We rarely have tissue in our home. We get it once in awhile, run out, and then forget to buy any for a really long time. As a result, when anyone needs to blow their nose, chances are good that it’s toilet paper.

Because of this, we often have a roll of toilet paper sitting in the living room. Today there was maybe somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of a roll sitting on the top shelf of our bookcase. In the ONE minute that it took for me to go to the bathroom to pee, Breanna (who is getting so very tall), stretched her arm up, grabbed it, and sat down with it. Forget toys and books, one of her favorite things in all the world is ripping a piece of toilet paper into tiny pieces. Have you read Stephen King’s The Langoliers? Remember Craig Toomey? Breanna does the same thing; ideally she won’t grow up to be a jackass freak like him of course.

When I came back to the living room all the toilet paper was shredded all over the carpet. It’s like she’s a shredding machine.

A good housekeeper would have freaked out, and then picked it all up immediately. Me? I sighed an exasperated, “Oh Breanna!” And then I thought, you know, at least she’s sitting quietly in one corner, shredding and playing with her pile of paper. It’s definitely better than trying to scale the back of the couch or pulling plates off the table. So I left it there.

I may just give her toys away and buy a crate of toilet paper for her instead.

I was googling a recipe for easy granola and ended up finding Casual Kitchen. I’m really getting into all these food blogs, and this one is particularly good.

I know from my referrals that I got added to the 2000 Bloggers page. It’s kind of like Where’s Waldo though. Although I found two faces that I recognize, I never managed to find my own picture. I tried for a bit but then my eyes started crossing and I gave up for now.

Some day I must make Plain Jane’s Mother in Law’s Cream Cheese Coffee Cake. It looks and sounds delicious.

This food photography blog makes me really hungry.

Okay, I need to post something more cheerful than that last post, which by the way, had me so agitated that when I told George about it, I could do little more than sputter, “TAPE!” over and over.

So, instead of talking about that, let me tell you what I did today. Hayley went to see George’s parents this afternoon, George was working, and Breanna went down for a nap around 2:45. And rather than surfing mindlessly through the blogs that rarely update on the weekend anyway, or zoning in front of the television, I found myself suffering from Izzy Stevens Disease* and couldn’t stay out of the kitchen.

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I have always wanted to go visit Russia. I have an incredible love of Moscow and St. Petersburg and all the old European beauty. I also love the language, guttural though it may be, and I’m always up for a bowl of borscht and some Chicken Kiev.

But something I read thanks to AdventureDad makes me want to go to Russia for the sole purpose of going to a hospital to throttle the holy living hell out of some of the staff. If you like kids, this situation will likely outrage you and possibly make you cry like I did; you’ve been warned.

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I hate to perpetuate the myth of stay-at-home moms sitting around watching soaps all day, but it is also true that every day, without fail, I watch All My Children from 1 pm until 2 pm. Which is why I was so excited to find the Soap Operas website. Despite only being about 6 months old, it is a very well developed site, covering all the major soaps. If you go, you can find recaps if you (horror!) miss a day and need to know what happened. It also has a spoiler section if you can’t stand to wait and find out what’s going on, a news area with updates on the stars behind the characters, and lots of other fun tidbits.

I know I’m bookmarking it and going back regularly! If there’s any soap opera that you’re addicted to, this site is a perfect companion.

this was a sponsored post

Do Not Under Estimate the Power of an Imagination

A lack of imagination was today with Auntie “L” discussed. Something was revealed to me. Silly it is so. Dawned on me ages ago it should have. An imagination must he learn to use. How?
The hard part that is.

An advocated of hands on parenting am I. Yelling across the room will not a child teach. On his own level a child must learn. The power of imagination can be shared by those who posses it. It flows around us. Found by digging ditches in the dirt it can be.

The other important concept also so simple is. Mimicking everything you do, he does. If I read, read he does. If I play on the computer, play on the computer he wants to. If I garden, garden he will. A natural thing it is that he is excited about playing on the computer.

This is the post in actual English for anyone who couldn’t figure out what I was trying to say above.

In talking with Auntie “L” today about the Babe’s lack of imagination, I discovered something. It’s so silly; it should have dawned on me ages ago. I need to teach him to have an imagination. How, you say?

That is the hard part.

I’ve always been an advocate of hands on parenting. Instead of yelling across the room at a misbehaving child, I should get up, walk across the room and crouch down to their level to explain what he is doing wrong. She tells me I need to teach him how to have an imagination by going out back and showing him how to pretend. By digging ditches in the dirt with him, he’ll learn and understand that it’s fun to dig ditches on his own at a later time.

The other important concept that she explained to me is also so simple I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on it before. She explained that my 3-year-old wants to mimic everything I am doing. So, if I read books all day long, you’ll typically find your 3-year-old being fascinated with books. Because the hubby and I are on the computer a lot, he wants to play the computer as well. If I happened to be a gardener, then he would want his own garden ect. It’s only natural that he is interested and excited about playing on the computer.

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This post was written by Kendra over at Dramatized Reality. She has a 3-year-old son and a 5-month-old daughter of her own and currently has a 3-month-old foster son. When she’s not keeping busy with her children, she likes to play the piano, scrapbook, read and sew.

This month’s topic for The Blog Exchange was to write a post in the voice of someone famous. Can you guess who Kendra was impersonating? When you’re done guessing, head to her site to read my impersonation post too – and then check out the rest of her site while you’re there!

On Friday, George and I took the girls over to his parents’ house in the afternoon and we drove up north to my grandmother’s place. My aunt and uncle had been there for a week, packing things up in her apartment because it was being rented out for the beginning of February. They had sorted through and either thrown out anything not worth keeping or donated a lot of things to the church. They also set out anything that we had all expressed an interest in having.

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