Henry bought a book about volcanoes while we were out garage saling a couple of weeks back and the boys have been pretty focused on all things volcano ever since. They've even been begging to watch a volcano documentary on Netflix over and over again which isn't too terrible but it has made me completely rethink ever wanting to move to Naples--how did I not know it's right next to Mount Vesuvius? And why don't people lead with that little tidbit when giving you the pro/cons list? Crowded, lots of traffic, high crime, smelly, oh and it's next to an active volcano that's best known for BURYING POMPEI.
The other result of their new obsession is that the big boys have been begging me to let them make their own volcano. I'm not sure how they knew that that is a thing people do, but they did, so I turned over my baking soda and vinegar. A quick check for volcano recipes suggested adding dish soap to make it more frothy so we did that too plus food coloring, obviously. I also read a suggestion to wrap the baking soda into a tissue ball for a fun delayed action effect. Well, it would have been fun if my audience weren't all under the age of seven. Delayed action isn't really something any of them are interested in. So plenty of baking soda was dumped on top, just to get things moving. And then the whole process had to be repeated for the neighbor children as well. I think I'm going to need to hide my baking soda if I ever want to do things other than mix it with vinegar ever again.
Meanwhile John, tired of waiting for me to finish up with our volcano and push him on a big boy swing, took matters into his own hands, dragged a chair over and got himself into a bit of a pickle. I'm not sure what his thought process was but he realized too late that being in a baby swing would still necessitate having someone to provide the forward momentum.
It all turned out okay in the end. Baking soda doesn't fizz forever and brothers always come to the rescue. Eventually.