The Velcro Suit and a Well-Used Can of Silly String

I have no pictures of the school carnival last Friday for a variety of reasons.  I was sick, and already had a baby strapped to my back who getting over a cold and had a very drippy nose, and this led me to be less than excited about managing the other kidlets in a crowd of people while I carried a heavy camera.  So I left my camera at home.  We barely managed to get to the carnival at all, really, because a certain kidlet was having a meltdown and working through that was a process that took a very, very long time.

Mr. Sneaky Pants was extremely excited about going to the carnival, and enjoyed every second of the chaos.  He played all sorts of indoor games and loved spending his tokens for a prize.  He was even more excited about the inflatable attractions outside the school.  When we got out the door he immediately ran right over to the silly string arena.  Each year at the carnival there is a roped off area of the playground.  You pay 8 tickets for a can of silly string and admission into the fence, where you can zap anyone you’d like with silly string.  It is very popular and looks like a ton of fun.  For years, however, YaYa has glanced over there in disdain, “Why would anyone want to waste their tickets on THAT?”   Let’s just say that the silly string arena was right up Mr. SP”s alley.  He had the time of his life.

After bouncing in the bouncing house, and a quick ride down an inflatable slide, Mr. SP decided that he really wanted to tackle the velcro wall this year.  I’ve always avoided the velcro wall because there is a very, very long wait in line to wear a velcro suit.  The velcro wall is an inflatable wall covered with velcro.  The participants wear a velcro suit and find exciting ways to stick to the wall.  I decided we might as well give it a try.  It was a long wait, and I wondered many, many times if two minutes in a velcro suit was worth the long stand in the sprinkling weather as I watched lots of kids bounce around and, well, really not do too much in the velcro suit even though they seemed to have a good time.  It turns out that it was worth it.

Mr. SP donned the velcro suit, and when he was given the go ahead, he turned into Spiderman, climbing up a rope ladder on the side as far as he could go to the very tip top of the wall.  He rolled out onto the velcro like Superman and stuck there, with the most enormous grin on his face that I’ve quite possibly ever seen.  Of course he’s so skinny and light that he could have just stuck there all day.  Apparently the view was nice up there, because he just hung around for a very long time and then had a marvelous jump down onto the bouncy floor.  He’s still talking about it.