My wife and I needed a new chair for the living room about a year ago. In a moment that can only be described as temporary insanity, my wife agreed to my suggestion that we buy an enormous bean bag. Now when I say enormous, I mean ENORMOUS. I’m talking leave-a-trail-of-bread-crumbs-to- find-your-way-back enormous. The east side of the bean bag is on Eastern Time, and the western side is on Central. All my kids can plop on it for a DVD with room to spare, and I have a LOT of kids.
The only downfall to owning this behemoth is the fact that it has to be rotated to keep it soft and fluffy. The box it came in said it should be rotated daily. Right… The thing weighs about 80 pounds.
Anyway, I’ve found that the giant chair needs to be rotated about once a week. Any less frequently than that and it gets too flat to be comfortable. The very first time I rotated it, all of the kids gathered around to watch. They hadn’t ever seen anything quite like it before. After a couple of minutes of grunting and groaning we had a mountain of a pillow in the corner of the room. The kids and I looked at each other’s mischievous grins and I snatched up my son (he happened to be closest) and chucked him high through the air to land stuntman style on the bean bag. He loved it, and my girls quickly run up to me clamoring for a turn.
Some of my kids are more courageous than others, so I had requests for small “chucks” from the timid kids and outer-space “chucks” from the more intrepid kids. We had a blast, and I ended up chuckin’ the kids for about 20 minutes. It became an instant tradition for kids and I.
Now, every time I go strap on the weight belt, my kids run to make a line in the living room. We’ve added flips and twists to the list of chucks, it is a very unique time to spend with my kids. It’s something that I know my kids and I will be doing for years to come. (At least until they get too heavy for me to chuck)