We had a lamp accident today. I should have seen it coming, it was my fault, I have to admit. I’ve been ordering all sorts of fun little things in the mail and one of the items was a ten-pack of very large balloons. They’re bigger than the punching ball balloons you may have played with as a child with the rubber band attached to the end. These balloons are over two feet across once inflated.
With these big balloons slightly under-inflated they’re resilient and exceptionally bouncy, so we started playing bouncing games in the house. We had fun with the first balloon for almost a week until my daughter decided to lay her entire body on top of it and bounce up and down until it burst, which was a surprise to her but not to the adults in the room. The second balloon had a “no body slams” rule and we proceeded to come up with all sorts of games with the most popular being a point system for hitting the balloon hard enough to tag the ceiling, the railing of the second floor bridge in the vaulted area of our living room and most importantly, getting on or over the bridge for serious bonus points.
My son was perhaps the best at this game, possibly because he refused to have his points reset after each game, tallying up over two hundred by the time the lamp incident happened today. I had gone out and called my husband to ask about lunch plans when he put my daughter on the phone as she was crying miserably. She said the lamp had broken and then said some other unintelligible words through her tears. My husband got back on the line and talked about the shattered ceramic lamp base and the cleanup process which was underway.
I changed my shopping plans and headed off to find a replacement lamp. My husband sent a picture of the remaining, matching lamp with height dimensions. I was lucky in that I found a reasonable priced replacement at the first store I went to. The lamp was in a set of three, which was nice because we’d still have matching end table lamps and an added floor lamp for a spot that sorely needed light in the living room.
I came home and we’d assembled the lamps in short order. We’re not sure we like the new lamps as much as the old ones because they aren’t quite as large and our living room, being a two-story valued space needs big feeling lamps to fill the space, but we like them and we’re going to see if they grow on us. The floor lamp added a nice touch to the room as well.
My husband said the broken lamp wouldn’t have happened in most cases. Indeed, the lamps had been hit by the balloons before, but because they were heavy and big, it just off-kiltered the shade a bit which was easily righted. My daughter did some sort of slam dunk at just the right distance to cause the lamp to crash. But to be sure, the balloon was “accidentally” popped and thrown away, thus ending the game.
Not an hour later, my neighbor’s daughter was in the house and had found one of the smaller, punching bag balloons from somewhere else and hit it in the living room—right into the new lamp, which fell over and crashed onto the floor. The bulb broke but thankfully the lamp survived. That balloon suddenly suffered another deflation at the hands of some scissors. Now we get to see how well the lighter lamps (which look quite nice) manage with two five-year olds in the house.
The Big Boy Update: Uncle Bob and I were in the craft room this evening doing some wrapping when my son came in. He saw cardboard boxes and went to my jewelry plier drawer. He asked if he could do “plier work” on one of the boxes. I let him select five different types of pliers and sent him to the front porch with a cardboard box. He was out there happily for some time mangling the box in all sorts of ways. He asked me to keep the box for him so he could do more “work” on the box tomorrow.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Not knowing what my daughter can and can’t see sometimes makes simple observations interesting. She was at the park late this afternoon, walking along, holding Uncle Bob’s hand. She said to him, “your shadow is so long”. It’s exciting to know she can see some things, I just wish she could tell us what the world looks like through her eyes.
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