In tribute to my awkward title from last year, I present “This Fourth is her Second,” a photo and video montage of our attempts to introduce Lily to fireworks without scaring her to death. We tried to go for things that were “sparkly” or “smokey” or “snakey” in our choices, but we stupidly forgot that our neighbors would be going for things that were more “screechy” and “explosiony” and “deadly,” so it really didn’t matter what we did in our own little driveway.
Duh.
Fortunately, Lily was pretty tolerant of all the noise and flashes. We started with a few smoke bombs in the back yard.
Hahaha…she wasn’t actually as excited as she looks.
Most of the pictures looked like this.
More “stoic” than “going bananas.”
But she did seem interested in our mini-show, and didn’t get upset, so we were encouraged enough to try the “real” stuff (haha…mostly just fountains and sparklers, but I’m from FL…that IS the real stuff to us!).
Later in the evening, we brought her out strapped in her stroller for the “real” fireworks after she was bathed and pj’d up. She wasn’t particularly excited and sometimes a bit skeptical, but sat quietly in her stroller for about an hour. She threw us an occasional “yay”…
…and an occasional celebratory “baby!” for our efforts.
Oh.
Your kid doesn’t yell “baby!” when he or she is excited?
That’s odd.
She also said a sweet “oh no” for me when we accidentally shot fireworks directly at our neighbor’s house.
Oopsie!
As much as Lily didn’t really seem to care TOO much about the fireworks, I was so impressed that she watched them for so long, and the stroller worked out perfectly as it kept her restrained for safety, and the canopy was useful when fiery shrapnel rained from the sky, pelting us and our house in a way that I still cannot get used to in spite of living in South Carolina for 14 years.
(Good grief, that sounds like a long time. Does “since 1996” make me sound less old?)
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