Au Revoir le Ballon

Once upon a time, there was a ball.

It was the kind of ball that people use at the gym to make their ab muscles stronger.  A few years ago, when I existed only in the mind of God, Momma and Daddy inadvertently bought such a ball as part of a yoga set. 

It turns out, these balls also can be used during labor to help tolerate the contractions. So when it was time for Momma to get ready to deliver me, Daddy inflated the ball and they took it to the hospital.  It helped somewhat during labor. 

When they brought me home, the ball came too.  They didn't deflate it.  Instead, they used it to soothe me by bouncing me on it.  I LOVED it.  In fact, it was the sharpest tool in the Judah-soothing-toolbox.

As you can see, everyone pitched in to calm me down by bouncing me on the ball.

Here's Auntie Sarah bouncing me when I was pretty bitty.

Here's Grandpa LeRoy taking a moment away from cooking to bounce me.

Here's Uncle Simeon bouncing me when I met him in Arizona over Christmas.  Oh yes, the ball had to travel with me.

 

Here are my cousins playing with the ball over Christmas in Santa Fe.

Uncle Dan was kind enough to bounce me when the ball and I traveled to Maine last month.

Here's Grandma Deborah using me to do her weight-bearing exercises on the ball.  I'm not sure what that means, but she said it has to do with building up her bones and thanked me so it must be good. 

Anyway, she needed to take a break from bouncing me.  You see, bouncing on the ball seems easy at first.  And it truly is easier than bouncing me without a ball.  But as time went by, Momma and Daddy got pretty sick of it.

And to tell you the truth, after countless hours of bouncing, I got kinda sick of it too.  You see, for most of my life, either Momma or Daddy or someone had to bounce me in order for me to go to sleep.  Every nap.  Every bedtime.  Every time I woke up in the middle of the night.  If I was going to go back to sleep, someone had to bounce me.  They call it a "sleep assocation" in all the fancy sleeping books Momma read.  I called it "heaven" for a while there.  But then, it started to drive me nuts.  So one day, Momma and Daddy said, "Enough!"  And they stopped bouncing me.

Much to their suprise, I was pretty relieved.  In fact, I slept for 8 hours and 45 minutes straight the night that they stopped bouncing me to go to bed.  Can you believe it?!? That stretch beat my previous world record by about 4 hours and 45 minutes.  Momma was so excited she took a photo of her baby time tracker. 

This development happened about two weeks ago.  For a while, Momma kept the ball inflated just in case I regressed.  Silly Momma.  I may be little but I'm a quick learner.  Now I go to bed on my own without any bouncing.  So Momma put away the ball.  Here I am posing with the deflated ball one last time. 

Au Revoir le Ballon!  Thanks for all the good times...and thanks to each and every one of you who bounced me over the past several months.