Day 642 - Fireworks and Waterworks

Except for Christmas and Thanksgiving, most other holidays are uneventful events for parents who have kids under the age of two. What these other holidays inevitably become is an extra day to catch up with laundry, shopping, and personal grooming (I was finally able to trim those pesky nostril hairs!).

With this year's Fourth of July, we kept it fairly simple like last year. We had some friends over for hamburgers and hot dogs and took a dip in the pool. Lisa wanted everyone in the family to dress up in red, white, and blue. She even laid out an outfit for me with the appropriate colors. But I chose to wear my usual at-home attire: panty hose and a cummerbund.

Since the kids are almost two years old, I was wondering whether or not it would be worth it to take a drive so the kids could see some fireworks in the sky. It was around 8pm, and PBS was about to broadcast the Washington D.C. fireworks show. So I gathered everyone on our pee/poo/milk-infested sofa for a fireworks test run on the television set.

At first, Emma and Andrew were both fascinated by the fireworks. They were pointing at the screen and gabbing away. But then there was a crescendo in the music and cannons began to fire. Andrew got even more excited by this noise, but Emma's bottom lip began to quiver. The quiver quickly changed to crying.

I tried to comfort Emma by explaining how beautiful fireworks are, and how they are made by kids just a little older than her. The crying continued. I tried to comfort her more by telling her how lucky she has all of her fingers because the kids who made these fireworks do not. The crying got louder. I gave up. This kid was absolutely inconsolable.

Eventually we turned off the television, but Andrew said, "More! More!" So we turned it back on, and thankless ten-fingered Emma began whining again. Once we put the volume way down on the television, Emma calmed down and was able to watch the rest of the fireworks show.

It will be interesting to see how much we can do as a family since it seems like Emma is a lot more sensitive to things than Andrew. I must say that as a child I was fearful of many things like Chewbacca and Snuffleupagus; as an adult, I just have a fear of body hair. I think whenever we decide to see our first movie in a theater, Andrew will have a great time in the theater and Emma will have a great time in the lobby wiping away her tears. Hopefully, I won't have to be in the lobby with her because matinees tend to have a greater audience demographics of hairy, elderly men. Shudder...