It was a few years back when I realized the fact that while I didn't take forever to make WZ's milk. Mommy seem to just disappear into the kitchen and reappear within moments with a bottle of milk. I didn't think too much about it until one day while I was visiting my inlaws I overheard mommy talking to her sister in law and they were discussing how the fathers (me included) were all slow and clumsy when preparing the baby's milk. That's when I decided to identify the problem areas where I was slow and clumsy and become as efficient as mommy.
So here's what I am doing right now, not sure if it'll work for all the rest of you fathers out there but here goes.
There's no zero tolerance policy on water measurement :- When I first started preparing the milk, I was meticulous in my water measurements, if I needed 6oz of water I'd pour the water in, put the bottle on the table, wait for it to stabilize, check if it's at the right measurement, if not, adjust and repeat. That can take quite a while. Then I saw how mommy did it, she poured the water into the bottle. While holding it in her hands and the water level still unstable, as long as it was near the required level it she just left it at that. So now I do the same thing, if the water level's off by a few CC, it's ok as long as you don't miss it by a whole ounce and change the density of the milk.
Don't Try To Make 3oz of properly warm water :- When preparing the milk, you need to use slightly warm water so you'll have to mix it with water from a hot pot and room temperature water. When your baby is young and needs only 3oz of water, trying to mix the right amount of hot water and warm water takes forever. What you do is to know how much of each water makes a proper warm temperature water. Instead of having to test to make sure the water's not too hot (and hence having to remeasure the thing ala the first point) I've figured out that 2oz of hot water from my hotpot + 5oz of room temperature water = 7oz of suitably warm water, then I just discard to the actual required measurements.
Don't bother doing math in your head :- There'll come a time when mommy will say "Make some milk for your baby, but less than usual" Previously I'd be running numbers through my head ie. 6oz Water = 4 scoop powder. Therefore 3oz Water = 2 scoop powder. Then I realized that I didn't have to be so strict with numbers (again refering back to the first tip) The main thing to remember is that you don't want the milk to be too thin (causing the baby to drink too much water) and not too thick (it's milk, not cream) and it'll be fine. One thing I noticed though, the density of the milk changes when switching from baby to toddler milk, etc. ie. Baby milk (step 1) is thick, when you shake it in the bottle you can feel it moving around heavily, toddler milk (step 2) feels lighter, and now the step 3 formula that WZ is on feels just like water.
With these steps I'm not able to make milk just as fast as mommy. But of course.. WZ is four years old so he's more tolerant of any weird mixtures. Let's hope this works out when number 2 arrives later this year.