Cold turkey

So if you’ve followed this blog for awhile, you already know that my daughter has been a binky fanatic since she was a newborn.

Yes, YES! I know that she is now a fully functioning three year old and not a baby, but the pacifier was something that always soothed her, and whenever we would get close to yanking it something would come up, like moving into a big girl bed or her brother being born, that would cause us to look the other way and say we’d take care of it a little further down the road. But then a few months ago, while Taylor was snuggled into our bed and I was in the rocker feeding Luke, she turned and looked at me, popped the pacifier out of her mouth and rambled off a story that included such words as, Wonderful, Ridiculous, and Delicious. And right then and there I knew I had let this whole binky business go on long enough. If she could talk like a big kid, she needed to act like one too.

So at first I thought we had the perfect excuse to say buh-bye to the binky: Preschool. And while Taylor starting school for the first time causes me to have anxiety attacks, a good side-effect would be that I could play up the fact that only big kids can go to school. And big kids don’t use binkies. And when I told her that a few weeks ago, she just cocked her head to one side, squinted her eyes at me and chirped back, Okay. And then continued to color or play with her dolls or do whatever it was that she was doing. And I exhaled and thought, Well, THAT was easy.

And then earlier this week, as we were getting her shoes on to go to the Y, she started talking about how excited she was to go to school at the end of summer. And I kept agreeing with her, and then I reminded her that when she started going to school she was going to have to get rid of her binkies. And I could see the worry start to bubble up inside of her, so I dug down and grabbed a combination of all the getting-rid-of-the-binky stories I’d collected over the past months, and this is what I came up with: So, you know, Honey. Instead of throwing your old binkies away, something we could do is mail them to the Princess Binky Fairy. And you know what she’ll do with all of them? She’ll give all your binkies to the baby fairies that don’t have any. What do you think about that?

Yep. Sometimes that’s how I roll in this fabulous job called Motherhood. I spew total nonsense at my kid and then sit back, cover my face and wait for it to backfire. But it didn’t. And after telling her about Princess Binky Fairy – Do you like how I threw in both the Princess AND the Fairy? That’s skill. – Well, after hearing about the mythical ruler of pacifiers, all the anxiety of giving away her binkies absolved and she looked at me with a smile and said, Yeah, Mom. I wanna do that! I wanna give all my binkies to the baby fairies.

But then something unexpected happened. That night as we were upstairs going back and forth between bedrooms getting the kids ready for bed, Taylor went running into her room, grabbed her binky and came trotting back to us, announcing that she wanted to send her pacifier to the Princess Binky Fairy right then and there. She was all done. And Chris and I just looked at each other all wide-eyed and were like, Really? Are you sure? Because you don’t have to send them until school starts if you don’t want to. And she lifted her chin and said, NO MORE BINKIES FOR ME! And we were all, Sounds good to us! We are so proud of you!

And I’m pretty sure it took about four minutes after crawling into bed for storytime for her to truly start to regret her hasty decision, as Chris said she just laid there, twitching and fidgeting after he finished reading her book to her. And when he came downstairs and gave me the report, we relaxed for about two seconds before we could hear the pitter-patter of little, Taylor-feet scurrying around her bedroom above us. So I went upstairs, tucked her back in and gave her a big hug and kiss and told her again how proud I was of her. And then ten minutes later, Chris went back up the stairs to repeat the process, this time laying in bed with her and tickling her back until she finally calmed down and fell asleep.

And then at 11.30 that night, we were woken up by the sounds of Taylor howling and crying out from her room. And Chris jumped up first, stumbling and comatose, found his way into her room and tried to soothe her back to sleep. And after fifteen-more minutes of her sobbing, I tapped him out and took a turn lying in bed with her, wrapping myself around her little, upset body, running my fingertips gently up and down her arms and the back of her neck until she stopped shaking and slowly went back to sleep. Oh, it was heartbreaking! And I totally would have stayed in her bed all night snuggling her, but knew it was only a matter of time before Luke would wake up and need to nurse, so I gently slipped my arms out from under her and quietly made my way back to our bedroom.

And luckily that was our only real binky-withdrawal episode of the night, as the next morning my Princess trotted into our room and jumped into bed with us and proudly showed me that she only brought in her blankie and NOT her binky. Because, I no use binkies anymore, Mom. I send them to the baby fairies. And I just gave her big squeezes and cheek kisses and told her over and over again what a big girl she was and how proud I was of her.

And to make the process official, we went ahead and mailed the binkies to the Princess Binky Fairy that afternoon:

So we mailed them off on Tuesday and today is Thursday, and with the exception of Monday night’s binky-withdrawal, it’s been pretty smooth sailing. Well, other then the fact that she hasn’t taken a real nap in the past few days, but I’m hoping that is because our summer-schedule has been a bit crazy this week. PLEASE, UNIVERSE! Please, please, please let us keep our daily quiet time! Mama just got the third and final-book of the Hunger Games series and needs to read it NOW before I explode in anticipation.

And like all other transitions we’ve made with Taylor in the past three years that I fully expected to rock our worlds, she’s handled ditching the binky exceedingly well. I really am so proud of her, and totally admire that she is so proud of herself too. Never once in the past few days has she asked for a binky-fix. If anything, she just keeps reminding us how awesome she is because she doesn’t need them anymore because, I’m a BIG GIRL, Mom. Yes, she is a big girl. A big girl that sleeps in a grown-up bed, refuses to sit in booster seats at restaurants and, now, donates her binkies to baby fairies. But she’ll always be my precious baby T.