We Sleep in Stickers

Just like the nation's economic status, our household economy is struggling.  We live paycheck to paycheck, and sometimes can only make it in between those weeks because J has gigs that bring in a few extra bucks.  We are not accruing any new credit debt; only paying down what he took away from his divorce, the car, the house and our student loans.  We are slowly but surely getting this thing under control.
On top of that, I make a pretty serious trade-off.  When we were trying to get pregnant, we were hoping for a spring due date and E$ was born in early March, which was just about perfect timing.  I have always known that I wasn't cut out to be a full-time stay at home mom, and I was able to have six months at home with him before returning to work.  Here comes the trade-off:  when I went back to work, I only went back 4/5 time.  I realize this might not seem like a big deal to some people, but when you watch where (just about) every penny goes, losing a fifth of your income can be difficult.  When we crunched the numbers, we realized that whatever extra I would be making on that day would just end up going to childcare and because all of the tax stuff changed (woot, Obama!), my take-home pay ended up being just about the same as it was before I cut back my hours. 
So, while we are oh-so-very close to paying off the ridiculous amount of debt (springtime, people-- spring.time), we're not there yet and we have to make lots of sacrifices.  But because my mother instilled in me a "you never know how many tomorrows you have" mentality, I also make some tiny splurges.  Tonight, we splurged.  Tonight, we bought books.  Just two.  Both paperbacks.  And if I had some fancy pants iPhone/Droid thingy, I would totally have snapped some pictures and uploaded them instantly but you'll have to trust me when I tell you that snuggling in bed with my boy, reading It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Clifford's First Fall was totally worth it.  Sharing a Halloween sticker from the back of Charlie Brown, hearing E giggle as he put one on his jammies and one of my jammies and whispering, "Mommy?  We sleep in stickers?"  Totally worth every cent.