An overuse of paper goods

We've been going through an awful lot of tissues around here, and believe it or not, it's not so much because of Julia's current cold, but instead because of the sudden popularity of tissues in imaginary play. For Madeleine, this has meant pretending to use the tissues as she sees Julia use them; she made a game of taking a tissue out of the box and either putting it to her own face or holding it out to Julia, saying "Hee go!", then toddling off to the garbage to dispose of the (not really used) tissue. Afterwards she would head back over to the tissue box to pull the next one out and start the routine all over. Now, I'm loving the fact that she has learned to pick up after herself, disposing of a tissue after using it, but I'm not necessarily wild about throwing away tissues which didn't actually get used to wipe a runny nose.

Julia, on the other hand, decided to use a bunch of tissues in her My Little Pony game this afternoon:



They're all sisters, so each of her dozen or so ponies had to lay down with a blanket and go to sleep at the end of the game. BTW, I got to play this game along with Julia. I know you're jealous. I had to use a different voice for each of my three ponies, and I had to actually hold the pony who was speaking and move it around or Julia was not satisfied. Neither was she satisfied with my voice for one of the ponies, whose country twang must have sounded too much like one of the other ponies (who appears on Julia's favorite My Little Pony movie, but whose plastic toy equivalent we do not have.) The ponies weren't the only ones who were worn out by the time they laid down under tissues to go to sleep.

Finally, while this did not require a bunch of tissues, we definitely wound up using a fair number of paper towels and fresh wipes last night cleaning up our little chili-eating toddler. I had the foresight to take her pretty church dress off before sitting her down to dinner, but I didn't expect her to be shaking her head - and fork - around vigorously during dinner, with a few breaks to play "Where's Madeleine?" by hiding her eyes with both of her chili-covered hands...