4th of July

I don’t really have any pictures of our 4th of July celebrations.  Mostly I wanted to write a quick post so that years from now I can come back and remember how these celebrations went when our kids were young.

Bella is coughing and up during the night again….enough said.

On July 3rd we went out to a friends party with Oliver.  Bella stayed home with Grandma.  Oliver was having fun, and as usual all over the place not wanting to sit still.  As the night got later we kept building up the anticipation of fireworks.  It was very late when the first firework finally went off.  And immediately Oliver started bawling.  So inside the house he went, still crying off and on when he would hear them.  And ended up playing with magnetic letters on the fridge.  There were a couple other little kids also inside the house who were crying and not enjoying the fireworks.  As soon as the fireworks show was over, we immediately loaded up in the car and left.

We had a 30 minute drive home, and for the first 5 minutes or so Oliver kept repeating “Boom Booms….loud…crying…letters”.  I think the poor kid was not only upset by the fireworks, but also upset he didn’t enjoy them when other people seemed to.

July 4th we had a neighborhood party.  We took the kids over early to swim,  Oliver and Jesse stayed at the party, while I ran home to feed Bella and get us changed out of our swim clothes.  And here is where parties get very unexciting for us.  One person has to sit with Bella.  Bella is immobile.  We could put her in her cart and move her around a little, but really at someone else’s house there isn’t a lot of room for a wheelchair to get around, especially when there are tons of people there.  So someone sits with Bella, at a place that is out of the way of people.  Which usually means you hang out by yourself, unless someone is nice enough to come and talk with you for a bit.

The other person constantly follows Oliver around as he explores and tries to get into things.  This means you are never in one spot for over a minute and you can not carry on a conversation with anyone, unless they are nice enough to constantly move around with you.

While the following Oliver around will obviously change as he gets older and can do things more independently, like play with the other kids, having to sit by yourself with Bella will never change.

And as much as we try to make it so she can hang out and enjoy the party, she is very set on going to bed at a certain time.  On the 4th she took a 2 hour nap during the day, and she was still falling asleep by 7:30 that night.  So we took her back home to bed, and shortly thereafter Oliver was also a wreak so we put him to bed at 8pm.  That meant someone had to hang out at home with them (thank you Grandma for sacrificing yourself!).

We did have some fireworks in the neighborhood, so when they started going off I woke Bella back up, since she loves to see bright lights.  We left Oliver sleeping, since he had such a traumatic experience the night before.

As soon as the fireworks were over I put Bella back to bed.

And that was our 4th of July celebration.