Beanbags

I've just written on Facebook "Don't let kids help you fill beanbags. Just don't."

I was going to write "don't fill beanbags with kids" but I thought people might wonder why I was trying to cram my kids into beanbags, so I didn't.

Through a combination of circumstances, we have two new beanbags in the house. In brief, the circumstances are as follows.

Firstly, once long ago we went to the Moonlight Cinema and payed extra for Gold Grass tickets, where we got to enjoy the luxury of some pretty awesome couch-shaped beanbags. I've wanted one ever since.

Secondly, we're having some people over for a movie night here at home tomorrow.

Thirdly, we don't have enough comfy couchy-type seats for even half the number we're expecting.

And lastly, when I checked the relevant website the price was much more reasonable than I remember it being when I first looked years ago.

So I ordered two couchy beanbags and they arrived a few days later, without beans. I went shopping and realised I had a conversion problem. The website that supplied the beanbags suggests I use 250 litres of beans, but my supplier sells beans in 500g bags. So I guesstimated and bought three bags. When I got home it didn't seem like enough. Today I went back and bought one more bag of beans.

This is where the kids came in. When we got home from school I asked them to help me fill the bags. Things generally went okay, although you would think that when you've only got one instruction to follow, and it's a simple one, you could manage. You know, something easy like "hold the bag open and don't let it go". A kid could do that, couldn't they?

Turns out sometimes yes, and other times not so much. 

Anyway we dumped all four bags of beans into one beanbag and it still didn't feel full. I  really wasn't in the mood to go back to the shop on a Friday afternoon for more beans, but Venus was really excited by the prospect, so we got in the car and came home shortly after with six more bags of beans.

We put one bag of beans into the one we'd already been filling, but then it felt too firm. So we put four bags of beans into the empty one and then the kids each held a beanbag while I bucketed beans from the firm beanbag into the softer beanbag.

Then the last bag of beans was divided between the kids' beanbags, as they were both feeling a bit starved. The beanbags, that is, not the kids. We had some dinner in between all this beanbag stuff.

I suppose that really, given the vast number of tiny polystyrene beads we moved around, it's amazing that so few of them ended up on the floor. But it seemed like there was a lot of shouting to make sure that half a bag of beans didn't wind up in the vacuum cleaner, and I was feeling bad about the shouting.

By now it was nearly bedtime and everyone was tired. I put Venus in the shower and played the soundtrack to Singin' in the Rain on my phone. She sang and danced in the shower and gave me the best laugh I've had all week.

Then she wrote this in her journal:

It says "I love my mummy so much that I can't hold it when I put my arms out", and the picture at the bottom is Venus dancing and me singing as we listen to Singin' in the Rain, because that's what we were doing when she picked up her journal.

I can't even begin to describe to you how precious that is, but if you have little people in your life, then you already know.