Mum always said... Don't play ball in the house

…I’m sure you remember that infamous line from The Brady Bunch and in this instance there was no broken Ming Dynasty vase… it was much, much worse!

Grace has one of those balls you can get for $2.99 at any service station that are slightly smaller than a soccer ball, made of a thin plastic and pumped up to within an inch of its life.

Last night as I was clearing away the dinner dishes, Grace was bouncing said ball in the kitchen.

Me: Grace, go and put the ball away.

Grace: It’s alright, I’ll be careful

Me: I know you’ll be careful, but we all know accidents happen. Please put the ball away.

Now, as her “last great act of defiance” before doing as she was told, she gave the ball a swift kick. The ball bounced off the kitchen window into an oil laden pan on the stove, bounced out of the pan and proceeded to bounce like a pinball (I swear at one point it actually increased momentum) off every wall and piece of furniture in the room smearing oil everywhere.

Needless to say, the rest of my evening was spent with the children playing a rousing game of “spot the splotch”.

Every ball in our house has now been slashed to ribbons and the only balls the kids are allowed to play with are cubes!