Balloons!!! Oh the horrors!

I took the girls to baby bobcats today and they made collages (well Eloise didn't, she sat on the floor and grinned like a fool). Then they decorated cookies. Serafina HATES the sugar cookies that university catering makes and family housing uses them like a crutch. At nearly every big housing event there will be a big table with disgusting cookies and gallons of technicolor gloppy frosting for them to glom on. But anyway, Serafina obligingly decorated some cookies while Eloise ate a plain cookie but then Eloise realized that everyone else had frosting and made a lunge for the table and grabbed a big fistful of frosting to eat. I ate one of Fina's cookies. ("There's not many people here today! You can all do as many cookies as you want!") And then as the cookie grossness was winding down, the lady in charge whipped out the supplies to make BALLOON ANIMALS!!!! Small children and balloons give me panic attacks. The lady popped at least 3 balloons trying to construct the dogs for the 6 children in attendance, and then one of the little kids popped her balloon when it was done. Then there was the lady with a little baby a bit younger than Eloise who was letting her baby chew on one. And I was in the corner trying not to show that I was freaking out. And after she had made dogs for all the other kids, the lady made one for Eloise and was so proud and brought it over and gave it to her without asking me. Yeah, no. My kids don't get latex balloons until they're like 3, and even then I was threatening to take Fina's away any time it got anywhere near her face. On the walk home Fina's dog came untwisted and when I tried to fix it once we got home it popped. So I told her she could have Eloise's, because it is not like Eloise is getting it back. But instead of playing with it she is playing with other toys and then loudly sighing every few minutes and saying, "Orange dog really wishes he had a balloon friend. He doesn't know why you had to pop his pink friend." He's going to think pop.