Fireworks, Thunder and Lightning Bugs

Both of my boys have a fear of fireworks, I attribute that to my idiotic neighborhood that believes from Memorial Day to Labor Day (and other special occasions like at 12:00 am on Jan. 1st and after big Monday night football wins, to celebrate Halloween and maybe after a hockey playoff game or 25!) is actually known as the best time of the year to shoot off fireworks, bottle rockets and any other type of pyrotechnic noise maker at 9pm or so on any random night of the week because well, that's the BEST time to wake up all the just fallen asleep toddlers within a 3 block radius forever scaring the bejesus out of them and in turn giving them a irrational fear of loud booming sounds for ever and ever amen. (holy run-on)

Last night, I put the boys to bed, it was a little later than usual for them.  I was cleaning up around the house and outside when for no explainable reason, I heard some shouting and BOOOM! It was loud enough to make the hair on my arms stand up, my leg hair grow and my heart skip a beat.  Less than 2 minutes later, same thing, shouting and BOOOM! Almost like that loud noise you sometimes hear at parades, I don't know if it's trucks backfiring or pyrotechnics but it's loud and it's ground shaking and to a unsuspecting child it's quite alarming.  I came inside both times to listen for the kids and no one spoke up or made a sound so I let them go.

Well, first question out of Max's mouth this morning was, "Mama!  What was that big loud noise last night?" We talked about it, I told him I wasn't sure (because I wasn't and I didn't want to tell him it was fireworks because that would further solidify his fear of them - forever dashing my dreams of watching them with my kids on the fourth of July)....  I asked if it scared him, he said no but that he covered his ears in preparation for the next one.  He's a smart one!  Then he said he fell asleep.  Then Andy chimed in with the questions, he was mostly just repeating what Max had asked but I'm certain he heard them too.  We all talked about it a bit longer then the topic was dropped and we moved on to Cheerios or something breakfast related.

Fast forward to our conversation this afternoon, I was telling them about how it's June and that means it's lightning bug season, I mentioned that we might stay up late one night to see them since I'm fairly certain that my kids have never seen lightning bugs.  They are always in bed before these bugs come out and on the rare occasion my boys would have been up during past lightning bug seasons they would have been very young and would not have really understood what they were seeing.  So then Max starts to tell me that he is afraid of lightning bugs because they are noisy (Andy is agreeing) and that maybe the loud noise we heard last night was lightning bugs.  (get it?  lighting is noisy so lightning BUGS must be too right?) So adorable.... So then Andy chimes in with how if the lightning bugs are out and it's loud and we're scared then we need "umbwewas" and we would need to hurry so we don't get wet and that it might be loud and that we really need to remember our "umbwewas" if we're going to stay up late to see these lightning bugs. And YES, he mentioned the "umbwewas" twice!  LOL

I of course assured them that lightning bugs were NOT noisy and that they were only called lightning bugs because they light up when it's dark.  I'm fairly certain they have NO clue how to comprehend that... but I sure am excited to share lightning bugs with them one evening this week!