In the heart of winter, it’s difficult to remember when it was last warm enough to drag out the wading pool for the kids to have a summer splash, let alone where the inflatable beast is stored. I say beast because we don’t have a decent pump, so it takes about an hour to inflate ours. Reina had been pining for the pool, but not for a swim, she wanted to have a pillow pool.
The pillow pool is a great way to beat the indoor winter doldrums and, assuming you have an inflatable pool, it’s simple (once inflated) to set up. Place the pool somewhere safely on the floor in the house and load it up with all the pillows you can yank off of beds and furniture. We place ours next to the bed on a carpet, drop in a comforter on the bottom and fill it with 6-8 pillows off the beds. Then, I stand back and let Reina go at it. She loves to jump off the bed into the pillows – no diving – and will spend hours playing games with her stuffed animals as the pile of pillows transforms from a house, to a den, to a fort. And when her friends visit, it only takes one leap off of the bed and into the pile of pillows in the pool to get them in on the action. Best of all, there’s no need to drain the pool at the end of the day and the pillows are recyclable.