Pop Ba-looons

As I mentioned in my Project Life post yesterday. Claire LOVES water balloons. I went to Target...a couple of weeks ago...and bought Anaya some water balloons because we threw hers away last summer because she left them all over the house and we had a 2 yr old and three cats. So I bought some more and explained to her that they do not come in the house. And after playing with them, everyone is required to walk around the yard picking up pieces of balloon. I know, I'm the mean and evil step-mother. It cooled off again and she was at her mom's house, so we never ended up doing anything with them until Memorial Day Weekend. At which point I think I tied at least 75 water balloons and therefore and no longer evil, even if I do make them pick up the pieces of the balloons.



So, on the Friday (May 25) we pulled out the water balloons. And Claire was enthralled. She was popping them as faster than I could fill them. Eventually I found a box to put them in and we kept it out of Claire's reach, so for every one that she got, we put two or three in the box. I also had Anaya start helping me fill balloons, I filled them, she tied them. Unless she was still tying one when I got done filling the next one.

That night we drew a bulls-eye on the driveway and Anaya & Claire "competed" to see who could get the most points. Unfortunately, unless you throw them really really hard, the balloons only pop when they hit grass. They bounce right off of the driveway...and people...but if they so much as brush against a piece of grass, they pop.

Now Claire is obsessed with the balloons. She calls them "Pop Ba-looons". I have a Summer To-Do list with pictures of things we can do on it, and Claire will go and point to the one of water balloons and look at me and say "Pop Ba-looons?". We'll be in the garage and she'll see them on the shelf and say, "Pop Ba-looons?". Which means almost every evening, I end up sitting in the backyard with a hose, filling and tying water balloons as quickly as she can pop them. Mostly she likes to sit in a chair next to me and just throw them from there so that she doesn't get grass on her feet.



In an effort to not tie so many balloons waste fewer balloons, I started making "fountain" balloons for her. Basically, you fill the balloon with water and don't tie it then hold the top of it closed and hand it to her. She holds it while all the water squirts out the top. Then you can reuse the same balloon until it is too stretched out and then it will explode all over the balloon filler while they are filling it. Which Claire will also find humorous. And of course, since I made the rule that Anaya & her friends had to pick up all of the pieces of balloons...guess what else I get to do every night...