tears, a parade, and sparklers

yesterday was a long and fun one. madelyn got off to a rocky start, but seemed to do better after her nap. she spent most of the morning crying. we went to babies-r-us to try out the double strollers again. and she started to melt down from the second we put mason's carrier into the cart. she was crying because she wanted to sit in the cart. once we got into the store we put her up in the main basket of the cart and had a moment of peace. then we asked her to sit in one of the strollers and she started to cry because she didn't want to. when her fit wouldn't end matt started to carry her outside, but then she said that she wanted to sit in the stroller. once we got her in the stroller she started crying because she didn't want to get out. and it just kept going that way. she has never had a melt down like this in public before and i was glad that we were the only people in the store. i am pretty sure that she was just tired from staying up later than normal the night before. or maybe she was just having a bad day.

after that morning display of ugliness we probably should have just skipped the local 4th of july parade, but madelyn loves a parade and i wanted to at least give it a try. we could always leave, right? it was such a nice morning out and we got to walk through the farmer's market on our way to the parade route. we went stollerless and it was nice to not have to fight the crowd with one. mason slept through the whole thing in my moby wrap. although i did have to cover his ears a few different times because the bands were too loud and made him squirm with discomfort.

as i expected, madelyn was in heaven watching the parade! she was an angel too. she is funny because she dances as the band is coming, but once they are in front of her she just stands and stares at the marching. she called out "hi" to everyone that went by - "hi, kids!", "hi, people!", "hi, man!", etc. and was super excited when someone gave her a flag to wave! she had been asking us for one after seeing some other kids waving flags, so it was really nice that someone walked by handing them out. and the people in front of us kept making their son share the candy thrown by the floats with madelyn. i felt bad for him because madelyn could care less about getting any candy, although she really did enjoy eating one of the lollipops while she danced.

the parade lasted about an hour and had a few different fly overs before it got started. i was surprised that it was so long but madelyn never lost interest and stood almost the entire time too. after the parade we headed home to eat some lunch and put madelyn down for a nap. as i mentioned at the beginning of the post, madelyn was in a much better mood after her nap. she let herself downstairs to help daddy with his chores outside. her favorite job? poop spotting. matt was ridding the yard of dog poop and madelyn was so excited to have helped him find the "dog poopie". she told me all about it as we were heading down to one of our neighbor's house for some dinner.

madelyn had a lot of fun playing with her friends - and managed to get two long scratches on the left side of her face - for a few hours before we went to another neighbor's house for sparklers.

as many of you know, i grew up in south florida and i know a few things about mosquitoes, but i have never seen them swarm so much outside of a swampy area! we were being bit all over by them and there were so many! i couldn't believe it! i don't think i have seen a single mosquito all year and then there were an overwhelming amount last night. not even the sparkler smoke would get rid of them. i stayed long enough to watch madelyn with the sparklers, but then i took mason home to get away from the bugs.

madelyn stood perfectly still while her sparkler was lit and stared at the spark/flame. she did try to touch it a few times, but thankfully there were not any sparkler related injuries. there were a lot of little kids (like 8 under the age of 4) running around with the sparklers so i was really surprised that there weren't any injuries.

all in all it was a wonderful way to spend the 4th and we are lucky to have such wonderful neighbors to have fun with. love.