Helena's Second Birthday

October 6, which happened to fall on a Saturday, was Helena's second birthday. We were at first whether to have a small party that day or the following weekend, but the day of her birthday worked well for the friends we invited, so we had a small party--two friends of ours that I met through English were able to come, one of whom has 3 children, that other, one. So Helena had some friends to play with and we ate pizza and talked; I made some snacks from a Cheerios cookbook, and had an excuse to have Halloween candy, decorations, plates, etc.

I bought Helena a balloon bouquet for her birthday, and each of the kids got to take home a balloon at the end of the party. Helena LOVES balloons. She calls them "balls," and rolls the "a" in the cutest way! One of the local grocery stores gives balloons out to all of the kids who come in, which she loves, except that she also wants the ones that all of the other children in the grocery store have!! So you can imagine that the balloon bouquet was a treat. And such pretty balloons!! Because the party store didn't have weights, I bought small pumpkins to tie to the ends. Helena would drag the balloons around the house with the pumpkins clattering the whole time. I can't tell you how many times we untangled those strings!! (I noticed after the fact that we had purple, green, and gold balloons! Oh well!)

I know that it's usually customary to teach the children to blow out candles before their first birthdays (or to try, anyway), but it's not something we really thought about! So here we are, at her second birthday party, and she doesn't really know how to blow out a candle, though she does blow on hot food. She has, however, seen the birthday episode of Blue's Clues about 100 times!! But that didn't prepare her for when we brought the cake and everyone started singing.
As you can see, she was embarrassed and just tickled to be the center of so much attention!!
By the way, that's a Halloween Funfetti cake! And the little boy to her right is the friend who helped with blowing out the candles when the time came! She is fascinated with candles now, but still won't blow them out!

And here's the birthday girl! Isn't she cute?