Ball Popper

Birthdays are a big deal in this house. At least to the boys and I. My husband doesn’t care too much about them, but he humors us and spoils us rotten anyway

But the boys and I… oh yeah, we’re all about birthdays. We love talking about cake and icecream, about parties and balloons, about presents and wrapping paper. It just gives us all shivers.

I don’t think it’s necessarily greed or discontentment that spurs us on, although that could certainly be part of it, but I think we mostly just love presents and surprises.

So a few weeks ago, the boys were talking about birthdays, and Josh (3yrs) said,

“Oh Mommy, for my burfday (birthday), I’d like one of dose (those) ball popper fings (things) with the air blower fings (things).” (we’re working on his “th’s”, can you tell?)

Not completely certain what he was talking about, Josh was kind enough to point it out to me the next time we were at Wal-Mart. I quickly noted that the ball popper “fing” was definitely a cool contraption (at the bottom a fan blows air that pushes light weight balls up the center cylinder. The balls go flying into the air and then drop back down, land on a slide, and come back to the fan to start the cycle over again. Very cool). But I also noted the toy was targeted as a play thing for 9-18month olds. Joshua seemed to note this at the same time as I did (seeing the baby on the front of the box) and he all of a sudden exclaimed,

“MOOOOOM!! I KNOW!! We can get the ball popper for Noah’s burfday! He’d love it. I know he would!”

And since I’m one that loves buying gifts as much as receiving them… AND since it touched my heart to see Joshua’s look of joy and excitement as he imagined getting Noah the BEST TOY IN THE WORLD, I agreed. The fact that it was the last one AND in the clearance section because the box was squashed may have played into it too.

So we bought it.

And we gave it to Noah on his birthday last week.

Fun and smiles like you wouldn’t believe.

 

And yes, Joshua is actually politely covering his mouth in one picture because he is laughing so hard. Oh man. I love these boys.

And since I’m sure all you fashionista’s were wondering, yes, I do let my boys dress themselves. And yes, their favorite colors are red and orange. And yes, yes, yes, they almost always wear their two favorite colors together.

Sigh.