Catastrophe Adverted (barely)

Last night we almost had to unwillingly wean Anna off her binkie. As I was putting her to bed, partway through the bedtime routine, I noticed that her binkie was gone. I figured she had just dropped it on the floor and I would get it when we got to the end of things and I was ready to sing to her and put her down (she was in a good mood so I didn't really need it just then). When the time came to sing, I couldn't find it anywhere. Her room is not that big and it's clean so there aren't that many places for it to hide. I retraced me steps and searched even where I was pretty sure it wasn't (like the rest of the apartment). Jason even looked in the trash with all the dirty diapers. Anna was intrigued with us running around but when we turned the lights off and she still was without the binkie, it wasn't funny anymore and she wasn't happy.

Now part of putting her to bed includes closing her window. I used to have her AC on all day because she was always in there sleeping but after a while it started being less effective. Now I only have it on at night and during the day we go with an open window and her ceiling fan. Seeing as there are no screens we thought she might have thrown it out the window. The problem with that was that she wasn't that close to the window and the curtain was in the way (or so I thought). I did check the ledge outside as well as the lower, bigger ledge and we didn't see it either of those places. As a last ditch effort, Jason went outside to see if it had made it to the groud and we just couldn't see it because it was dark.

While I was waiting for him to come back, I decided to try to calm Anna. While I don't usually pick her up after I have put her down I figured this time I could make an exception. It took a little bit to get her to stop screaming but she calmed down after a bit. Fortunately Jason came back with the binkie! It was in the parking lot and after we washed it off, Anna got it and promptly went sleep.

Now, the obvious question is why, oh why do we only have one binkie?!? I honestly don't know. I know we did have more (three others in fact) at one point but when we were moving we gave two away to some friends who are having twins and I have no idea what happened to the other one. Apparently it didn't make it to India. Besides, we haven't had this problem before thanks to the binkie tether which has, unfortunately broken. We did have a second one of those too but it's another thing that I don't know where it is. I thought it was here but I haven't seen it since unpacking. I guess we just need to get another one.

One of Jason's panoramas. This is the Amber Fort, just outside of Jaipur, from the road.

On a completely unrelated note, Jason has found a new toy. He was going through the pictures on our trip and started putting together the panoramas he took. Photoshop has a tool called photomerge and he loves it. All you do is choose the pictures you want it to merge and it puts them together mostly seamlessly into a panorama shot. He started merging pictures that he hadn't taken for that purpose but went together anyway. He had a fun night.