How We Brought In the New Year

I know I haven't posted about Christmas; I have so many pictures (and still have more to get from my sis-in-law) so I'll just talk about New Years Eve first. I'm starting to wonder when we'll have a new year's eve without a child scared out of his mind. Orin has been scared of fireworks since I can remember. Last New Years Eve the people who lived across the street from Mimie (Damien's mom) thought that they could give the city of New Orleans a professional fireworks show from their front yard. Orin was up to 2am because he was so scared of the noise outside. Any time we opened the door he FREAKED! We had him watching a movie on the laptop with the head phones on to try to drown out the noise. This year he has been very attune to what is going on outside. He has been telling us every day that he is scared of fireworks. A few days ago we went for a walk. Fireworks went off in the distance every so often. I thought he would have a problem and want to go back inside but he suggested to Aunt Christina that every time they heard one go off they should say, "Who goes there?" I have no idea where that came from, but it worked. It was how he coped with it. Because of that, we had high hopes for New Years. We decided to put the headphones on him and play music to drown out the banging. One street over from my parents house usually had a lot going on so about 15 minutes until midnight we walked over. Orin was doing well and the music was really helping. Well, about 2 minutes until midnight Damien started to think it wasn't such a good idea. When midnight came, the noise would really get crazy and he was afraid he would freak. He suggested we should have stayed on the front porch or at least closer to the house so we could go inside quickly. Well, he was right. Midnight came, and so did the crying and screaming. Since Micaiah loves to copy Orin, he decided that he was deathly afraid of fireworks too. I got two quick pictures in before Damien took him back to the house. In the first one you can see Damien holding the CD player. Orin has a worried look on his face and Nina (my mom) is trying to convince him that the fireworks are very pretty and that there is nothing to be scared of. The second picture is when Orin decided that there IS something to be scare of. The third is the just a close-up of Orin's face in the second picture. Oh, well. Maybe next year! The best part of the night was when we got back home Orin fell asleep on me (that hasn't happened in a LONG time although we often take naps together). :-)