akaiya loves balloons

i went to the dollar store yesterday with my niece mary to pick up a few things for school. right in the middle of the store they have a big display of mylar helium balloons so the first thing my niece does is start talking about how much she loves balloons and oh boy are those balloons pretty... i just smiled and nodded, i knew i was going to get the kid a balloon - i just didn't want to give it to her till we were walking out b/c her walking around the store with a balloon would be a recipe for disaster! so we get into line with our arms loaded with stuff (it's so easy to talk yourself into buying something if it's only a dollar!) and i had forgotten about the balloon. this grandmother was in front of us with her grandson, and she started asking him if he liked the balloons and ended up getting him a couple of them...so then my little friend starts staring longingly at the balloons in the middle of the store - the ones right next to us in line were not good enough i guess. so we get out of line and go browse through the ones in the middle of the store. she picks a smiley face one out for herself and a disney princess one for kaiya. she was convinced that kaiya loved pink and she just knew that disney princesses were kaiya's favorite. so now we head back to the line and the precious darling says quite loudly "hey, that guy took our spot in line!" i love 3 year olds...
we went back to my house and waited for kaiya to get home from school so mary could give her the balloon that she bought for her. kaiya came in way later while mary was supposed to be napping...the first thing she saw was the two balloons hanging out on the ceiling. her little face lit up like a christmas tree. so we brought the balloon over so she could check it out. it was funny b/c kaiya is always really tired when she gets home from school. she's on the bus for 45 minutes at least before she gets home so it's a long trip for her...not that the school is that far away, it just takes that long b/c she is the last stop. so the funny part came in when kaiya couldn't decide if she wanted to be crabby b/c she was tired or happy b/c she had a big shiny balloon. she went back and forth between getting all scrunch faced and whiney and then being a scrunch faced b/c she was smiling so big. sleep ended up winning. when she got up the first thing she played with was the balloon. and listening to her giggling made me want to giggle right along with her. she gets these deep belly laughs and i swear it's the best sound in the world...