the Spark that Ignites our Lives

    Several years ago, I was enjoying another lovely morning out at breakfast with my Grandpa Narles. We were at Waffle House that day, and I was telling him that Michael and I were starting to talk about trying to have a baby. Without looking up from his food, Grandpa told me, "Having kids is the best thing you can ever do for yourself." He and my Grandma Re had four children total, my mom being their youngest. I thought that line was such a nice sentiment and I've never forgotten what he said. Michael and I can agree that Emma is definitely "our best thing". 

   Since I didn't write about much last year (only nine posts total), another holiday I skipped over was the 4th of July- Emma's favorite holiday!! Just like in 2019, two years later, we went back to the Red, White, and Boom event over a big lake in Clermont. They have a big walking sidewalk area with a lot of grass for people to spread out their chairs and blankets and still get a great view of the firework show. They have lots of food trucks, but in 2021 we didn't get anything to eat while we were there.

   Most of these night time pictures were taken on Michael's phone because my iPhone SE takes blurry photos in low lighting, and his are so beautiful and crispy!! He has a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. Case in point: the following photo where Emma's head is mostly covering my face was taken on my iPhone, but the next photo, without her glasses and my full face, is the Samsung. Also the nice photo above this paragraph, of just me, is also from his phone. :)

   Right as we were almost back to the car, nearly right after I took this picture, something unexpectedly scary happened. Maybe Michael accidentally hit a bump in the curb, but the filter on the side of her ventilator came loose. That is the other part where the tubing is attached that loops around to give her breaths. I didn't even hear the disconnection alarm beeping it because of people cheering and hollering as more colorful fireworks continued to explode in the air. But I heard Michael yell, "Rachel, get her!" I looked down and saw that Emma was slumped over to the side of the wagon. I thought she was being silly at first, because on walks she loves when we go over bumps and she'll dramatically sway from side to side while laughing, but when I grabbed her she was limp. I went in to quick panic mode! I don't know why the sudden lack of ventilator support caused Emma to pass out because she had been sprinting (breathing regular air on her own through the trach) at home frequently, so she was used to being off the vent. Michael got everything hooked back in and quickly turned up the oxygen. Emma raised her head again and blinked a few times, as if to say, "Where was I?" 

  Michael thinks it was because she was overheated and a lot was going on. We got her back into the car as usual, and during our drive home, Michael asked me every two minutes if Emma was doing okay. She was. I didn't stop watching her. She seemed totally fine and happy as if nothing has happened. We kept her oxygen up to a liter until we got home just in case.

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   This year for the 4th of July, we were almost going to do nothing, but I am the type of person who can't do nothing on a holiday. We have to celebrate and do something! My friend Carly, who I met in college at Full Sail University, and who I had been texting with and talking to a lot over the past several months, asked if I was going to do a photo shoot with Emma. I told her no, since all of our decorations were in storage. Plus, of course, everything was sold out at Target by July 4th. I was very happy to be able to still find a decent size pack of fireworks for 13 bucks there. And I remembered which store I can always count on to save the last-minute "decoration day". Dollar Tree!! They still had lots of stuff, but I only needed two things to get cute pictures. Three, if you count Emma, but she is worth ninety-two zillion times more than $1.25, plus tax.

   Emma cried at first when we stood her up there, balancing against the wall, since she doesn't like wearing her KAFO leg braces too much. But Michael turned on Madonna's Vogue song and we started dancing and singing, cheering her on, telling Emma how good she looked. She quickly got into it.

Giving me a sweet kissy!

   I had looked up some places for us to go to watch fireworks, but since Michael had to work the next day, he said he would prefer to find an open area close by and just do them ourselves. That's when I bought the small box. There was a good open parking lot across the street that we used, and I was surprised nobody else was out in our apartment complex, even doing the small ones like we had. Or that we didn't get any emails from the complex telling us not to shoot off fireworks and set the palm trees on fire! Haha. Two years ago, towards the beginning of Covid, we did a small box at the end of our driveway too.. Oh good, I did post about that one. << It's a big summer summary post, written in September 2020, so you have to scroll a little bit to get to those fireworks pictures.

Letting Emma pick which firework Daddy set off next. :)

   We did a box of Pop-Its last. I was surprised how well Emma did since I didn't know if she would be able to throw them hard enough to hit the ground at the right speed to snap, especially since she was sitting on the curb. She kept throwing them right at my feet and laughing! What a stinker! I'm glad she had so much fun. I made sure to pick up all the wrappers before we left. We were also able to see some big fireworks coming from somewhere across the street in both directions, which was nice.

   Don't think I would end this post without first sharing a couple pictures of Grandpa Narles! :)