Mango's 2nd Birthday

Watching Mango on her 2nd birthday was so fun.  She didn't really know what birthdays were yet, just that her sisters had been singing her a song for the past week.  Birthdays are a huge deal around here and Strawberry and Apple were doing their best to make sure Mango knew how special she was on her big day.  It was sweet.

Mango is definitely a girly girl.  She always wants to wear dresses and try on shoes and carry purses and put on lipstick and get her hair done.  So she was pretty dang excited that I let her go all out.  She especially loved the hair flowers.  She's so funny about girly things.  We were in a bookstore one day and she kept running up and grabbing all the books that had a pink cover with a ballerina or a princess or a fairy on them.  She would only put them down if she found a bigger one with more frills.  She loves being called a princess.  But most of the time she refers to herself as "baby" and gets mad if we call her a big girl.  :)

She was bewildered by the birthday candles.  She kept staring at them worriedly and we kept encouraging her to blow them out, but she would just make little puffs from a distance.  We finally got her close enough to blow out one candle and she looked like she was ready to cry.  It took her another minute or two to get the second one out, and still looked like she did something terrible wrong.  It was so sweet.

She was also really timid about opening the presents.  She finally figured it out, but then would sit there enjoying her new gift.  I love that about this age.  They actually enjoy each toy instead of tossing it to the side for the next one.  Unfortunately, she has two big sisters that were really excited to see what was next so they did the tossing aside for her.

She loved all of her new gifts with one big exception.  We got this little hoppity-horse thing and she was terrified of it.  It was so funny.  She kept saying "Scary! Scary! Scary! Scary!" and wouldn't go near it.  She'd run to the other side of the room and just stare at it, just waiting for it to jump up and pounce on her.  I thought she'd be more scared of the porcupine puppet.  We finally got her to bounce on it by having one of her sisters sit on it with her, but as soon as they gave the slightest hint that they would be sneaking off, she would dive off and run to the other side of the room.  This thing got great reviews online and none of them said that kids thought it was terrifying.  It was so funny.

A couple days after her birthday, she got a little Baby Alive from my family.  It would "eat" bananas and "drink" juice and talk.  Mango thought it was the most fascinating thing she had ever seen.  She was so intense while she was playing with it.  The older girls thought it was pretty cool too and had to find out how it worked.

It was a really fun day.  We didn't throw a party for her because she isn't the most social little thing, especially with kids her own age.  She loves older kids, but toddlers stress her out.  Maybe next year.  :)