July 4, 2005 - Monday
We found a front row piece of curb right across from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History about an hour before the parade was due to start. Mercifully, Greg and Jessica told us to go in the museum for a little while, instead of having the boys just wait on the curb in the midday heat. We went right for the dinosaur exhibit, but strangely Harry seemed a bit ill at ease in the museum and I have no idea why. It may have been the size of the bones, but having been reading about Sue with such interest lately I would have thought that he would have loved. Perhaps it was just the heat.

The Nation's 4th of July parade lasted about an hour and 45 minutes and featured something like twenty marching bands from schools around the country, all of the armed services, a variety of floats and balloons, several Asian groups (must have been the outreach segment for the year), and other random (can any part of this parade really be random?) groups, like cloggers, square dancers, and local baton twirlers.



The boys really did well to hang in there for the whole parade. Certainly by the end they were pretty hot and tired. At least we had the subway ride to look forward to. Harry seemed to feel quite empowered when I let him use his fare card by himself each time. It seems to me that you just have to run with stuff like that if it somehow inspires confidence.

We kept the kids up for the fireworks; the second late night in three days, the first night being in the tent. We were too far away for there to be much noise and it just wasn't as captiviting as the last time the boys say fireworks, even though this was Washington DC and that was Groton, Massachusetts.


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