Photo courtesy of Christy Lynn
I am, admittedly, a stuff snob. When our first child was born, my husband and I, perhaps rudely, rejected plastic toys with mechanical parts, songs and glitter. We opted for beautiful wooden objects, books and sentimental blankets and stuffed animals that we saved from our own childhoods. Suffice it to say that in the years since, our standards have slipped. I hit rock bottom this past July when brainstorming what to get for our daughter’s third birthday. Recognizing that it would lead to pure and unparalleled delight, I bought a bounce house. That’s right. A bounce house.
It was kind of a fluke, really. I had started on a quest to rent a bounce house for her birthday, but targeted ads immediately informed me that while I could rent a bounce house for $500 a week, I could BUY one for $379! It wasn’t cheap, but I suspected we’d get our money’s worth. What’s a Mama to do?
Now, for all of you stuff snobs reading, please feel free to stop here and keep living in that lovely, curated world. But if I’m being honest, I’ll admit this was quite possibly the best purchase of my forty-year life.
The bounce house is pure bliss. It takes up almost the entire yard and comes fully equipped with a tower, slide, tunnel feature, classic bounce zone AND a pool base that shoots water in three different spots. Our kids love it. All summer and fall, I’d hear them shrieking gleefully as they bounced off all that wild energy discouraged inside our (still rather precious) home.
A couple weeks ago, we begrudgingly decided it was time to take down the bounce house and pack it away for the winter. The kids still ask for it on sunny days and have daydreamed aloud about what it would be like in the snow. My seven-year-old even suggested that the Middlebury College fieldhouse probably wouldn’t mind if we set it up on the turf on some dreary Sunday. Alas, like the garden bulbs and the beach toys we just packed away, the bounce house will have to wait its turn.
The only lingering question: can I find something as fun for Christmas?
— Christy Lynn is co-publisher of the Addison Independent