The Mellen Patch: January thus far

The most important event of January to date was the visit from the Binky Fairy on New Years Eve. Grant put his binky in a little box and put it on his toy closet. In the morning, the binky was gone and Grant received Guido, Luigi and the tractor from the movie Cars as a present from her. Since then, things have been fairly smooth sailing. He doesn't ask for his binky in fits of rage as we expected but he does talk about the Binky Fairy during the day and generally he's not sleeping as well as he used to. However, I no longer get woken up 2-3 times each night to search for the binky. It was time and a good thing it is gone. I think it's good we waited until now rather than doing it when he turned 2 like we originally planned. I'm just glad it's gone.

I got to have a girls night out for the first time in months. It was nice to get out for a few hours without kids. Me and some friends went out to dinner for a couple of hours. Some of the girls did a Mary Kay makeover beforehand and then went to a movie afterwards. I don't have energy for all of that so dinner was good enough for me.

Grant, Cole and I spent January 5-9, 2009 in Flagstaff with Amy, Nicholas and Zachary. I needed to get out of town for awhile and Amy and her boys were up staying with her parents while Lars is in Asia. We had a great time. They had just had a huge snow storm so there was a ton of snow for me and Grant to play in. On the way up to Flagstaff, we stopped in Phoenix and had lunch with David. David made us lunch. We had delicious rotisserie chicken with Salsa Lizano. Grant loved being outside and learned how to sled. There was a giant pile of snow in their backyard. We used garbage bags to sled down the hill. Other than snow playing we didn't do much but hang out in the house and let the boys play. The boys had a great time playing with their Cars and Grant's train set. I learned that both of my boys are in the phase where they don't sleep well away from their beds. I did not get great sleep but we had a good time. I was also able to go to Prescott for a few hours. I had my teeth cleaned. I was supposed to stay over night but that didn't work out. It's ok though because we went to Phoenix and I spent time with Shelli and David. David cooked us dinner and then we slept at Shelli's. It was a nice little vacation but I was glad to get back and get at least a little more sleep.