The Worst Christmas Present Ever

Early in the fall I had a hunch that we would need to get gross-motor skill activities for Jamison during the winter. So after spending hours looking at online bouncy-bounces and even creating a spreadsheet of all the bouncy-bounce contenders, I ordered the bouncy bounce pictured below.

I asked my dad to blow it up in his basement to make sure there weren't any holes. The next morning he told me that there was a huge hole in one of the sections. So I returned that one and ordered two more. My thinking was that if one of those didn't work then the other must. How could I go wrong?

The second one arrived and was inflated in my parents basement. It stayed inflated for over a week and just in time for Christmas. (question: why isn't it "flated" why is it "inflated"? I would think that "in" would be a suffix for "flated". anyway, just a thought.)

Unfortunately, about a week after Christmas the tunnel that the kids crawled through to get into the bouncy bounce itself became a safety hazard. The kids actually couldn't crawl through it at all without having to wiggle through the deflated tunnel.

So I wasn't sure what to do but I knew we had to get rid of this thing that Santa brought. At one point Lily and Jamie were actually throwing their bodies at the sides of the bouncy bounce in attempts to climb in it without having to use the death trap of a tunnel.

Here was my idea. Santa would write them a note explaining the error. And then he would leave a replacement. The replacement was much cheaper and didn't take up as much room. And there was minimal possibility of suffocation.

This part of the note ended up sounding a little threatening, but luckily Lily didn't interpret it like that. Do you like my Santa handwriting? I'm thinking of making it a font. I'll call it "Santa".

So here is the replacement ball pit. It does like pitiful. But actually I think they like it better. Jamison uses it as a place to lounge with the stuffed animals. Lily uses it as a collection bin for all the balls we have. That's good for me because at least they're all in one place.

Last week I received a catalogue from the company that sold me the first bouncy bounce. They were advertising a NEW! and IMPROVED! bouncy bounce. I was tempted to see if it would stay inflated. But then Brian threw it into the fireplace and we went back to watching tv.