“Balloons. Balloons. Balloons.”

Tomorrow is Loyette’s third birthday, and we’re hosting a “Noon Year’s Eve”-themed birthday party for her. Becky (who is awesome) is doing the vast bulk of the planning, preparation and house-cleaning (did I mention Becky is awesome?), but she tasked me with devising a way to have a “balloon drop” at noon. So last night, after Becky blew up several dozen balloons (to review: Becky. Awesome.), I experimented with several methods of suspending them up near the ceiling. Streamers didn’t work. Twine was going to be problematic. Then we hit upon the solution: wrapping paper!

That’s a giant single piece of (post-Christmas discounted) wrapping paper, secured with masking tape at both ends. I put it up last night, and — knock on wood — it’s remained stable so far.

I’m just hoping the balloon drop goes better than the one at John Kerry’s convention. I don’t want a bunch of 2- and 3-year-olds to hear me say, “We need more balloons. We need all of them coming down! Balloons. Balloons. Balloons. What’s happening? They’re not coming down. All balloons. Where the hell! Nothing is falling. What the f**k are you guys doing up there?”

Anyway, here’s another picture:

You can’t see it in either photo, but on the left side (as seen from the angle above), there’s a little “tab” at the end of a looped double-string of fishing line. One side of the fishing line is above the wrapping paper, the other side below, both converging in a loop on the other side, nestled in a tiny rip in the paper near the big green balloon in the middle of the first photo. The idea is that, at “zero” in our countdown to noon, I’ll tug firmly on the “tab,” thus abruptly yanking the fishing line toward me, turning that tiny rip into a giant chasm in the middle of the wrapping paper, tearing it asunder and causing all the balloons to tumble down into the middle of the living room, onto the waiting horde of toddlers below.

(Yes, I just used the words “chasm,” “asunder” and “horde” in a sentence about dropping balloons from our living room ceiling at a 3-year-old’s birthday party. I’m a nerd.)

Of course, I can’t test this — I only get one shot at it. But if it fails, I’ll either just sort of rip the thing by hand, or else the entire sheath of paper will rip and collapse in an uncontrolled fashion from one side or the other (or perhaps both simultaneously) due to all the tugging and pulling. Regardless, I’m sure the kids will love it. I daresay that balloons falling from the sky appear awesome to a bunch of 2- and 3-year-olds regardless of the details. Still, I hope the fishing line thing works, because it’ll be a better effect if all the balloons cascade down from the middle, rather than the sides.

My biggest worry is that the whole apparatus will collapse catastrophically in the mean time, well before noon tomorrow, most likely due to a rip in the wrapping paper near where the masking tape is attached at either end. I don’t really have a Plan B if that happens. But, like I said, it’s been up for more than 12 hours now, and so far, so good.

Now we just need to make sure none of the kids turns on the ceiling fan…