It used to be that once in a blue moon we'd get a mylar helium balloon from the dollar store. As a treat. Now, these puppies can easily last a month, so it would hover around the house, getting stuck against a vent now and then. Then it would slowly sink the the floor and would have to be put out of it's misery with a pair of scissors. Done on the sly, of course. What 3-year old needs to witness that??!!??
But then Quinn had an epiphany: a friend of his had a ton of balloons just blown up, laying on his floor in his playroom. Quinn was amazed, and promptly asked his Daddy if he, too, could be so blessed.
So that resulted in balloons laying about haphazardly. That was fine. I really didn't mind it.
But it developed into a little...thing. Quinn liked balloons at different stages of fullness - some had to be small, some had to be medium sized, some had to be stretched to almost popping. He and Daddy discovered a way to tie the balloons so that they could be continuously changed from small to large and back again. There were long sessions consisting of Quinn requesting "Make it BIG Daddy!", "No, I want it as small as it can go!", and "Tie it now, Daddy!".
These balloons were put through a rigorous amount of tying and untying. Sometimes the request would be "Let it fly!" which involved blowing the balloon up and then letting it go, shooting here and there, as balloons do.
Some of the balloons, once expanded to near bursting, when made smaller, had a bizarre wrinkled effect that kinda creeped me out. Being over 40, it wasn't fun to watch.
Then they all started getting names. I mean, when you have five or ten balloons, you gotta keep order. Being three, the names were pretty elaborate: Pinky. Blacky. Yellowy. Greeny. You get the gist.
Quinn even got to the point were he wanted to snuggle the balloons. When only partially inflated they are kinds cuddly.
The newest bent to this obsession is they now have faces. On a whim Quinn put stickers on one for eyes. Then he wanted a mouth and asked me to draw a smile on with a marker. I obliged and spent the next half an hour handing out big, goofy grins to balloons in various stages of expansion.
This was the result:
Whitey somehow merited a picture of her own. Oh, all the balloons are girls. Go figure.
And like all balloons, they need a nap and like to do it as a group.
And here is where this all started. Sometimes you just don't know where things will take you:
1 comment:
Okay, my FAVORITE is tucking the balloon people into bed! so cute!!! Where were you in Peace Corps? I was in Malawi!
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