Pinterest Strikes Again (and look where it got me this time)

I've been seeing... hmm... let's call them "giant squishy water bags" all over the kids and DIY boards on pinterest lately and honestly I thought it looked like a lot of fun. The following conversation with my husband went like this:

Me: "Let's buy some clear plastic sheeting, fold it in half, duct-tape the open edges together, fill it with water, and let the kids jump on it!"

Husband: "You're crazy. That'll never work."

Me: "But I saw it on Pinterest! It must work."

So, the next time we were at a home improvement store we bought some clear plastic sheeting and duct tape.



Then I folded it in half and taped the three open sides together leaving a 2-3 inch gap on one side and stuck a hose in it. Then I proceeded to re-tape the sides with about three more layers of duct tape to fix most of the leaking. If you decide to try it, I'd suggest slightly overlapping the plastic sheeting and just going with two layers of tape to begin with. I also had the kids stuff in some shapes made out of craft foam I had in my craft supplies stash. I propped the corner with the hole and hose up on a chair until the bag was about as full as I wanted it and then removed the hose and taped up the hole.

We ended up with this:



The children loved it. It was so much fun. They ran around on it exhausting themselves for an hour. They jumped on and chased air bubbles. They tried to push the foam shapes around inside the bag. Ava enjoyed running and sliding. How she managed to avoid slamming herself into a deck rail I do not know.

Now, if I were completely sane, I would have stopped once the children had run off their initial excitement. It had been great exercise, and a good sensory experience for the children. Ava pre-OT would never have walked on that squishy bag. Ava pre-OT couldn't have handled the wet and slightly sandy surface of the bag. The activity had already been a huge success.

I didn't stop there though. I was thinking about how to stretch the sensory experience even further. So I decided to strip the kids down to their undies and toss some washable tempera paint on top of the bag and see what happened. (You should have seen the look on the neighbor's face when he briefly came out onto his deck and glanced over to see me in the middle of squirting a puddle of red paint onto the "giant squishy water bag" right in between my two mostly naked children. He went right back inside.)

It started like this:



Then looked like this:



I didn't get a picture of the end, but Michael and Ava were covered in paint from head to toe. I hosed them and the bag down and we headed straight for the tub. They had so much fun.

Date Nights

My husband and I have recently begun trying for regular date nights. We're aiming for about once a week. That pretty much means that instead of engaging in independent pursuits for an hour or so after putting the children to bed and before falling asleep exhausted we are trying to spend a couple of hours together. We've been picking out a movie to watch. We watched Salt and Knight and Day. Knight and Day was surprisingly enjoyable. Salt was fine although not spectacular. Last night we rewatched the first Bourne movie which we hadn't seen in years.

My first rule for picking out a movie is that I absolutely do not want it to make me cry. When I only get a couple of hours a week to escape into a fantasy world the last thing I want is to spend the experience getting put through an emotional wringer. That rules out dramas, war, romances, and most romantic comedies. I'm also not a huge fan of horror. That pretty much leaves action, action/comedies, and some sci-fi/fantasies. Given that I've seen about five non-children's movies in the last five years, that leaves plenty of movies to choose from.

It isn't exactly high-class entertainment or an elaborate "date", but it is some uninterrupted time spent snuggled up next to my favorite person in the world. That's all I need to make me happy.

The Weekly Review: Week 66

This week's weekly review format will be slightly different. I'm going to highlight several memorable events searching for my favorite one.

1. Taking my daughter to school I discovered that all the other children were dressed in swim clothes while she was not. The school had announced the splash day on Wednesday. We aren't there on Wednesdays. It all worked out though. I just told them to let her play in her clothes and then change her into her spare clothes afterward. -- Not my favorite event of the week.
2. Michael, now being four years old, is eligible to go on field trips at school this summer. This week was his very first field trip - to the zoo. He was so excited about riding the bus with his friends and wearing the special shirts and going to the zoo with his teachers. It was such a shame that he also got his very first bee sting on the trip. -- Also not my favorite event of the week.
3. There was the delightful morning that started off with laundering one puke-soaked and one urine-soaked set of sheets. -- Do you really need to ask if that one was my favorite?
4. Leaving for school one morning our little escape-artist feline managed to sneak into the garage. I went ahead and buckled the children into their car seats hoping she'd choose to wander voluntarily back into the house. Nope. Then, as I oh-so-casually approached her she darted right under the minivan well out of reach. I spent the next 10 minutes waving a broom under first the front of the minivan, and then the back of the minivan, and then the front, and then the back while listening to the children giggle hysterically in the car. Did I mention the garage was really, really hot? -- Not really a great candidate for my favorite event, however I can see how the children thought it was funny in retrospect.
5. And then there was the lovely dinner with my friend of nearly 18 years and husband of eight years on our wedding anniversary. I am so fortunate. -- Definitely the highlight of the week.