Fourth of July Weekend Part 2

On the fourth itself, I took Frances to see fireworks with a friend of ours... I'll call him Bob. Arial stayed home because she didn't want to have to feed Johann out in public (and she told me that she didn't really want to see fireworks anyway... and that she likes the burnt part as well as the crust...). Bob's wife is very pregnant and didn't want to deal with the whole adventure.

So us three went downtown for fireworks looking like a gay couple with our adopted daughter (as Bob pointed out). We managed to find a parking spot on the street that was free in the evenings.

We walked to a place where we could see the fireworks and found a spot on the grass, the very wet grass and lay down our blankets. The water instantly soaked through one of the blankets where ever we put weight on it but the other was water resistant so it took a little bit for our pants to get soaked.

Frances started off pretty good. I didn't really bring much for her to play with. There were a couple books in the diaper bag but that was about it. Soon she was up and doing laps around us which was fine. The only part I didn't like was when she would go behind the stroller and there would be a little bit that I couldn't see her. I pushed over the stroller and that solved that.

Frances' shorts were a little loose and they kept slipping down. She was fine when she stood still, but she wasn't doing much of that. I dug through the diaper bag looking for a safety pin but didn't find one. Finally, after some thought, I removed the shoelace from one of my shoes and tied it around her like a belt. That worked great but it made it a little more difficult trying to keep my shoe on while chasing after her.

She grew bored again (since it's a long time to wait for a little girl). So, I opened up umbrella and gave it to her. She held it wonderfully and started walking around. It seemed like since Frances was under the protection of the umbrella that she had more courage because pretty soon she was walking in a straight line away from our blankets.

I followed and tried to guide her back but it was pretty difficult. From my viewing angle above, I could only see the umbrella and not the direction that Frances was actually pointing. So I would think that she was going the right way only to realize that she was facing left. Plus, I couldn't actually touch her to guide. I could only guide the umbrella itself.

Eventually, I got her back and we had juice bags, but only one since we had just had an incident. Well, actually Frances had like one and a half since she finished hers pretty quick and then grabbed Bob's. Of course Bob didn't want to upset her, so he just let her have it. I didn't see it or I would have stopped her (I was working on getting my own straw in. I didn't have many juice boxes growing up so it is a bit of a challenge for me).

After juice, she went back to running circles around us, occasionally crouching down to say "Set! Go!" before running again.

When the first fireworks went up, I tried to get her to come back to me. She didn't listen and kept running... until she saw them. Then, she stopped dead in her tracks and stared at the sky in awe.

I grabbed her and set her on my lap. We spent about five minutes watching fireworks and saying "ooo". Then she got bored again. I can't really blame her, I had gotten bored of the fireworks too. So she got up and slowly walked towards the fireworks, like she was testing her boundaries. She finally stopped about 10 feet in front of us. A couple times, I grabbed her and brought her back to the blanket but she would just hop up and go back to the same spot. So I gave up and let her stand there (I think she thought she had to say "ooo" if she was with me and she was tired of that).

Then, she started circling again but this time she went as wide as possible, coming closer than I liked to the other people around us. But she didn't seem to be bothering them, so I let her continue. Occasionally, she would swing in closer to me to kinda check in and then go back to the races.

When the finally started, she stopped running and came over to me and we watched the end together.

All in all it was a good time. We saw fireworks, no one got lost and Frances was asleep in her car seat pretty much by the time I got the car started.

mwz