Try to imagine a 2 ½ year old’s vision of a perfect day:  a bunch of friends, music , arts and crafts, cookies, candy, cake and balloons are all pretty good ingredients, no?

At Elmo’s 3 ½ year old birthday party (Monsters count birthdays differently than humans, natch), we were even treated to a musical performance from the real Elmo himself with his pal Leela, from Sesame Street.

Throw in a meeting with Elmo and you’ve passed happy and into the realm of completely awestruck. The only catch?  After seeing human sized Elmo impersonators for so long, try to convince the 2 ½ year old in question that the small red puppet with the man’s  hand in his tush is the ‘real’ Elmo. Though a little thrown off, my little one truly enjoyed her hug I was just hugely starstruck to meet Kevin Clash!

It was also pretty great for this mommy to get a chance to catch up with some friends : Esti Berkowitz of Prime Time Parenting and Onica Cupido of Mommy Factor, among others.

Not only were our goodie bags full of a whole bunch of great Sesame Street toys, but they included a copy of Elmo’s World: Elmo’s Favorite Things a two-hour DVD featuring 8 Elmo’s World segments (released February 7^th).

**This post was originally a guest post on themamamaven.com**