here’s a pic of me and the boy taking a nap. There seems to be an awful lot of gray in my beard.
Bumbo Baby Seat
The Bumbo Baby Seat looks a touch ridiculous. Somewhat like a cross between a giant sized cartoon tooth and a candy left in the sun too long it appears more like a set piece for a Disney film than any household object. Made of soft foam it has a deep cavity for an infants bum and two smaller openings for the legs.
It’s designed to support the infant’s back and gently grasp their legs, securing the child into an upright seating position. As soon as the infant is able to hold their head up, they can sit in the Bumbo Baby Seat, just like a big person.
It’s unclear from the website or literature just what benefits the child is supposed to receive from using the Bumbo Baby Seat, other than an upright seating position. The website seems to promise smiles, super fun playtime, and increased communication with your preverbal infant.
Logan seemed to enjoy it. We popped him in, and after a quick look around, he did what any comfortable man does when seated upright in an appliance chair. He scrunched up his eyes and had himself a nice big poop. From my vantage point, he appeared relaxed and at ease. Surely that’s a positive product endorsement.
The Moby Wrap and Pancakes
Like the Baby K’Tan, the Moby Wrap is one those new fangled baby products based on a design that is literally thousands of years old. Both are made of cotton, feature wide weight supporting straps, can be worn in a number of ways, support multiple positions for the child, and support the child firmly while freeing up your hands.
The major difference between the two is the construction. The Baby K’Tan is two loops of fabric joined by a smaller one and it loops over both shoulders and in front of the chest like a cotton pretzel without salt or cheese sauce. This means that it’s sized for the wearer.
My wife is tiny, and I am not. We can not use the same Baby K’Tan.
This is wear the Moby Wrap is different. The Moby Wrap is a single lengthy piece of fabric that you loop and wind over your shoulders and around your waist and tie utilizing any simple knot you can remember from Webelos. It is, literally and without hyperbole, eighteen feet long.
It’s a little bit intimidating at first.
Fortunately the Moby Wrap came with detailed instructions featuring photographs of pleasant looking people demonstrating step by step how to bind yourself up like a mummy. Because it’s a single length of fabric, both my wife and I can use the same wrap. I was dubious that it would work effectively, and I remarked that it was not the kind of thing I’d want to try and don in a windy parking lot. How would I, hazy with lack of sleep, be able to remember how to do this?
After only a few attempts I was donning the Moby Wrap like a pro. Within a matter of days I had acquired the skill so well that I’m sure I could wrap up a lunging black bear.
Using the Moby Wrap, I can pop Logan in and have both hands free for essential father tasks like; taking the garbage out, writing blog updates, playing video games, and making pancakes.
Orange Cranberry Pancakes
1.5 cups of AP flour
3 tablespoons of sugar
1.5 teaspoons of baking powder
.5 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of milk
.25 cup of heavy cream
.25 cup of juice of an orange
3 tablespoons of butter, melted
.5 teaspoons vanilla
.5 to 1 cup of dried sweetened cranberries
zest of 1 orange
Whisk together in a mixing bowl the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In a separate mixing bowl whisk together the milk, cream, butter and vanilla. Zest the orange into the milk mixture. Juice the orange and whisk .25 cup of the juice to the milk mixture until well combined. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry and whisk gently until just combined. Lumps are okay.
If you whisk the mixture too much, gluten will form and your pancakes will be tough and rubbery. If that happens, let the batter sit for 10 minutes before continuing, this will allow the gluten to relax slightly. Gently fold the cranberries into the batter.
Drop batter by large spoonfuls onto a hot greased griddle for the size of pancake you want. Flip the cakes when bubbles form in the center.
The Baby K’Tan
There are a lot of ways to haul a baby around, many of them are perfectly safe for the child, although I do not recommend a leash and collar for an infant under 20 lbs. If you are among the two to three dozen people that my research indicates can not afford a full time flying nanny who communicates largely in song, then chances are you’ll have to perform this task yourself.
Fortunately for you, there are approximately six consumer products available for every safe infant carrying method. Many of these products are comfortable, safe, and will not burst in to flame when exposed to sunlight, moonlight, water, or nitrogen in greater concentrations than 100 parts per million. I would not recommend those products that do. In a later installment I will give precise and easy to understand instruction on how to identify these dangerous products that could maim you and your baby.
