The mom-friends on Facebook are full of good ideas this month! First there was the whole "how to make play-doh bearable" and then a good friend with two similarly aged boys posted the most amazing idea ever...!
She (plus hubby and kids, of course!) just moved to Calgary and she has been looking for ways to keep the boys from going stir crazy during the winter / shorter days. And she bought them an inflatable bounce house! She posted a video of them jumping with a "Am I crazy?" type of post. No Jen, you are a genius!
I got Matt on board once I found one that could reasonably fit in our house and then all we had to do was wait for it to arrive. We told the boys it was coming, but they didn't really catch on to what we had bought them - until the box landed on the front porch!
We were a teensy bit worried that it would be loud and apparently so were the boys. They covered up their ears before we even plugged the motor in. We had to tell them several times that it really wasn't that loud before Henry decided to trust us enough to check. Thomas waited until Henry was convinced before uncovering his ears. These boys are *so* trusting...
But it only took them mere milliseconds for them to get in the bounce house once we told them it was ready. Henry wasn't quite sure what to do, but Thomas was jumping around in no time. In his defense, Henry is a little more unsteady in the bounce house. ;)
Here's the aerial view of the bounce house. We stuck it here for testing purposes, but Matt would only agree to the bounce house if it would fit somewhere besides this particular spot. If we have company over, we want the kids to be able to jump, but not block the TV. After all, game night needs the option to play Mario Kart!
Of course, the bounce house is only half of the fun when you have a husband who likes to play. He realized that all of the plastic balls (that I had put in the bounce house the night before) would fly through the air if he turned the blower on. The boys were quite impressed by their daddy's aim sending projectiles at momma.
Also notice that the clock and the painting are not in their usual places. Apparently if you are waving a high powered fan around the odds are pretty high that a lightweight painting may fall off it's perch. And that lightweight painting might be heavy enough to knock the clock off it's perch on the way down. It was a bit dramatic, but amazingly there was no damage beyond a slight paint scuff on the clock's edge. Impressive!
The lightweight balls soon got replaced by the mini-basketball, four square ball and soccer balls. Thomas was so excited about all the floating balls that he ran and grabbed his football. We figured it would be a good lesson in the fact that not everything will float in a stream of air.
Except it did float! We were all super surprised and Thomas was even more ecstatic! Science in action!
I finally figured out that if I made the boys take their socks off, they could both get up the slide much easier. Once Henry could climb up by himself he was much more excited about the bounce house!
Though he still isn't quite up to the bouncing like his brother is. Thomas is a jumping champ! I think once Henry gets his jumping skills a little better on solid ground, he'll be a match for Thomas. Right now Henry can only manage teensy little hops in tumbling class. But he'll get there soon!
He doesn't seem to mind though, he was happy enough with going up and down the slide. When I laid down at the bottom of the slide to take photos, he was more than happy to try and dive bomb me. This particular photo, he was sitting on me and bouncing for all he was worth and so very proud of himself. Apparently nothing is as fun as attacking momma!