Saturday, August 7, 2010

Minute to Win It: Motherhood Edition

We've all seen the show: challenges that test balance, coordination and skill, with household objects, all in a minute's time. Move the oreo from your forehead to your mouth without using your hands. Keep 3 marbles in motion with the back of a spoon without them falling off an incline table. Minute to win it. My kids love it. I love it. It's like watching 100 different versions of Jenga.

Here's the thing: I am living out that show. Everyday it seems a new challenge arises. For those of you who have not embarked on parenthood, here's a sneak peek into the ways that your balance, strength, hand eye coordination and skill will be tested to a whole new level. .

Let's hope you make it to level 10-One million dollars- which in our house is the value equivalent of our kid getting into kindergarten.

Level 1 Challenge: One Handed Wonder- Eat with your non-dominant hand while feeding (bottle or breast) the baby. You’ll need hand eye coordination to scoop up just the right amount of food, and very slowly get it to your mouth. If food falls on the ground- you’re out. For extra points, try rice or peas- brutal hard. Other Level 1 Challenges: Type to someone on Gmail chat/ Go to the bathroom/ get dinner out of the oven-- all while feeding the baby. All harder than it looks. I should know…desperate times call for desperate measures.

Level 2 Challenges: Touch Cuisine- Serve your children dinner without any of the food on their plate touching. And then let your kid use non-sippy cups to drink water at the table. Water that spills out of the cup is ok- as long as it doesn’t touch any food. If the water floods the plate- game over.

Level 3 Challenge- Patty Cake- To get your child to sleep, pat their back in a rhythm consistent with your beating heart, at the exact same frequency and pressure. Taper off the pressure slowly so the child doesn’t notice you’re no longer patting them. If the baby wakes up- game over.

Level 4 Challenge- Date Night- Find a way to get all the kids asleep at the same time before midnight, so you can have an intelligent conversation with your husband and possibly have some alone time- let’s hope you have more than a minute- at least 15.

Level 5 Challenge- Phone Tactics- Talk on the phone while changing a poopy diaper. No bluetooth allowed. This requires one hand to keep the kid from kicking you in the face, smearing the poop, and wiping at the same time. Extra points for not getting poop on the changing table and extra points for the person you’re talking to not noticing you’re changing a diaper.

Level 6 Challenge- Silent Ice Cream- This challenge requires a one bedroom apartment like we had in Connecticut. Sophia slept in the dining room. So after 8 pm bedtime, if you wanted an Ice cream sundae, we had to make one silently, in the dark. Requires finding the ice cream scoop, bowl, and opening the fridge, scooping and making the sundae without making a peep. Bonus round: Chocolate syrup without the squeeze farting noise it makes. 

Level 7 Challenge- Grocery Gamble- Carry in 10 bags of groceries, a baby, and 2 gallons of milk in one trip into the house. The gamble is in the setup- keep the baby in the car seat so only an elbow is needed, or balance on the forearm? All the groceries in one hand or distributed across? If any of the bags fall, you lose.

Level 8 Challenge- Obstacle Poop Course- Start in sitting position with a baby whose pooped missed the diaper and is coming out in every direction. Stand up and make your way to the changing table while dodging Legos, wooden blocks and barbie shoes. Duck so you don’t get in front of the Tv your kids are watching. If any of the poop spreads to the dry clean only clothes you’re about to wear to church- you’re out.

Level 9 Challenge- Car Baseball- This is a challenge of aim and stretching. Feed all your kids while driving a car. Get food 10 feet back, within arm’s reach of the target child. If the food falls below a bench or hit any kids in the eye- game over.

Level 10 Challenge- Peaceful Yoga-This is a test of all skills in the game- reflex, aim, focus, selective hearing, plyometrics, the list goes on. Start with a Yoga video. While doing Yoga, put the baby on the mat to smile at while you do downward Dog. At the same time, listen to NPR to hear your favorite movie star talk about their latest movie…or hear about politics in Uganda, whatever floats your boat. At the same time, look periodically at your 5 year old’s reading book to help her sound out the words, and ask comprehension questions. As your 3 year old does Yoga beside you, keep her and yourself from falling on the baby or pulling a hamstring in the royal dancer move. You win if you never yell during the whole exercise.  (Let’s hope the the 5 year old gets bored and plays somewhere else, and the 3 year old falls asleep next to the baby to soothing NPR poetry segments. )

The best part of all these? I’m mastered them all – did the Yoga exercise last week (enter evil laugh here). So, do you have what it takes to win a million? Or keep your kids from emotional scarring and make it to Kindergarten?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

This post is fantastic. Keep up the good work.

Katie said...

Love, love, love! I am one of Reuben's friends and saw this post when he linked to it. I haven't done many of these challenges, but I do do the grocery bag challenge every week. Although I have failed a few times, I think I have finally figured out how to get all the groceries and the sleeping baby in the house in one trip.

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