For now though, I’m simply going to tell you about the Baby K’Tan. I’ll start of by saying that we received the Baby K’Tan three days ago, have used it a few times, and not once has it burst into flame. It has not even smoldered or emitted smoke. This is a good sign.
The Baby K’Tan is an all cotton contraption in the shape of a figure 8. It drapes around the shoulders and crosses the chest in front. The straps are really wide soft strips of cotton that can be folded and twisted to form deep pockets. While you could use these deep soft pockets to store melons, or protect your hoard of walnuts from scavengers through the winter, it works best as an easy way to tote your baby around. Once safely injected into the wrap (instructions are included) your arms are then free to wash dishes, write blog updates or fight off marauding crows looking to steal your walnuts.
The Baby K’Tan is similar to a few other popular products that do virtually the same thing, truss up infants, but features a unique set of something or other that has allowed the manufacturer to apply for patent protection. This is likely not surprising to a patent lawyer, but would probably come as a surprise to the millions of mothers who have used nearly identical baby wraps for thousands of years. I’m not saying the Baby K’Tan has ripped off other designs, I’m just saying that there’s a lot of prior art, some of it established by the Mycenaeans.
Which isn’t to say that the Baby K’Tan doesn’t work, because it does what it claims to do rather brilliantly and easily. Toss it around your shoulders, pop in the baby, and off they tend to go to la la land, happily gurgling and snoring away. The Baby K’Tan is easy to don, easy to maintain, and vitally, wraps over both shoulders with wide straps providing even load and relieving back strain considerably. Field reports in the Hawkins family have been positive from both mother and son. I won’t be using it, so I can’t speak empirically. I have no aversion to it, It’s simply too small. The Baby K’Tan comes in 5 sizes. My wife is dainty. This thing would fit on my like a balaclava. For me we have something different, but similar, of which I will speak later.
Accomplishing tasks
When people find out that we’re going to be having a baby soon, they invariably ask one of several questions. I get asked these questions with such regularity that I have often wondered if there’s someone standing just out of my peripheral vision wearing a sandwich board reading;
Choose one:
Are you excited?
Have you decorated the nursery?
Have you selected a name?
Do you know what the sex is?
Your life as you know it is over.
Okay, that last one isn’t really a question. It’s just a little encouraging pick me up that every one of my friends has elected to mention. I can only presume that most of them would also elect to point out the silver lining to being homeless is that you don’t have to worry about the housing crisis.
We’ve steadily been working through the list of questions. Either completing the task the question suggests, or making up an answer, we’ve managed to cover most of the standard inquiries. I’m happy to add Decorating the Nursery to that list of completed tasks.
We started with a collection of boxes from IKEA that would be transformed into furniture as if by magic. When I say “magic” I, of course, mean two full days of sweat and swear words.
Here are some before shots of a room that was too crowded to add any more furniture too.
We removed the bed and shifted a few things around. Then I spent two days cursing and sweating, none of which could have been accomplished without the attentive assistance of these two.
VOILA! Nursery!
The peculiar hazards of registering for a baby shower.
When I got married, many people used the lure of the wedding registry to help soften the blow of Wedding Chaos. It was suggested, rather explicitly, that even though several months of my life would evaporate into barely controlled chaos where the sane peaks would be represented by shouting matches over the color of napkins and the dark valleys would be circular arguments about family members that would surely end in tears or bloodshed, the wedding registry would more than compensate for my life derailing through the sort of comedic tragedy that is normally reserved for romantic comedies.
The wedding registry was, allegedly, some sort of miraculous and transcendental consumer experience that would salve all wounds and remedy all problems. As a child I would spend the weeks leading up to Christmas, flipping through the pages of the Sears catalog. I would select and make detailed lists of all the items I wished for Santa to deliver to me, ideally, free of charge. The lists were accompanied by calculations and even to my pre-teen mind, which had yet to form a clear understanding of the value of money through years of labor and tax payments, my greed was staggering.
