Balloon Head

I think my baby girl is a balloon head! She celebrated her 2nd birthday this past weekend and the best part of the party (for her) was the "forest" of balloons. Twenty-four blue balloons with long spirally tails floating around the dining room. It was like the scene from "Ice Age" where the squirrel finally gets to heaven and it's paved with acorns... balloooooons! By the next day they were  down on the floor and trailing after her like puppies. Today (yes, they are still here!) they look a bit more like raisins and I think they are starting to scare her. Tonight they will magically disappear.

Her dress (from Hanna Anderson - they had a great sale a few weeks ago!) well, it looks like a Hostess cupcake! My husband decorated the cake and cupcakes to match. Yep, that's right, my husband. He made all the other food too. Of course, he waited until the morning of the party to even START cooking and then forgot to buy eggs. But if he had actually planned ahead, then he'd be perfect, and who wants a perfect husband, right? ;-)

Any perfect mommies who stumbled upon this post hoping to find great toddler party tips should back away now! I think we broke all the rules on this one. We had an evening party. All the kids were older than Lilah, and there were tons of people with no kids at all. My 11 year old was in charge of entertainment which included a frantic "treasure hunt" covering the entire house (but NOT my studio - I said "no!") and piano bashing (we recently got an out of tune piano through FreeCycle). The birthday girl, and her mom wore black, (it did have a very sweet puffball fringe!) And the color scheme had no pink at all (blue and silver with a few black penguins). The "treasure" party-favors were really cool little collectible "blind-box" toys from Kid Robot that had interchange-able body sections so the kids could actually trade parts. They are called "Critter Splitters". Then my son went around offering everyone, adults included, giant, striped chenille stems (pipe cleaners). I was surprised that many adults accepted them, and even requested certain colors, and stood stroking them as they chatted. They are very silky and fun to twist. Good for us introverted, nervous types, too. But it made for a strange scene - grown-ups (in a balloon forest) with stripey giant pipe cleaners in one hand and a beer in the other. (oh... you're not supposed to serve beer at a toddler party? oops.) Don't believe me? Here's my own dad making a tiger. Yes, it IS a tiger, he even followed the instructions on the packaging!