4th of July

Yesterday we all enjoyed Lydia's first 4th of July together. I was nervous about her reactions to the heat, fire truck sirens, fireworks and staying up past her bedtime but she did wonderfully! I think that the 4th of July may be my favorite holiday - there is just something about a summertime celebration that makes my heart happy. 

We all woke up rested yesterday morning. Lydia has been teething and in a lot of pain so David had given her some Tylenol on Tuesday night and it helped her to sleep from 9:30 to 6! I felt like a new person after 7 uninterrupted hours of sleep. We started the day with a delicious brunch with my side of our family: frittata, waffles, cinnamon rolls and fruit. Then at noon we walked a few blocks to the parade. 

The only times in my whole life that I have missed this parade were when I was in Chile and when I was at Cornell, so we decided we would start Lydia on the tradition early too. She did great at the parade and just loved looking at all of the people, trucks and floats. She sat in her stroller for the ride up and back, and even hung out a while during the parade when the sun really started to shine. She tried her first popsicle since it was so, so hot and I scored lots of Goetz's caramels!

She was such an amazing baby at the parade. It really made me so proud of her that she went with the flow and wasn't scared of anything. We are very blessed to have an easy, happy baby.

After the parade Lydia got a big serving of yogurt with oatmeal and then a much needed bath at Nana and Papa's. Then we all came back home and took a long nap in our cool, dark basement apartment. It was perfect.

Around dinner time we headed to David's mom's house for a cookout and then continued another long tradition of watching fireworks in a park that was one block away. Again Lydia impressed us all by being awesome and interested.

We left the fireworks and decided to just walk back to our place since our car was blocked in at David's mom's and we were only a few blocks from home. Lydia fell asleep on the way after a long, wonderful day of 4th of July festivities!