Because then you wouldn't know how much Dylan LOVES balls...

I have a boy who LOVES Balls! Anything round Dylan calls a ball. For example, when we would go to Target and he'd see those big red balls out front, he thought he was at Ball Heaven. What a disappointment to be just at a store. Then we would be going somewhere and he would see a balloon waaaaay in the corner of the store and he would yell, "BALL!!!" until I acknowledged where it was. He will throw anything that is round, including peas at the table, you do NOT eat balls. I have to smash them before he will eat them. We had a pumpkin on our front step and we couldn't keep him from throwing it down the stairs every day. When we have rolls, we have to rip his up or he'll throw them. Today he saw a picture of a ball on the back of our powdered chocolate milk bag and he went crazy until we noticed this teeny soccer ball on the bag. Kix is just a bad idea unless you want a floor covered in the little balls.
(Oh, you know I love it!)

Let's start at the beginning. When Dylan was a few months old, he would sleep as if he were holding a ball in his hand. (BTW, we kicked the thumb sucking habit and changed it into a binky habit. We'll see which habit I prefer when it comes time to say "bye-bye" to the bink.) Ever since he could crawl he would play fetch with himself.

Before we got our stuff here in Hungary, we borrowed this ball and he would not let it out of his sight!

Right when we got our things from the States, I put the balls in his room and this is where we would find him if we couldn't find him. He would crawl up the stairs, into his room, under the changing table, and into the ball bin.

The ball bin then graduated to the play room down stairs. He would take a few out from the bin (just enough to make room for him), throw them across the room, get in the bin, throw the rest out, go out of the bin, retrieve the balls, put them back in and repeat the process.

Back in his "Happy Place!"

This is him saying, "ball" over and over and over and over again.

This time it's a bit crowded. I tried to not get the lid in the picture because on the yellow sticker it has a picture of a baby in a bin with a big circle and a line through it and big letters saying "Not intended for children to play in." The lid is not ON him, so it's okay, right? Notice in every shot I try to make sure that the sticker is covered up... hee hee

We went to a big Russian "Statue Graveyard," so they call it because they took all the Soviet statues out of the city and placed them all together in a guarded area so that people would stop vandalizing them. Hungarians do not like the Russians. There are MANY reasons why. Read up on how Russia used to rule Hungary. Scary stuff!

Dylan found the best statue of all. Two hands holding a big ball. "Ball? Ball! BAAAAAALLLL!!!!" He cried when we left this statue.
Why won't my mean parents let me play with the biggest ball I have ever seen!!! Wah!!

During Christmas this year, he was infatuated with our tree with all the numerous fun-looking balls. He broke this one during our photo shoot and he was thinking,
Why did this ball have this dumb string coming out of it? There. (rip it out) I fixed it!

One day I heard Dylan complaining in the other room as he was trying to put the ball bucket in the little space it usually was, but he couldn't do it because his own body was getting in the way and it was too heavy. He would back in, get in the bucket, and realize he wasn't TOTALLY against the wall, get out try to pull it closer to the wall, get in, notice it STILL wasn't close enough, then repeat the process.

After he got THIS mad, I showed him how to do it. By pushing it. Poor baby.

There. All better. Mommy is helping me instead of taking pictures... hey, wait a minute! Keep helping Mom! Drop the camera! :)

This is my most recent ball picture and I just can't get over those dimples!!
(You can see the yellow sticker (upside-down) a little better in this pic.... dang it. Making me all kinds of guilty for letting my boy play in plastic bins. Okay, not really. But don't call CPS on me!)

For some reason, this is just my favorite ball shot of him... what a cutie! He's not even smiling huge or doing anything spectacular. He even has a little bruise on his left cheek. I just love this shot.

Confession: I get the willies every time I see a play place with balls in it because I think of all the germs and gross things hidden in them. url. When I was around 7ish I remember going to Chuck E Cheese's for a party, going into the huge ball pen, and getting 'slime goo grossness' all over me. I don't know what it was, but it was yellowish and stunk REALLY bad. I gagged and couldn't even look at it while my mom cleaned it off. I have had a dislike for any ball play place ever since. I LOVE it when I see the balls taken out of the Ikea play place here for cleaning. . . I just would like a schedule so I know when they were just cleaned. eulg. So when my kids ask to go in the balls, sometimes I say yes, but when I don't I can just say that we have balls at home to play with. I just can't watch them in them without gagging. Bring on the Purell!