DIY Climbing Wall

I thought I would add in how we made the climbing wall as a separate post.
The climbing wall is a success.  The boys love it!
We did not have any plans for it, we just kind of winged it.  Well I say we, we had a little bit of help in the form of the boys' Gigi and Popo supplying the grips and gift cards that supplied the rest (those were meant for us to us for us, but of course we used them on the boys) and a friend of ours helping Eric hand saw and put together the frame.

This is the finished project. What is shown is a 4'X8' sheet of plywood, we thought our ceilings were 8' tall but they are more like 7-1/2'.  I'm okay with that because now it can be slanted really easily for the boys and Aiden cannot knocked it down on himself of others.  The frame behind this front piece of plywood is four 2"X4"s and a 2"X6".  Eric cut the 2"X4"s to have a box behind the plywood.  He has three running the length of the plywood, two on the edges and one down the middle.  Then he cut the remaining 2"X4"to fit on the shorter edges.  The 2"X6" is on the back of this at the top and bottom along the shorter 2"X4"s.  We had planned to use these to attach the climbing wall to the wall, but ended up not needing them.  The grips are bolted on the plywood in a random array, we did not look up any route plans for them or anything.  Then we decided the other half of the climbing wall could use a rope, so that's what it got.  We had some smaller rope that we braided and knotted so the boys can climb.  The boys needed something to help them grip when they climbed up the rope, so we thought we would add some wooden slats for their feet.  We ended up having some in the shed that worked great, so we added those.  Now behind all of the grips and the slats we have some rubber anti-slip mats that are for carpets, but it helps with little toes on smooth plywood, too.  Oh and we have some bells at the top in the middle, one of Scott's ABA therapists made that suggestion, and its great, they love ringing them.

 Scott climbs all the way up to the top to ring the bells, and then he slides down and does it again.

Aiden, or as he is calling himself today, Ballerina loves climbing, but he is a little more unsure of the heights.  I'm sure he'll be tackling this wall in no time and then maybe we'll look into some climbing gym memberships for these guys.

And yes the boys are not the only ones enjoying the climbing wall.  Mister Pinkerton sure loves the height of it (and the fact he can escape the dog).

Ball Pit Fun!!!!

This weekend has been a blast, we made a ball pit for the boys and it helped Aiden calm down quite a bit.  Aiden for the past few weeks has been overly emotional about anything and everything.  We are pretty sure it was due to the stress of not having much of a routine over the summer, seeing family and then having to say goodbye to them, and then school starting back up.  It's been a crazy last month for him, so I do not really blame him for being emotional.  But he had been asking for a ball pit, we used to have one, but took it down a while ago.  I thought, maybe he's trying to tell us what he needs, so a ball pit might be just what the doctor ordered.
So we thought we would go ahead and make a decent size one for them. Our previous ball pit was made with their old pack-n-play, but we decided now that they needed a proper ball pit, after all they are big boys now and it only seemed right they had a ball pit to fit their needs (sensory that is).
All this past week we worked on drawing up plans, we had decided to use PVC pipe as an exoskeleton and netting for the containment of the balls.  We had several sizes that we went through before deciding upon 4ft X 4ft X 2ft for the frame.

Here are the plans we used.

We decided it would just be easier to have the pipe cut all to the same length, it made for much easier figuring on our part anyways.  We then tried to figure out how many balls we needed and decided that 2300 seemed like a good enough number.  

This past Saturday we decided was the day to go ahead and make it.  

Eric worked on cutting the PVC while I worked on sewing the netting to fit.  My first attempt worked out well in terms of going together and containing the balls, however we didn't use a high enough quality netting and Scott ripped it.  So I ended up having to go back to Joann's and get some high pressure cargo netting, which so far has not ripped (fingers crossed).  What I did for this was I cut a piece that was a 4ft square and then four pieces that were 2ft by 4 ft for the sides.  I then attached the sides to the bottom and then to each other to form the fabric box.  I then made eight tabs for each side out of some scrap denim I had, I made those 4in wide by 5.25in (so the PVC will fit through them).  Then once I had those all attached to the sides I slide it on the PVC and we dumped all the balls back into to.  We also decided to make a ladder for the boys to get in and out of the ball pit all by them selves.  

And viola, ball pit fun!