Big blue ball

Today the boys were outside playing with their two big blue bouncy balls. They were both straddling their balls and bouncing on them when Matthew's basically split into three pieces and he fell to the ground. He was unhurt and just a little surprised and nonchalantly got up and went about playing with other things. Sam, however, was devastated by the loss and threw his head back and cried about the broken ball. He repeatedly asked me if we could get another to replace it. After a few minutes of mourning, the boys picked up the pieces of broken ball (two of which were very large), covered their heads with them and began running around and chasing each other. Abby even discovered how much fun the broken rubber ball pieces were and exerted herself in trying to get one (i.e. she cried very loudly...see the picture below).

Later in the afternoon Matthew was preoccupied with his snack and Sam was playing with the remaining inflated ball. He looked so cute and "senior-photo-like" that I grabbed the camera and took his picture playing on the ball. Then I asked him to make funny faces and he offered me his sad face.

Then it was Matthew's turn for the ball. Sam was ok giving up the ball for Matthew to take pictures with, so he handed it over and Matthew began bouncing on it.

My last great idea was to have both the boys sit on the ball together (hoping it wouldn't break like the other one), with their backs together and faces toward me. Wouldn't that be cute? So I told Matthew I wanted him to make room for Sam to sit on the ball too. Well, that didn't work so well. Matthew picked up the ball, hugged it and ran around the yard screaming, "No, it's my turn!" He basically threw quite a loud fit and didn't stop until I told him that I thought I saw the neighbors staring out their windows at him, wondering at the noise. Matthew and Sam both really like the neighbors, so that stopped his crying, but he was certainly in no mood for sitting on the ball with Sam for a picture. Maybe another time.