Derby Days

Last Thursday we went to the Kentucky Derby Pegasus Parade. The derby is a BIG DEAL around here! I wasn't sure how Rebekah would react to the parade since it was her first one and I was a little nervous. From the time I was a baby I went to parades all throughout the year to see my Papa march in them. It was always a fun family day, but I also remember the chaos of the parades too. It's loud, there are a lot of people, and you never know if the clowns walking by are going to stop and try to get you to talk to them. Sam doesn't care much for parades and I love them, maybe it's just the nostalgia, but something about them makes me happy!

Well, all of my fears about Rebekah hating parades were crushed last week. The girl had a ball! I felt such relief when I was holding her and she began dancing to the music of the bands walking by. You see, when her 9 week stay at the hospital was over and she came home with us she was still dealing with the side effects that the prenatal exposure to drugs had on her body's nervous system. She was easily overstimulated and it didn't take much to get her wound up and it would take a long time for her to be calmed (i.e. stop crying). The way she would deal with extreme overstimulation was by sleeping. When she would come back from seeing her birth parents (who typically wouldn't give her a nap all day from the time she was just 5 months old) she would scream for a few blocks and then go into a deep sleep for the rest of the ride home and sometimes hours after that. She would get too much stimulation from the lights in a room being on for too long, music in the car, and just having too many people in a room talking at once. So, loud noises were definitely out of the question! But God, in His faithfulness, has seen fit to continue to grant Rebekah His healing mercy and grace! My little girl didn't have a single side effect from going to the parade with over 275,000 other people! She loved the music that was blaring from the floats and cars driving by, and she came home that night and had a great nights sleep, a normal sleep. We still see some tremors from time to time, and those may never go away, but the Lord used that parade to show me that He is still in the business of healing people and I praise God for His continued goodness to Rebekah!

Okay, on to the pictures:

The parade took about 30 minutes after the start time to get to us so we had to get creative in entertaining the girls (i.e. giving them handfuls of colored goldfish). Here's the Crosby clan:

Here's Laurel (she's always good for entertainment):

Riley and Libby:

Libby had a bit of a meltdown. The sidewalks were so crowded that we didn't want the girls to get down and walk around and not everyone agreed with that parental decision.

Adults dressed in costumes = entertainment for me! I am always intrigued by people who dress up in costume in public. The man of the left was promoting a medieval times restaurant. The people on the right were dressed up to support the parade? The theme was "super heroes" but these folks weren't even in the parade.

Then the parade started. There were lots of horses, of course!

The volunteers holding the balloons were part of the reason that the parade took so long to get to us. Every block or so they would stop and run in a circle to spin the balloon. It was pretty cool and semi worth the wait!

The moment I captured in this picture is when I started to feel like we were in the all clear with Rebekah.

She totally rocked out to the University of Louisville's marching band!

These guys would roller skate backwards, dance, and one guy even did a back flip on skates! I could never do that, even in my best roller blading days (which Sam still LOVES to make fun of me for).

While Rebekah was on Sam's shoulders she started running her fingers through his hair. It was so funny because by the time she was done his hair looked like he'd styled it in the "my hair is messy on purpose" way. I love that he lets her do stuff like that but, if you know Sam, you know it didn't stay that way long!

One little girl sitting in front of us had a bubble machine that was being sold from a street vendor and thanks to Laurel grabbing the camera we got these shots. Thanks Lar!

You could tell that Rebekah noticed that people on the floats were waiving and thought she should waive back but was unsure.

*******Side note: I had to put two clips in her hair because it was a bit windy and a few pieces of her hair were "trimmed" by one of her friends one day. The girl got so excited! She loves it when she sees other little girls who have 5 million clips or bows in their hair. She will immediately start talking about the clips and pointing, none of which is done quietly. If she can get down and away from me she heads straight for girl and wants to touch all of her clips and has even tried to take them out and put them in her hair.  This has led to many discussions on how it's never okay to touch someone without their permission and it's certainly never okay to take something from someone's hair and put it in her own (read FEAR OF LICE!).*******

Once Rebekah saw Laurel waiving back to the folks in the parade she decided that it was okay too!

The girl waived for at least 20-30 minutes.

She waived to the firetruck, she waived to the miniature horses,

she even waived to Kate Gosselin. 

It was a GOOD DAY!

She's got skills - taking a picture with an Elmo easter egg while holding a cracker in her mouth just right so she doesn't choke on it or drop it!

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Saturday, the day of the races, was declared a Crosby family holiday (by me). We stayed home, planted our vegetable garden in the raised bed that Sam made, watched some horse racing coverage, and that afternoon we went to the big park in our neighborhood to let Rebekah get some energy out. The Derby race was set to start in 45 minutes and we thought we would have plenty of time to walk to the park, play, and walk home in time to see the race. Well, I started talking to a woman who was there with her 2 girls and the next thing we knew it was past our set time to leave. At first we thought we could book it and make it home in time but we quickly realized that we were wrong. I think we walked in the door just as the race had finished!

The best/worse thing about living in the town where the Derby is held is that it is played on TV, again and again, for at least 3 days after the race. So, Rebekah pushed her highchair from the dining room to the TV, getting it as close as she could, and said, "Eat! Watch horses! Eat!".  The girl cracks me up!

This may have been the best Derby weekend I've had in the almost 7 years that we've lived here!

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Finally, I wanted to share this picture with you:

This is the picture that our friend's daughter, Anna, drew of/for Rebekah. I took the picture thinking that she would probably leave it in the car when we got home but she didn't. She asked about the picture the second she woke each morning and carried it around throughout each day for about a week. She would show me the picture and say, "cully pitchy of Egeka ah Anna!". For those of you who don't speak Rebekah language it means "colored picture of Rebekah from Anna!" She even tried to take it in the bath one night.

Two year olds are fun and I especially love my wild one!