Well I was going to post about this last week, but I couldn’t decide between the timeliness of our birthdays and the timeliness of the fourth of July. In lieu of fireworks (which we don’t really like anyway because they scare the dog) Will and I watched Hamilton on the fourth of July. It was incredible and I loved seeing the original cast perform, but it wasn’t at all the same as a normal theater experience. I like being able to choose who I’m watching on stage. I feel like that’s part of the fun of the theater experience, that everyone has a slightly different view.
We watched the Hamilton teaser trailer and Julius really liked it and asked to watch it about 15 times until I told him that was enough. He doesn’t know it but he loves Lin Manuel Miranda. Julius asks to listen to the Moana soundtrack every single day from the day he first watched it months ago. Sorry I digress. After listening to the Hamilton trailer I tried to explain to Julius who Hamilton was, but that was too deep and convoluted. Instead I taught him the colors of the American flag. I am not positive he retained that information but we did lots of crafts to ingrain it in his memory.
First Julius made a “flag”. I know you might think that this is a picture of fireworks (which would have been a good idea) but this is actually the American flag as interpreted by a toddler who really just wanted to put the entire container of glitter on the flag. Ingredients were red construction paper, white puffy paint and blue glitter. I put a limited amount of blue glitter into a tiny plastic container with holes poked in the top so he couldn’t just pour the entire thing out in 5 seconds. Instead it took him about 10.
Diligently sprinkling glitter on
Standing by his work of art
Next we pick some of our white hydrangeas and did a science experiment. We used blue and red food coloring mixed with water in the first two jars. After only a couple hours the hydrangeas started becoming tinted blue and red. We also noticed the red food coloring appeared to be killing the first hydrangea. Overall though the experiment worked pretty well!
Finished experiment. Red blooms are definitely drooping.
Finally I decided to make a flag dessert for Julius as a surprise. I used whipped cream left over from my cake frosting, a piping bag and star tip and blueberries and strawberries. Ours were a bit fancier because I decorated the plates first, but of course I didn’t take a picture of that. Julius loved the dessert and now asks for all his fruit “with cream”. (We don’t always indulge him of course.)
My patriotic dessert
Mid-chew
The blueberries were not from blueberry picking – which we did the next day! Yes you read that right, we finally left our house as a family for a short period of time… Julius was a champion and kept his mask on the entire time with no complaints. What a good little man. I’m so proud of my little guy.
Hope you all had a happy fourth of July weekend!
He carried his own basket and everything!
Eating the fruits of his labor
