I love this age. I think the key is to keep it quite simple. My DS is now 21/2 and I've been to loads of 2nd birthday parties - some really elaborate and others quite simple. I think the most successful of them was one I went to a couple of weeks back. It had not many adults (only one parent per child) so the ratio of kids was really high. This meant it was all about the birthday girl and her friends - which was really really nice, (unlike my DS's party where we had about 40 people - with only about 7 kiddies... he ha!)

They had only two structured party games - pass the parcel with every child winning something little, and pin the tail on the donkey but without using the blindfold. Actually their game was an equivalent to pinning the tail on the donkey, it was pin the horn on Dora's unicorn.

The parents also hired a couple of pieces of indoor play equipment from a toy library (it was raining for this party so no outside activities possible), and these went down a treat. They were a little cubby and a two headed crocodile sea-saw thing.

They also hired (from the toy library) a little kiddie size table with chairs for all the kids and had it all decorated with a Dora party theme. They had loads of bubbles and balloons bouncing around the house.

The party went for three hours (10am to 1pm) so the kids spent their time playing with some of the birthday girls toys, the hired stuff, eating and playing the party games. Time seemed to fly. Was definitely one of the best we've been to for this age group.