July the Fourth

Most of the time we celebrate Independence Day with our neighbors up the hill. This year I think I probably enjoyed myself more than ever. The Banana was out of state with Grandma Kathy, and the Devious Snail was working, but YaYa came home for the day, so we brought her, Mr. TOF and Peanut Maximus over to the neighbor’s. All three of our neighbors’ young adult/teenagers were there, along with a cousin and Aunt, and all the teenagers together were just in a hilarious mood, cracking jokes at every turn, and making me laugh so very hard.

We cooked food, sat around the table and played in the yard. Peanut Maximus loves their playset, of course, and he also had fun just running around the space. There was always a teenager of one sort or another willing to follow him around, for the most part. In fact, they had fun feeding the monster, and gave him many, many slices of water melon. I’m not sure how that much watermelon even fit into his little body.

There were also highly entertaining lawn games, with lots of banter back and forth. Peanut Maximus would run in and turn things upside down by stealing a few beanbags or moving them on or off the scoring board, which kind of became part of the game (like Uno flip, but a lawn game). The opposing team would sometimes bribe him to the other side with a cookie of one sort or another, and sometimes he’d just sit down right on the score board, a toddler imposed time out. The whole thing just made my heart happy. The interactions were all so good humored and inclusive of a little person lost in a sea of “big friends.” He ate up all the attention.

Hours past his bedtime I finally packed him up in the stroller and wheeled him (screaming . . . an epic toddler meltdown) home to go to bed. Dr. Peds had to work, but the others all headed to see the fireworks.