Hah! I bet you’ve never read a post with that title, have you?!?
This morning, in an effort to play some fun games that encourage coordination and movement, I set up for “balloon volleyball.” The idea is to hit the balloon back and forth over a string or ribbon tied to two chairs and stretched between the players. It’s simple and fun and we had two balloons.
Hannah thought it was fabulous. Naomi sent the balloon over the string once and then announced that she was too tired and began a 20-minute whine and cry fest. (I believe that the whine and cry fest took far more energy than even an hour and a half of balloon volleyball. Strangely, nobody sought my opinion.)
Hannah and I played balloon volleyball for a while, then decided to take down the “net” and see if Naomi just wanted to bat the balloon around.
“When I was a little girl,” I said, using a tactic that usually gets both girls’ attention – stories from my past – “we used to play Balloon Don’t Touch the Floor.”
“Oh, Naomi!” said Hannah with real enthusiasm, “It’s just like Laura and Mary and the pig’s bladder!” Michael has started to read Little House in the Big Woods to Naomi, and she loves the story. Hannah is a longtime devotee of all the Little House books. The pig bladder story is the first or second chapter of the first book – after the pig is slaughtered, Pa fills its bladder with air and the girls bat it around. For some reason, the pig butchering has captured the imagination of my children for some time.
“Right,” I say, trying to think as little as possible about children actually playing with a pig bladder, “so which balloon should we use? Green or purple?” And here’s the question I wish I’d skipped: “Which one do you think a pig bladder would be?”
“Green,” said Hannah without hesitation.
I do not want to know why a pig bladder would be green. Especially a nice, dark, forest green like that balloon.
2 comments:
Oh my word! Haha, I got such a kick out of this post! I knew before I even read this that you would be talking about Laura Ingalls. My mother used to read them to me every night before I went to sleep. I was obsessed and even had my grandmother make a Laura costume for me for Halloween. Thank you so much! This just made my day :)
I don't have as much trouble thinking about children playing with a pig's bladder as I do thinking of Pa blowing it up. They didn't have tire pumps or air compressors then, did they? Yuck. That Pa was one tough dude...
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