As a work at home mom, I often feel like I am going in 20 directions at any given time.  Add in extended family and you really think your life is a circus.  My kids are only 4 and 1 so I can only imagine how much worse this gets.  Qlubb is one of those organizing sites that allow you to not feel that your life is a circus.  You can use this as your own personal orgaziner, family organizer, playgroups organizer, school, organizer, or even a community organizer!  There are even sign up sheets you can use — I can definitely see this coming in handy for your next family reunion.  It is just as easy to add tasks as it is to add pictures.  The majority of the things you want this to do is on the main page which makes nagivating the site quite easily.  This is one of the few sites out that I have ever seen that allows you to use your social networking to benefit your real life.

If you need to get organized, check out Qlubb, and let me know your thoughts.

365 Days of Baby Einstein is one of the books that is such a great deal that you cannot pass it up. This book teaches your children about art, language, poetry, math, and science. The illustrations and pictures in here are awesome and engage your child. There are read aloud rhymes, interactive questions, and poems that encourage your children and you to have a conversation about what is going on on that page. The pages of this book are paper, so you do have to be careful. There are things in this book that both Madison (my 4 year old) and Will (my 1 year old) can do and be entertained by. Each section of the book is color coded, so if you want to work on certain skill like language development, you can easily find it. They even have pages where you can learn how to say words like dog and cat in other languages (my husband has been looking for some golf bags translations in there but we have yet to find any. LOL)  This is a book that can easily be given as either a baby shower gift or a birthday present, and you won’t break the bank either.

Winnie The Pooh’s Sleepytime Hum is another great book for little ones.  It has awesome illustrations and is about Winnie the Pooh going to bed (which we want all our little ones to do).  This makes a great bedtime story.  The book is made from cardboard, so it is very durable.  It is short, so it keeps the attention of even the shortest attention spans.  It also tells you about why Pooh wants to go to sleep at night (he might even want to buy the moon) which hopefully will entice your little one to go to sleep. (If it doesn’t work for that, well it was worth the try, right?)  The whole book is a short little poem.  Each page has a picture and a couple lines of the poem.  Though my favorite has to be the last page:

Winnie is sleeping,
so you close your eyes, too!
Catch up with your dreams -
Pooh’s waiting for you!

Don’t let the really long title of Pooh’s Early-To-Bed and Early-to-Rise Hum scare you away.  This short little book is a cute poem about Winnie the Pooh.  It is made of cardboard, so your little ones really can’t wreck it.  You get to see how Pooh spends his day (though I hope he doesn’t get Plantar Fasciitis from all the walking he does!). It is short, so even little attention span children will enjoy it (and easily memorize it). Each page has a picture and part of the rhyming poem. This is definitely a cute little book for the little ones in your life.

Guess Who? is one of my most favorite books we own.  This is a book that both my 4 year old and my one year old can definitely use.  The pages are cardboard, so they can take a beating.  The story is quite simple.  Each page has a clue to who the book is talking about.  The character at the end of the book as a purple hate, an orange nose, Asgi shoes, a red scarf, and is white as a marshmellow! Have you figured out what he is yet?   Since the pictures are simple and the only thing on the page, it makes it very easy for your little ones to figure out what the items are even if they can’t read!  Madison (my 4 year old) loves to take this book and read it to herself (and no she doesn’t know how to read yet).  She take the book and makes up her own story with the pictures too.  Guess Who? is pretty short, so it will keep the kids with the shortest attention spans occupied.  I would say this book ranks as a top ten for me.

Pooh Counts is a book that we received when Madison was little. She still plays with it and so does Will! The pages are made of cardboard, so they are definitely tough and can withstand children.  As you can see from the picture, there are beads going across the top.  Each page of the this story is about the Winnie The Pooh characters going to pick berries.  The story has you move the beads/berries from one side to the next.  The beads/berries are also color coded too.  This book very easily teaches colors and counting, and your kids won’t even know they are learning!  There are a total of ten beads/berries, so it is still very elementary (though if the characters decide to eat all the berries they are going to need some fitness equipment to burn those calories off. Look another book idea for them. LOL).  Pooh Counts is also only ten pages long, so even kids with the shortest attention spans can enjoy it.

This book by Cecil Alexander takes the popular saying we all know:  “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful . . .” and illustrates it.  Besides the first couple of lines, I did not realize there was more to the poem (or whatever you want to call it).  However, the illustrations in All Things Bright and Beautiful are really nice.  When I read this book to my kids, it reminds me to enjoy life and quit worrying if my business should change hosting companies or use authorize.net. The pictures in here allow your children to really make up their own stories beyond the words on the page, and what more could you want from a book?