Up, up and away

I’m kind of an impulse buyer. Not for myself, but for Ladybug. If I see something I think she’ll like, I have to get it. I’ll leave to your imagination the kind of havoc I am capable of wreaking on a checkbook.

So when I walked into Party Central to buy helium balloons for her birthday this past week, you know I couldn’t walk out with the generic latex balloons I intended to buy -- not when there were giant Cinderella-carriage and Disney-princess castle balloons beckoning me.

Each balloon was almost as big as Ladybug – how cool is that? – and they would go so well with her princess-themed party. So I bought two of them … for a grand total of, gulp, $21.

But Ladybug loved them. I tied them to her high chair for her party, then moved them to her rocking chair in her room where they’re still bouncing around.

Each time Ladybug looks at them she says, “Balloon sky.” That’s because the last time she had a balloon I accidentally lost hold of the string, and the wind whipped it up and away before I could grab it. Ladybug watched in amazement as it floated over the houses and disappeared into the woods.

“Balloon sky,” Ladybug said to me again this afternoon, taking me by the hand and pulling me to her rocking chair.

“Oh, no, honey,” I replied. “Last time was an accident. I didn’t mean to send them in the sky. Plus, these cost $21.”

Yeah, I said this as if my two-year-old, who thinks empty penny wrappers go in piggy banks, understands the value of money.

But who am I to talk? I spent $21 on two balloons.