Happy 4th on the 5th

Last night we let Claire experience her first fireworks. We tried our best to avoid anything that would make a loud noise. Claire shys away from any loud noise that isn't made by her person. Since we would like for this to be an annual event, we chose to break her in slowly. Got that advice straight from the "How to Properly Expose Your 3-Year-Old to Explosives" handbook. 

We did put Sarah to bed first. We figured we would have enough on our hands making sure Claire didn't burst into flames. Trying to wrangle a rogue 17 month old at the same time could've proven disastrous. 

First came the sparklers.

I think that face says it all. She wasn't quite so sure about the sparklers. She was happy to hold them, but eventually the wind blew some of the embers onto her arm and that was enough to convince Claire that sparklers are for Mommy's and Daddy's to hold.

Then came the smoke bombs and boy did she love those.

They were very quiet and non-intrusive so she was happy to play with those the entire time. We would light them and Claire would run over and stand in the smoke.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Her shoes are now tinted a lovely blue from the blue and purple smoke bombs. We also tried some color fountain fireworks. We were told that they would simply emit quiet sparks of color. Wrong. They were quite loud and a few times even gave off a lovely squeeeeeeeeeel just for good measure. Fortunately Clarie handled that in stride and we were able to call our little intro into fireworks a success. 

I did, however, have to tell her to pretend that the neighbors were popping popcorn outside her window just so she'd be able to go to sleep that night. It was a little loud to say the least. And I also had to promise that in the morning we could go outside and pretend to eat all the popcorn they left on our lawn. Hey judge all you want, it worked. She fell right to sleep. And, yes, we did go "popcorn" hunting this morning!!