A few months ago, I bought an exercise ball (also referred to as a balance ball or a stability ball) as an addition to my home gym. It’s essentially just a very large ball, and, supposedly, it’s an excellent tool for working abdominal and back muscles, because not only to you can you stretch over it and work the whole range of muscles, you also have to work them just to keep your balance on the unstable, rolling ball.
Not that I can vouch for how well it works. Since I opened the package, my children have appropriated it. As soon as I attached the included pump to it and started blowing it up, the children took over. They fought over turns at the pump, as much to enjoy making farty noises with it as much as to expand the ball to its full size. Even thought it’s already fulfilled its initial purpose, the pump remains a toy of guaranteed hilarity, as well as the seperate hose, which is particularly useful for swinging at one’s sibling.
When it was expanded, Neil and Kelly took turns jumping on and tumbling off of the ball. Kelly quickly named it the “boo boo ball” (because falling off makes for boo boos), and we haven’t been able to call it anything else since.
I put the boo boo ball with my other exercise equipment (which is free weights in girly sizes and steps of various heights.) But whenever it came time to exercise, the boo boo ball would be missing. It would have tumbled down the stairs, and rolled through all the rooms of the bottom floor, sometimes to screams of horror and delight. I used to return it to my stuff, but it would be rolled away so quickly afterwards that I realized the attempt was futile.
My children do more with the boo boo ball than a hyperactive aerobics instructor in an infomercial. It bounces, it rolls, it tumbles, sometimes with children attached. Neil will fall off the ball with only an ankle remaining on top, whereup Kelly will bounce onto the ball and as she slides off, hang on Neil’s leg. Kelly crawls on top of the ball and makes it circle beneath her as she clutches a table leg for balance. Neil tries to somersalt around the ball, always to a sorrowful conclusion.
My children are going to have awesome abs. Me, I think I’m going to have to stick to doing crunches.