Sasha's First Fourth

Sasha's first Independence Day as a US citizen was a total success! She hasn't quite embraced fireworks as the intensely spiritual experience that the rest of us know them to be, but we'll give her time. On the up-side, she didn't cry all of the way through the fireworks like she did at Summerfest so we are very optimistic about her future fireworks acclimatization.

This year we attended the vaulted Stadium of Fire rather than orchestrating our own show. Speaking as an overwhelmed Mommy, it was kind of nice to have someone else plan my fireworks display for me, although I did miss the thrill of my children narrowly missing third degree burns at every turn. Plus they had light-up cups for purchase at the Stadium, and I've never seen those at our home concession stand.

Plus this year's Stadium of Fire featured the one and only Jonas Brothers. Before Saturday my exposure to the Jonas Brothers consisted solely of Camp Rock music videos aired on TV in Kazakhstan between Hannah Montana episodes. I greedily devoured this daily hour of mind-numbing tween-TV because it was in English, sweet sweet English. Trust me, if you spent days on end talking to your Russian-speaking toddler daughter and watching Soviet claymation, you would weep with joy at discovering the Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana on TV, too.

As you can see, Sasha was enamored with the Jonas Brothers show. The rest of us may have been a little less enthused, but it was a genuinely enjoyable show as long as the girls behind and next to us managed to keep their ear-piercing squealing to a minimum. I know, I know, this is my probable future, but man were those girls loud!

And then came the fireworks! Sasha was satisfied with merely hiding her eyes and occasionally peaking through the cracks for the first part of the show, but eventually it all got to be too much for her and even the safety of her peek-a-boo hands wasn't enough. Fortunately Mom and Dad were thinking and brought a blanket to swaddle Sasha (it didn't go to our heads, though, since we also lost Ben for about half an hour in the 40,000-person crowd, thus negating any parent points we had scored by bringing a blanket for Sasha). As long as that blanket was over her head, she was totally calm and fine - no tears, no fear! I peaked in on her a couple of times throughout the show and as soon as I cracked that blanket her chubby little fist shot up and yanked it back over her head, so that was as much confirmation as I needed that she wanted the blanket right where it was. And as soon as the fireworks were over, she popped right out of her covering and cheered along with the other 40,000 of us, just like she actually enjoyed the show. She's a quick recoverer, this daughter of ours!

As always, it was a wonderful fireworks display and a great way to celebrate our Independence Day. We're so proud of our newest citizen and thrilled to share another new holiday with our baby girl. Happy first Fourth, Sasha!