Dummies & Diapers

I recently read about the brilliant Spoon Theory and while I am not sick I felt it was easily applicable to my current situation with a 2 month old, colicky baby. Obviously I am not comparing being ill to having a baby (I love my little baby girl and I am pretty sure noone ever said that about their illnesss), but the idea of having a finite amount of spoons resonated with me.

Spoons however are not really that geeky, so I came up with my own version of the theory.

Life with a colicky baby is like playing oldschool D&D. You roll your character and based on your stats you have a certain amount of hit points. Once your hit points reach 0 it is game over.

Here is my stats sheet:

© Mistel 2013

Every morning you start out with full Energy Points, but each task you do takes away a certain amount of points. Want to go grocery shopping? Roll a D20 to see if your baby gets hungry midway. You rolled too low, ouch, baby lands a critical wail at you in the middle of the supermarked. You loose 4 Energy Points!

Want to vacuum? Roll the die again to check against your luck. If you roll high enough the white noise from the vacuum cleaner will lull your baby to sleep so you only loose 1 Energy Point.

Baby is crying, roll the die against your ability in baby decoding. Result: 1... Ouch critical failure, you thought the baby was hungry, but she wasn't now she is in hysteria and it will take 1 hour of walking back and forth singing to her before she calms down. You loose 5 Energy Points.

One of your friends ask if you want to meet up for lunch. Preparing to leave the house includes feeding and changing your baby. You loose 2 Energy Points for that and another 1 for packing the changing bag and walking back and forth to the cafe because you have to take an extra long route  as the pavement on the route you normally take does not accomodate a pram.

Your Energy Points got to -3, because you had to change diapers 3 times during the night? You will have a negative modifier for tomorrow... it is going to be a loooong day.

I hope my geeky version of the Spoon Theory helps non parents understand how it is to have a baby. When I decline a lunch invitation, it is not because I don't want to hang with you, it is simply because it is only 11:30, my Energy Points are already at 2 and I am fresh out of potions ;)

Real life multiplayer

Screenshot from Neverwinter Online

Everyone can probably guess that playing MMOs is not something that goes well with having a newborn in the house. Especially if said newborn is being breastfed exclusively.

However yesterday I thought I would try my luck anyway with the newly released Neverwinter Online. And in my naive optimism I thought, "hey maybe I can even do a dungeon and try that out". I mean I had just spent a couple of hours interacting with my daugther. Her diaper was new and clean plus she had fed for 35 minutes and were soundly a sleep in her moses basket.

Yay a bit of time for myself! And what better way to spend quality alone time than to group up with a bunch of strangers in an MMORPG?

Anyways lets not discuss my weird habbit of self inflicted punishment and instead return to my story.

I had probably played for about 10 minutes. Just long enough to sit in the queue for the instance, get the invite and kill the first 3 packs of monsters, when my daughter started crying.

My partner, who is awesome, got up checked her diaper, tried calming her down and to his credit did his very best to buy me enough time to finish the instance.

My daughter however wouldn't have any of it. Apparently my daughter like a platypus is capable of consuming her own weight in food on a daily basis and like her mother she gets very cranky when she's hungry. So she wants to eat often, but preferably when I have:
A. Just poured warm food onto a plate (wont be warm when I get to eat it HAH!).
B. Just laid down on the bed in hopes of a bit of sleep.
C. As was the case yesterday, just for once loaded a game that requires more than 1 hand.

Now I am not a bad player, in fact I like to think myself above average, I mean I raided in the 2. best guild on my server in TBC *flex virtual nerd muscles*, but even my level of skill can not handle feeding a squirming, displeased baby while doing a dungeon run. And this is where my partners pure awesomeness really shines.

"You handle the mouse I will deal with the number keys and awsd based on your commands" he said. So for the next 15 minutes I shouted "3" "e" "r" "double tab s" etc. while feeding my baby and stearing the point of view with my mouse.

Did I top the damage meter? No. Would it have worked in a hardcore raid instance? No.

But I got to finish my instance and half an hour of as good as uniterrupted gaming.
No loot dropped for my class though damned RNG!





The moral of my story? Well I guess if there has to be one it is that my real life has gone from being a single player experience with a lot of interesting side characters to full multiplayer mode with forced grouping. And frankly that is quite awesome even if somehow slightly frustrating. :)

Upping the difficulty setting

So... I have become a mom! I don't know quite how to describe it other than it feels like I won life at the easy setting and started over on the highest difficulty. Or maybe like I found some crazy bonus level where you have to change as many diapers as you can before your lackofsleepometer is full.

Let me say it like this. This new game resembles the old one, but the gameplay has been drastically changed. And I am not talking about a crappy update like SWG:NGE, I am talking about a full blown remake where the core of the game is the same, but a ton of new features has been added to increase complexity, but also the fun factor.

If life had patch notes the ones for "life with Baby" might look like this:

• New Special Class: Dad - Players can now choose to play the Dad class. You will have to level your current character to at least 18 before unlocking this. When picking the Dad class your character will retain its former class, but be a Dad in addition. Note that any skills, abilities or debuffs pertaining to the Dad class will always overrule those of your other class. Can only be chosen by male players.
• New Special Class: Mom - Players can now choose to play the Mom class. You will have to level your current character to at least 18 before unlocking this. When picking the Mom class your character will retain its former class, but be a Mom in addition. Note that any skills, abilities or debuffs pertaining to the Mom class will always overrule those of your other class. Can only be chosen by female players.
• Sleep feature has been removed from the Mom and Dad classes and replaced with the ability to powernap whereever, whenever.
• New Skill: Zombie Mode - When activated allows the user to function on 2 hours of interrupted rest.
• New Skill: Diaper Changing - Gives the ability to change diapers. Raising this skill lowers the chance of ending up with the smelly debuff. 
• Skill in one handed proficiency can now be raised to 500 instead of 100
• Crafting: New recipe for milk has been added. It can only be obtained by female players.
• Grouping for Parties now requires all members of the group to be level 18 plus.
• New Group content has been added for groups with characters below level 18: Mothergroups, Prenatal Yoga, Baby Swimming. 
• Known Bug: Some players have managed to choose the Dad/Mom class before level 18. This is being looked into by the Game Masters.  
• New Daily Quests has been added - Change 8 diapers - Reward 1 hour of uninterrupted powernap. Feed the baby 10 times - Reward2 scoops of still warm food.
• New Achievement: GugguGagga - Babble along with your baby.
• New Achievement: Evil Genius - Get pooped on by your baby while changing diapers.
• New Achievement: The Circle of Life - alter between diaper changing, feeding, soothing and dosing off for a week. 

While the new gameplay at the moment is hectic, a bit on the repetitative side and frankly quite frustrating at times, it is also incredibly rewarding and I would rate "Life with Baby" 10 out of 10.

Feel free to add your own ideas for patch notes in the comments below. :)