I’d never done sparklers with my kids. Not a big huge surprise since at the time Avery was only 3 and Nolan was only 1. I decided to buy some at one of those big tents outside of my grocery store. It was the longest freaking sparkler I’d ever seen – they said it was safer for kids because the sparks didn’t get so close to their hands. And it was pink! SOLD!

We get home and head out to the pool deck to try out our new sparklers. PS – it’s 117 degrees. Seriously. Avery’s assessment? ‘Geez! It’s like 50 degrees out here!’

{Longest sparkler on Earth, right? Screams ‘SAFE!’ to me!!!}

I turn around to protect the sparkler from the wind so it would light and hand it to her. In that split second, she’d kicked off her flip-flops. This is a key element to the unraveling of the day. Remember this.

The following things all happened within LITERALLY 10 seconds.

• So Avery has a sparkler.
• It starts to drop embers.
• She keeps walking around with the sparkler. And no shoes.
• She steps on an ember. With no shoes.
• She freaks the #%&* out.
• I yell ‘WHERE ARE YOUR SHOES?!?!?!?!?!?!’
• Nolan falls in the pool.
• I pull Nolan from the pool.
• I throw the evil sparkler in pool.
• I carry both screaming children inside.

{The healing begins. For all of us.}

Oh, another fun thing about last year’s 4th of July? AJ was in bed for at least four straight days with spinal meningitis. Light and noise and basically simply being alive were excruciating to him. So he hardly wanted to discuss a sparkler incident and a near drowning. I called my mom.

Avery wanted to talk to her grandma – still sobbing. This is how she so succinctly told the story:

‘Mommy let me play with fire and Nolan drowned because she wasn’t paying attention.’

I decide to shift gears and put on a Netflix movie for the kids while I defrazzle {yes, that’s a word when you’re a mom}. Except for the fact that I couldn’t get Netflix to work because my credit card had been frozen due to suspicious activity surrounding a transaction with an explosives company. Damn sparkler. It’s ruining my life.

While I’m on the phone with the credit card company, Nolan finds his way to the {very, very light beige carpeted} stairs with a tube of bright and shiny pink lip gloss and proceeds to coat the entire first step. Avery walks over when she hears my shock. She says ‘If you’d been paying attention, this probably wouldn’t have happened.’

I can’t wait until she has two kids. I mean – I can’t wait for when she has two kids when she’s in her 30s. It doesn’t have to be anytime soon.

Happy 4th!

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