Now We Are Two...

As a friend of mine recently told me, the second birthday is the last one where you can get away with giving them an empty cardboard box as their main present and not bothering to do anything else whatsoever.

However, Theo and I are far too doting on our Precious First Born daughter to stop at a cardboard box, so we got her a few other things as well and arranged a small toddlers tea party so we could celebrate her reaching the grand old age of two.

We kept it small - toddlers can be a lot of fun, but en masse, they are exhausting. We invited a pair of twins and another little girl who are all Rosie's buddies, plus my godson, who, at just over a year old, was the most junior member of the party.

The twins were the first to arrive and Rosie was delighted to see them. Soon all three were tearing around the ground floor of our house, taking turns (impressively, there was hardly any squabbling) with the various toys dotted around and generally having a lot of fun.

The other little girl arrived soon after, but blanched when she saw Theo. Nothing personal, it turns out she has a fear of beards. Which is understandable, I mean some beards are pretty scary. Theo's is a fairly modest beard compared with many, but it's still inescapably beardy, so he did his best to stay out of her way.
We were going to wait until my godson and his parents had arrived before starting on the food, but the twins had other ideas. They managed to reach the plate of cheese sandwiches on the kitchen table and took matters, if not the sandwiches, into their own hands. We took the hint and filled their plates.

The food - which also featured some toddler corn snacks and a mixture of blueberries and raspberries - met with general approval, although a certain amount of refereeing was needed to stop the twins stealing the other two's food. The twins ate at three times the rate of the other two and regarded any morsels remaining on their neighbours' plates as fair game.

All was going smoothly, if not a bit messily, when my godson and his mum and dad arrived. Without warning, Rosie suddenly went into a tearful panic and insisted on taking refuge in the garden with Theo and point-blank refused to come in again, even with the promise of chocolate birthday cake.

It took us a short while to work out that Rosie was fearful of my godson's father - a lovely, gentle chap but very tall - Rosie would barely reach his kneecap. Despite having previously met Al quite happily, Rosie was suddenly terrified of his altitude. I think he must have been sitting down last time she saw him.

The problem was solved by Al tactfully banishing himself to the front room while Rosie stayed in the kitchen. She soon regained her equilibrium with the help of a strategically offered piece of birthday cake. I suppose the wisdom of giving chocolate banana cake covered in gooey ganache to a quartet of two year-olds is questionable at best, but our furniture survived the ordeal unstained, thanks in no small part to the swift dustpan and brush action by the twins' mum.
So, overall Rosie's birthday party can be summed up thus:

Four toddlers and a teething one year-old
Six adults
Ten balloons
One trampoline
One chocolate cake
One cupboard under the stairs (for hiding in)
Six renditions of the "Turn Around" song
Three nappy changes
Eight cups of tea (adults)
Eight straws (toddlers)
A couple of minor bumps and skirmishes
A lot of cuteness.
Happy second birthday, Rosie!