Annie's 2nd Birthday Party

Annie turned 2 a few weekends ago and a birthday celebration was in order at our house.  Per usual, I’m behind blogging about it but better late than never.  The birthday planning was a lot more-low key this year around; the fact that I’m tired at 8+ months pregnant as well as knowing that her lack of awareness of her birthday meant I could get away with a little less this year helped to  keep it low-key.  Even though it was ‘low-key’ I would say she had a pretty nice party still.

Invites

At daycare, they celebrate birthdays in her room so we started off the birthday celebration with bringing in a cookie cake for her to share with her friends that Friday.  Most all of her class has birthdays in March so it seemed like they’d been having cupcakes several times a week lately so I wanted to find a different idea and the cookie cake ended up being a hit with her friends.  The cookie cake was so delicious that it’s an idea that will be resurfacing in future years for sure.

    

Cookie cake, how many times can you tell a toddler not to touch it?  Too many. 

Awe, 2 dozen flowers from Daddy for turning 2! 

Annie has always been completely obsessed with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, has shown really little to no interest in any other characters.  So it seemed like a no-brainer to have a Minnie themed party.  Of course, the week leading up to her birthday she found a real interest in Dora the Explorer and seemed a little more obsessed with Dora than Mickey that week.  Which don’t get me wrong, I was happy about having a break from Mickey for a change but was hopeful she would still love her all Minnie themed party I had already planned.  Well Saturday morning she woke up and wanted to watch Dora.  I had bought her a Minnie dress a few weeks back especially for her birthday, I held it up to her and said “Annie, look it’s Minnie!” and I went to put her in it and she didn’t cry or scream but she ripped it from my hand and threw it to the ground.  I thought to myself, oh here we go….  So I picked it back up and pointed to Minnie on the dress as excitedly as I could, and again, she ripped it from my hands, threw it on the ground and continued to watch Dora.  At that point, I held her down while she screamed, kicked and fought me to get the dress on.  Oh Annie!  Any other day she would LOVE to wear Minnie but of course that day was a fight.  After I successfully got it on her, she pulled at the neck of it for the next hour, disgusted I was making her wear her favorite character.  I guess it wouldn’t be day for Annie without some drama, right?!

I had sent Aaron out that morning to pick up a balloon I had ordered.  I failed to tell him that it was a 4 foot tall Minnie balloon and he apparently about lost it on the cashier when he saw it; he came home grumbling about my choice to go so over the top with a life size Minnie, demanding to know how much I spent on it.  As if it mattered at that point anyways.  I wasn’t sure how Annie would react to it but of course she was completely terrified of it and crying hysterically.  We had to put Minnie in the corner of the living room and I had to show her that it wasn’t going to sneak up and get her.  My best efforts for a special Minnie party were striking out thus far.

Minnie, I must admit you did get creepy as the week wore on 

The guests arrived, both sets of Grandparents and Annie’s cousins.  I let them play for a while but I knew I had to keep on schedule because Annie’s naps are non-negotiable.  Generally, I don’t like to start with gifts but it made the most sense to do so at the beginning of the party rather getting her all excited about new toys before her nap.  Luckily, Annie pulled out of her Mickey funk and is back to loving it because most all of the gift ideas I gave everyone were Mickey Mouse themed.  On Annie’s birthday list this year were items such as play baby set, bubble mower, swimwear, beach towel, pajamas, and books.  I already knew she was getting an Amazon Kindle, which she is in love with electronics so I was happy she now has her own and leaves my phone alone.  I had no idea what Aaron and I were going to get her, we had just bought her a new bed which I know isn’t really an exciting gift but it is a darn nice bed so I decided not to go too spendy on a birthday gift.  I found a V-Tech digital kid camera that is normally $50 on sale for $28!  Perfect and she loves it!  Really all of her gifts were perfect and she got a good variety.  I tried to let all her cousins help with gift opening to make it fun for them to be involved too but it was a little chaotic with them all wanting to help open the gifts at the same time so I didn’t really get much for good pictures but Annie enjoyed it and didn’t mind one bit that her cousins helped her out.

New shades for the summer

After gift opening, we had pizzas ordered, again trying to keep the party easy and it’s one of Annie’s favorite foods so we had pizza for the win!

I had a few activities for the kids planned but only ended up doing a few of them.  We did some press on tattoos and did blow up the punching balloons that served as party favors to take home but otherwise we didn’t get to the Mickey coloring pages I had printed out or the bubbles or the silly string, which probably was just as well.  Less to clean up after!   After I put Annie’s tattoo on, she started scratching at it as if she was trying to get it off and I thought oh great, now she’s going to scream and I’m going to have to scrub this off but she actually seemed to like it and ended up thinking it was pretty cool. Wheew, probably helped that she saw her cousins enjoying theirs. 

I could tell Annie was wearing down so although everyone wasn’t done eating pizza, I knew we had to get cake in front of her or she was going to fall asleep.  She perked up and loved having her cousins surrounding her singing Happy Birthday; it really was very sweet to watch them.  I made a huge mistake of making a smash cake and cupcakes for the party.  Why was this a mistake?  Too much work!  I wish I would have just ordered everything, 8 months pregnant and the day before I spent my entire morning making a cake, cupcakes, decorating and doing dishes and it wore me out.  And I honestly didn’t think my confetti cupcakes was that great so it was disappointing to go to all that work for bland tasting cupcakes.  And in true Annie fashion, she wanted nothing to do with her smash cake and the entire thing ended up in the trash, practically untouched and she ended up with a cupcake in which she licked the frosting off the top and was done with it.

Cupcakes 

My best attempt at making Annie a smash cake

Surrounded by cousins singing to her

In the end, I was able to incorporate a phone call from the one and only Dora just for Annie.  Aaron found this cool free deal where you can pick a Nick Jr character to call you on a specific day and you can custom tailor a phone call just for the special birthday kiddo!  So of course we had Dora call Annie and to my surprise she giggled and I think she understood that it was Dora talking to her on the phone.  I put it on speaker for all to hear and the kids got a kick out of it.  Check out how you can get your favorite kid's character to make a special call for them on their birthday at:  http://www.nickjrbirthdayclub.com/

Annie was wiped out, had too much fun and was asleep within minutes.  It really ended up being a good party despite the bumpy start to our morning.  All in all, I think Annie had a really good birthday party.  She may not have understood what a birthday is yet, that she is 2 and that everyone came to celebrate her but she had a blast playing with her cousins.   Hard to believe that we had a 2 year old and no longer are the days of saying she is ‘X’ months old, we have now entered the 2 then 2 ½ then 3 and so forth!