Ball!

We have an exercise ball upstairs that I sit on from time to time. This morning as I was getting dressed, I heard James shout "Ball!" in triumph. He had extricated it from its lodging place under the table in his room and rolled it out the door, around the corner, down the hallway, through the door of our room, and up the step. Then he used the ball to brace himself as he climbed up the step after it. After appropriate applause, he started bouncing the ball off the wall near our closet, jumping back and shrieking with joy as it recoiled on him.

All this makes quite a change from a few weeks ago, when he found the exercise ball uncanny because it was exactly his height and moved on its own when he wasn't expecting it to.

On a thematically related front, I used the phrase "we're really on the ball" yesterday as we were driving home. This troubled him. "Ball? Wat ball? Ball dis?" I explained belatedly that we weren't on an actual ball, but rather that it was an expression meaning "on top of things." Then, of course, I realized that this didn't help either and changed it to "alert, organized."

James looked tolerant of my muddled explanation, but he was disappointed. He obviously hoped there was a real ball in the car. Luckily we passed an apartment complex with a clump of balloons outside just then. "Ball!" he cried in delight.