Reshaping Shower Games - Or Why Tossing Water Balloons Does Not Prepare You For War

I have played quite a few games at baby showers and heard of many more that I have not had the good fortune to play.  What I have come to realize in my first year of motherhood is that all of these games have one thing in common, they were completely designed to put a rose-colored glow on the dirty part of parenting. They are roughly the equivalent of training future soldiers by tossing water balloons for grenade practice or playing paintball to practice face-to-face combat.  So I propose that we revise these games to retain the fun while incorporating a hard dose of reality as well as some necessary skill building.

Game #1 - Diapering a stuffed animal.  In this game the participants have to diaper a stuffed animal and whoever does it the quickest wins.  Once I saw someone diaper a watermelon.  I can tell you that diapering a stuffed animal does not compare at all to diapering a child.  Even the blindfolded variety does little to help you.
Alternatives: 
a.  Diaper a cat.  I have a cat and I can tell you that he enjoys many things, tuna water, corn chips, baked goods, being scratched under the chin, even broccoli and occasionally being put in a paper bad and swung around in circle but he does not enjoy being diapered.  But then again neither do babies.  If you try to diaper a cat you face rapid movement and squirming and have to avoid being scratched and/or bitten.  This is what it is like to diaper a baby after they learn how to roll.
b. Diaper a rotating sprinkler before it gets back around to you.  This is where speed comes in handy.  You have about 30 seconds to get the diaper on before the water comes back around and hits you in the face.  If you are up for it, and are throwing your shower somewhere you don't have to clean up or ever see the host again, go ahead and fill that sprinkler with pee, or if that's a little too much, just die the water to freak people out a little.
c.  Diaper a cat while playing whack-a-mole.  The goal of this challenge was inspired when Owen found his penis.  Now, I don't care if Owen plays with his penis, pretty much every child will find and be in awe of their genitals at some point and more power to them.  In fact, it makes diaper changing a lot easier when Owen does find and enjoy his mini-manhood because it keeps him occupied.  (And of course by 'min-manhood' I mean baby-sized, not small. In case this blog comes to light in his teenage years I want to make it clear that Owen is exceptionally well endowed.) But the problem with the penis play is that the penis is often covered in poo when I first take the diaper off and playing with a poo-covered penis is where I draw the line. But it is VERY hard to get in there and wipe before he gets to it.  So, hence whack-a-mole. . change a diaper while completing other high speed tasks at the same time, such as wiping the penis down, catching tubes of butt=paste as they sail from the table, trying to get him not to eat the clean diaper before it is on him, or quickly wiping his hand that has just been plunged into the tub of A&D ointment before he plunges that same hand into his mouth.  And that is just the beginning.

Game #2 - Trying to identify the taste of baby food blindfolded.  Here you taste jars of baby food and try to figure out what's in them.  In the first place, baby food is disgusting.  What you will realize when you have a baby is most babies will refuse to eat jarred baby food if they ever get the chance to taste something else because 80% of them are inedible.  So unless this game is a teaching moment to allow you to empathize with your future bundle of joy, skip it.
Alternatives: 
1.  Try to feed baby food to a cat strapped in a high chair.   Here you will find that most cats also don't like baby food.  Even mine who will eat wonder bread off the street won't eat jarred baby food.  Cat's also don't like to be in high chairs and yes I know this for a fact.
2. Make recipe combinations that make anything taste like either a pear or a banana.  In this game, you try to make foods that are not a pear or a banana blend well with a pear or a banana which seem to be like beer goggles for babies, making food they will not eat, look and taste delicious.  To make this challenging include foods like fish, lima beans and brussel sprouts.  And if it is truly successful you will be able to feed it to your husband or partner and they will not realize it is baby food.  Now Owen eats what we eat and has a quite varied palate but I'm not going to lie, in the beginning the only home cooked food was his so we often ate that.
2.  Try to catch finger foods flung off a balcony while eating a sandwich and feeding another sandwich to your friend.  For this game you need a partner, or a cat.  In this game, you try to eat some food, it does not have to be a sandwich, whatever you are serving at the shower will do, the sandwich is just best for beginners because you can eat it with one hand.  With the other, you should try to feed your partner, or a cat if you feel like it.  Then someone will start flinging food, good options are: cheerios, blueberries, pieces of cut up chicken, peeled and halved grapes.  Your job is to catch as many food items as you can.

Game # 3 - Trying to identify what type of candy bar has been melted into each diaper.  Okay, this game is pretty close to being perfect already.  It is pretty gross and has you doing things you think you won't actually do, like examine the contents in a diaper trying to identify its origin.  But the problem is, it's just not gross enough.  There is a big difference between sniffing a melted Reese's Peanut Butter Cup or a Twix and peering at actual poo to try to see if those remnants are peas or corn or cat food.  (as an aside, while cats do not necessarily like baby food, babies do like cat food.) You might ask, "Why would you want to know what was in there poo?"  There are so many reasons, you are trying to see if they digested in properly, they had a bad reaction and you are not sure what it was so you are trying to figure out, or you are just falling into the examining poo as pride trap that many people do to this day, as if getting out a good poo was something your child should be proud of.   I don't really have a game alternative here because it's kind of like that show Dirty Jobs, you might want to watch someone else do something but you don't want to do it unless you have to or you're getting paid for it.

Game #4 - Guess Mommy's Tummy Size - In this one guests try to guess how big mom to be's stomach is.  Now in my opinion this is pretty much no fun from the get go because even though I LOVED my baby bump, I can pretty much tell you at 8.5 months I would have hit anyone who guessed that I was three feet around.  Also, even if the guest of honor is the 1 in 100 women who is happily immune to feelings of body image towards the end of pregnancy, there's just no real learning here.
Alternative:
a. Guess how many months post-pregnancy this woman is.  Here, you show pictures of women post-birth both from vaginal births and c-sections and guests have to try to guess how long it has been since the woman has given birth.  Fact is, I left the hospital after my c-section weighing 3 more pounds than I went in, wearing my husbands shoes because my feet were still swollen and my maternity yoga pants and even larger granny underwear to fit over my still enormous belly plus scar.

Okay, I could do lots more like 'try to keep a cat lying down in a crib, try to punch 'gently', how to make a diaper MacGyver style when you have run out, how to play chess while someone screams in your ear, how to walk on a balance beam after you haven't slept for a month, but those all require too many props and preparation.  Please enjoy these, and let me know if you try them!