FIREWORKS!!! ... or not

      Monday was Independence Day, so we decided to go to a barbecue/fireworks with friends. It was very fun. Good food, good friends, lots of conversation and laughing, and there was even a little toddler very close to Jessica's age, that she was able to play with. However, I wasn't exactly worried about the barbecue part. I was pretty sure that would be fun. No, I was worried about the fireworks. Jessica has a tendency to get very scared with loud noises, but I thought she might be okay if I held her, and if we could show her the pretty lights that come with.
     Much to our host's dismay (he's a fireworks fanatic), we started while it was still light, and barely spitting rain. (just a drop here and there). But we started with the parachuter fireworks. Yeah, that was a bad omen. Jessica freaked out every time they popped. Even after she saw that the parachuters came down, and she was holding on to one. We then moved on to the fountain/flower type of fireworks, and even the spinning flowers scared her. They weren't extremely loud at all, but they were too much for her. The interesting thing was, there were arials going off all around the neighborhood, and they didn't seem to scare her as much as the fountains as I pointed out the "sparkles" in the sky. But we had to leave as it was getting dark because Jessica was just getting too scared too often with the fireworks. I'm thinking we're going to get to start REALLY slow with her if we want to have fireworks at all. Maybe start with things like sparklers, smoke bombs, and the snakes, that don't have any sound really, but are fun to watch. Then maybe we can move up to the ones that do make noise like fountains and flowers (but don't make loud noises), and then maybe we can take her to see some of the shows.  But for now, we'll content ourselves with having fun at barbecues, and going home before fireworks.