7 Days

One week, 7 days, 168 hours... however you want to break it down, it was a long one for us.
Marty started back to work (the paying kind after 16 months of the non-paying kind) He now gets home around 6:30 but the first week he was getting home around 7:30, which made dinner and bed time a lot more challenging.
Here he is back at KMTT studios. Small photo but it is all I had.

Add to that the fact the Josie decided this was the week to give up her binkies!!! Yippee! It was her own decision and she really powered through her desire to pop the binky in when she went to bed even though they were right under her pillow. It was tough but not as hard as I had imagined. She did have a few rough nights in which we had to rub her back until she fell asleep (which was a couple hours later than normal) I was ready to take them away a year or two ago but Marty insisted we let it be on her terms. I have to say that even though she had them for much longer than I (or her dentist) would have liked, it was a much more effective way especially given her personality. And the trade... a trip to Curious Kids to "buy" something with her binkies.
Here we are with her holding her binkies ready to go "pay" for a toy. Just so happens, her hippity hop and big stuffed penguin cost exactly 7 old binkies... lucky us! Actually, we got off pretty easy. I was ready to buy her the entire store.

The woman who was working is a wonderful teacher at her preschool. She doesn't have her this year but hopefully next. She bent down and took her binkies and talked with her about what a big decision it was and how proud she was of her.

Even Fritzy got to play with the trains while Josie picked out her toy.


Not only was it the week that Marty went back to work and Josie gave up her binkies, but Benjamin was diagnosed with an ear infection. He was non symptomatic but the Dr. said it was about an 8 out of 10 for severity. Now looking back he was a bit fussier than normal but not too bad. His sleep has always been bad so it was hard to tell if that was affected at all.
Thankfully, he LOVED talking his medicine. Little did we know it would make him break out into a rash!! (more to come on that)


We survived.. but barely!!