The wedding registry, I was promised, shared the essential mechanics of my youthful Christmas ritual. I would select items that I would care to receive, and a list would be generated, accompanied by calculations that would allow me to appreciate that my greed for consumer goods had only increased beyond compensation for inflation. I could even register at Sears, where it was noted with a knowing elbow prod to the ribs and a conspiratorial wink, that one could add power tools and electronics to the registry.
The only significant difference between the wedding registry and sitting cross legged on the living room floor armed with the 1982 Sears Wish Book and a calculator, is the results. As a child I would “accidently” leave my lists laying about in conspicuous spots in the hope that my parents would make note of my selections and perhaps use it as a guideline for gift purchasing. My parents were either very inattentive to details, or attempting to teach me a lesson about money, because I don’t recall this plan ever working. As an adult with a wedding registry however, I could create a list of excruciating detail, make specific demands on model numbers, colors and quantity, and even rank items in order of priority, and people would buy them them for me!
Naturally, I assumed that a baby shower registry would be a similar exercise in wish fulfillment and consumer greed. Something that would dull the sharp edge of impending fatherhood by providing me an opportunity wander around a retail establishment armed with a laser pistol that magically granted me gifts.
I could not have been more wrong. I suspect that the baby registry will mark the Rubicon of my decline from confident, educated and logical young man into feeble minded and high strung foolish father with poor decision making skills.
A wedding registry is all about you, and what you desire. The things you select and request are not necessities. As helpful as a multi-speed stand mixer with a 5 quart detachable bowl is, it is not something you need to prevent the death of you or your spouse. A baby registry, on the other hand, is all about procuring things for your infant. Most of these items are very cleverly marketed in such a fashion as to imply to the mother, that without it, your child will die.
A mother bear will charge and attempt to consume a Toyota Prius if she believes it may increase the chance of risk to her cubs. Human mothers have a similar tendency to ere on the side of caution in defense of their children. Lacking the bear’s natural fear and antagonism to passenger vehicles, a human mother will instead rely on the helpful and altruistic assistance of retail outlets and consumer good companies to determine where she should focus her paranoia and fear.
The baby registry is therefore, not a simple exercise in selecting desired items, but a grueling and stressful test of a marriage where the selection of an infant thermometer becomes a gamble on the life of your future child. Selecting an infant bathtub isn’t simply a matter of determining which color matches your nursery and how convenient the device appears to be, but rather a decision frighteningly laced with the possibility that the product may contribute to the increased risk of death by drowning. Bottles must be BPA free. Diapers need to omit chlorine. Infant carriers must restrain without choking. Cribs must not have slats too far apart, or too close together. Additionally, and this struck me as unfair, you can not add power tools to a baby registry.
This was not fun.
To increase the stress of the situation, my wife is an Engineer. She seemed to be under the impression that this activity could be treated like a complex design problem involving comparison of lists, check of items off the list, and adding items to the list that were absent. This was something that could be calculated, weighed, compared against standards charts and crucial decisions about the future of our child would be revealed in the determination of product selection.
Random selections I made based on the simple algorithm of “Oh! Monkeys!” earned scorn and condemnation. If she heard the beep of the laser gun from another aisle, she would come running and I would suffer a withering glare and a stern lecture about my impulsiveness. This was not a game. This was important. Why was I trying to make her upset.
This lasted for nearly three hours.
It was grueling. I’ve participated in activities involving forced marching and the digging of large holes that were more emotionally satisfying. In the end though, we survived. Most of the important items on our lists were selected, and an additional list of items still needed was generated by careful comparison of the days results with other lists already secured. Neither one of us broke down in tears in the store, and I count that as a success. We did have one close call however, when my taste and judgement were called into question over the selection of crib sheets. I contended it had monkeys, she contended that is more of a nautical theme and therefore inappropriate in some fashion. I narrowly averted throwing a tantrum but managed to satisfy myself with a dour expression, a stomp of the foot, and the exclamation, “you’re a meany!”
At this rate of decline, the child will be raising us before it reaches the 8th grade.
I need to have a talk with my boy
I can only presume that he’s somehow gotten his hands on my credit card numbers, despite still having a few months left in the womb. We came home to an ominous looking box on our doorstep the other day. Contained inside the box, that was addressed to “Bean Hawkins,” was the following unexpected item.
At least he’s got good taste.
