The Economics of Bubbles

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My daughter is infatuated with things that are composed of 99% air.  So why am I spending so much money on them?

The items that I’m talking about, of course, are bubbles and balloons.  Loves them.  LOVES them.  She likes to blow bubbles.   She likes to (try and) hold bubbles.  She likes bubbles in her bathtub, bubbles in her milk.  And balloons?  Balloons she adores.  If she were just a few years older, we’d be seeing Pixar‘s Up this summer.  As it is, she’s been dragging around a mostly deflated balloon that we got from Red Robins a few nights back as if it were her best friend in the world.

But bubbles…bubbles are where her joy lies.  And I swear it’ll break me.

I’d never noticed how much Bubble Juice (her term, not mine) ends up on the ground instead of on a wand or a bubble-blowing device.

My mother-in-law was watching my daughter today, as is her custom on Thursdays, and the two of them spent the whole day out and about on the town.   I’ve tried to have my day and my chores wrapped up by the time the two of them return home, but today I still had to mow the front lawn, and I was just getting ready to start that task as they walked up to the porch.  My mother-in-law didn’t mind spending a few more moments watching Micah, so they settled in around the house.  After a quick patrol of the yard with the mower, I returned to find them blowing bubbles while sitting on the bench out front.  Already a huge puddle had gathered underneath the two of them.  Neither noticed as they were having too much fun with the bubbles.

After that it was time for Nana to leave.   I don’t know if it was her own tiredness, or the fact that she watched the whole packing up and heading to the car process, or if she was still thinking about bubbles, but my daughter decided to wander around the porch rather than bawling and railing against the world for taking away her Nana.

Things were looking up for me.

I watched my daughter for a few moments as she wandered back and forth, barefooted on the cement of our front porch.  Eventually and unintentionally she stepped right into the bubble juice puddle.

“EWWWWWWWWWW,” she said.

“That’s ok, honey.   Wipe your foot off on daddy’s pant leg,” said Nana (she hadn’t quite left yet).  Suprisingly my daughter did exactly that.

She then wandered back over to the puddle and examined it.  (At this point Nana made good her escape.)

Gingerly, oh-so-gingerly, my daughter stuck her foot back into the puddle.

“EWWWWWWW”

She almost hopped over the puddle at that point and wander over to the porch swing.

Then she turned around and walked back to the puddle and through the puddle.

“EWWWWWWWWW”

Then she slipped (it is a soap-based liquid after all).  Fortunately she caught herself.  She turned to me and said, “Slippery.”

She spent the next several minutes deliberately stepping in and sliding around the puddle.  She’d alternate between saying “Ewww” and “Slippery”, and looked pleased as punch.

Eventually the puddle went away.  It was a combination of heat and evaporation, absorbtion by the concrete, and the coating of my daughter’s foot.  Soon enough, the puddle was no longer quite so Eww, nor quite so slippery.

At that point my daughter turned to me, pointed at the bubble container, and said, “More bubble juice please.”

I’m thinking I should stock up on this stuff.   Apparently it’s multipurpose entertainment.