The blank white walls were as dreary as the wet day. Even the most ardent stay-at-home mom and/or homeschooler knows that empty, defeated feeling when waking up to the fourth straight rainy day in a row, and here I was in the middle of nowhere, Poland.

"If I leave now, maybe nobody'll notice". I thought about how easy it would be to disappear into the fog.

Now, as I stood next to my three year old in the bathroom, waiting for the privilege of wiping her rear-end, I contemplated the age-old complaint: "Mommy, I'm bored. There's nothing to do." I had exhausted my list of in-door activities and nary a museum, play-group or gym-jam within a few countries radius, so inspiration (borne of desperation or otherwise) was welcome: "Let's decorate the bathroom!"

I ransacked the craft box, one of which may be found in all homes containing children under the age of eight. Flinging feather boas and loose tinsel aside then shovelling colored pom-poms and plastic rolling eyeballs out of the way (all carefully collected and packed Stateside), I emerged--with only a few extraneous items dangling from hair and glasses--victorious!: scissors, paint brushes, wallpaper border and podge.

Emily was delirious. She danced impatiently, waiting for me to cut out and hand over the bright green brachiosaurus so that she could paste it, with her generously dripping glue brush, onto the white wall of the bathroom. She named him "Fred".

"Lily", a school-bus yellow smiling ceratosaurus (sans scary teeth and toenails) got plastered next and then a few palm trees and a sun added some background. The rhamphorhynchus took on a bit too much glue and lost its tail, so Emily just called it "Big Bir".

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The pattern of the border repeats, of course, and we got all sorts of family reunions going, spending about an hour in the bathroom, doing voices and making up story after story.

A little wet Polish friend came over to play and, after introducing her to Fred and Lily and Big Bir and everybody else, bilingual Emily left me, embarrassingly unilingual, to clean up. With a bit of water I was able to rearrange some of the dinosaurs and wipe off excess glue.

Nearly a year later, we've still got the primary color splash right in the middle of the bathroom wall and regularly greet the cheery red triceratops with a "Hey-ya Hippo!".