Fireworks and Fun for the Fourth

Evie's second Fourth of July was filled with lots of fun and fireworks.  Thursday, our friends Cristaldawn and Matthew drove up from Memphis and stayed through the weekend.  We had homemade barbecue and cole slaw (with homemade barbecue sauce), beans, potato salad, and buns.  Evie ate a little of everything but the cole slaw.  She loves baked beans and did a good job with the barbecue too.  After dinner we drove to the Providence center where they were supposed to have a fireworks show but it had been raining and they postponed it until Friday.  So we went home and did our own fireworks since they are legal in Mt. Juliet.  Evie and I just sat on the porch on our new (to us) porch swing, which came from Pappaw and Memmaw's house, and watched the amateur display.  Our neighbors across the street must have spent a pretty penny because theirs were quite impressive, and Evie enjoyed watching all the colors and didn't get scared by the noise, for which I was very grateful.

Friday, we gave the drop-in daycare another go so that the four of us adults coud go see a movie.  Evie did really well, until the fireworks started and the other kids started crying.  Then, because they were crying, she started crying.  The fireworks had only been going on for a few minutes by the time we got there to pick her up, so she calmed down quickly once we got there.  We watched the big fireworks show until she lost interest and started getting fussy (it was bedtime after all) and then we headed home.

Saturday and Sunday we just hung out.  Matt and Cristal loved playing with Evie and she enjoyed them.  They were a big help to us all weekend, keeping Evie entertained and watching her if we needed to leave the room for any reason.

 

Here we are at Chuy's.  Matt's a pro.

 

Evie's pretending to turn on the TV with "her" remote (the broken, battery-less one)

Lots of new developments in the world of Evie this week.  First off, we had to pull out her 18 month clothes because her head is too big for some of her shirts to go over it (big brains!).  She stood by herself a couple of times this week.  She is still not wanting to let go of even one hand when we are practicing walking, but she is making progress by standing without support.  Her "thank you" is becoming more and more phonetically correct.  It now sounds more like "taint tu"; pretty good!

When we read books to her we often point to the pictures and name the objects on the page.  Well, her new thing is, if we don't start pointing, she will grab our forefingers and move our hands so that the finger points to part of the picture.  Recently, her favorite book is Baby Be Kind and it has only three characters: a boy, a girl, and a dog.  If we are not pointing and we ask her where the doggie is, she will move our finger to the doggie, pretty reliably.  It's really neat.

Her other new thing is looking at you sideways.  She will tilt her whole upper body so that her head is at 90 degrees and look at you with a grin.  I tried to get it on video here:

 

She's getting to be so much fun and it is such a delight to watch her grow!