Dear Addie,
It is Summer, and our town will be bustling with street festivals almost every weekend from now until Christmas, I promise you! It's a time for rest, relaxation, and good ole fashion, family fun. Families will fill their days walking around enjoying art & music, finding refuge from the southern heat with ice-cold snow cones (or a cold beer), and tossing any calorie counting out the window, eating meals from various delicious food trucks. Ah, yes, Summer. It all sounds so simple & blissful, and this week was none other than the Pimento Cheese Festival - Yeah, you had me at cheese; just saying.
Addie, anyone who knows you knows that you really do want to be part of all the action, as do we, but it just comes with a fair share of prep work and a bit of rolling with some serious punches on unpredictability. Leaving the creature comforts of our home is walking directly into a battlefield of sensory assaults, and we never quite know what we will get. It is a hope for the best, but always be ready for any situation. In recent years festivals for us often look like a divide and conquer where one parent stays back with you, and then we switch at some point because sending you into an anxious meltdown is never the goal in our fun summer plans, so it just seemed best for all involved. Fast forward to the present, and we have seen some fantastic growth in your tolerance and coping, leaving us to think maybe, just maybe this party of five was ready to enjoy all the cheese our town had to offer together.
Exposure is key cheese edition – Let’s do this!
Now as much as I would like to say we all went together from the get-go that did not happen. Big brother Gabe had a prior commitment, so he and I met the rest of y’all in town shortly after you had arrived.
Not going to lie, it was hot, loud, and busy, but you were rocking right through it all! When Gabe and I arrived, we met up with y’all, walked around for a bit, and then decided to eat lunch as we ventured to the food truck lines. Now you were already sweaty and flushed, so standing still in line with no breeze was hardly your idea of a good time, and you indicated as such with what I like to call your pterodactyl cry as to show your displeasure for the current situation. Taking that as our cue to find a piece of calm in all this, you and I found a shady spot beneath a tree to wait for the rest of our crew.
After a little rest and a cold drink, you were back to yourself, and we decided that we may have hit our max on exposure for the day, so we walked back through town to head home - all without incident.
Addie, this past weekend we did our first summer festival of the year as a party of five! It was packed full of traditionally challenging things for you, and you rocked right through it all – I mean, we are not exactly ready to take a flight to Hawaii anytime soon, but we are seeing great progress and are all so proud of you!
Keep it up, baby girl! We'll get to Hawaii one day ;) But
first, cheese.
Great job.
Love,
Mom
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