Happy Epiphany! Time to take down the Christmas decorations, if you haven't already!

When I was young, we used to get an Epiphany present. Usually something fairly small, but it made letting go of the Christmas season a little bit easier. My favorite hat that all my friends like to make fun of -- the bright pink one with the faux-fur trim -- was an Epiphany present.

As an adult, that was been replaced with the mid-January Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday. After a bunch of closely-packed holidays -- Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's -- it's hard to go back to work. So a nearly arbitrary holiday in mid-January sort of eases the transition.

Of course, my company doesn't give us MLK Day. They decided about two years ago to reduce our assigned holidays (I think we have six left -- New Year's, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas) and turning the remaining three days into "floating" holidays, chosen by the employees individually.

It's a win-win situation for the company. Employees who don't give a rat's ass about Columbus Day, for example, can take off their birthdays instead. Or the day after Thanksgiving. Or just declare a random holiday. It effectively extends our vacation time by three days.

And from the company's perspective -- that's three extra days that all the offices are open and work is being done. Everyone's still getting the same time off as before, but you have to get your supervisor's permission to take a floating holiday, just like you need permission to take vacation time. The office has to stay up and running, so when I take a floating holiday, I have to get someone to cover my work for me. It works out to a net profit for the company.

Win-win situation. I don't know why they haven't dumped Memorial Day and Labor Day into the general pool, except that everything else is closed on those days, too.

A failed experiment. Or a successful one, depending on your point of view, I guess...

Penny's teething. Molars, which can't possibly be comfortable, but she's always been a good teether. She doesn't really seem to notice the pain during the day. She doesn't drool excessively or bite things. All that happens, when she's teething, is that she tends to wake up during the night, when the growth rate is peaking.

Of course, Matt and I don't really want to wake up during the night, so when she's teething, we usually give her a dose of Children's Tylenol just before bed. That seems to get her over the hump and through the night.

We ran out of Tylenol the other day. This is not a horrible thing; we saw it coming, and I stopped at the drugstore on the way home to pick up some more. Except it was the day before restocking day, or something, and they had no Children's Tylenol. Hrm. Well, okay, I grabbed a bottle of Children's Motrin.

Ibuprofen works better for me than acetominaphen, anyway.

Apparently, it doesn't work better for Penny. Three nights on Motrin, and she woke up every. Single. Night. One night, she woke up three times.

Matt went out yesterday on his lunch break and picked up a bottle of Children's Tylenol. Last night? She slept straight through to morning.

So, uh, we'll keep the Motrin around, I guess, because it'll probably work just fine if she gets a fever. But for teething and other minor pains? Tylenol all the way, baby.

--Liz