The Pacifier

When Cate was a baby/toddler, she loved her pacifier, or "passer" as she called it.  But, as she approached her second birthday, I knew it was time to give it up.  I was pregnant with Charlotte and Cate was moving to a big girl bed.  It was just time to go.

I wrung my hands for weeks about it, but finally decided the day she moved on to the green room at school was the day she would give her pacifiers to "the baby" (in my tummy).  We talked about it a lot, and I was really nervous about how my sensitive girl would do.  The morning she was to move to the green room, we collected her passers, deposited them in the closet in the baby's room, and never looked back.  There was not one peep.  Color me surprised!

For my easygoing Charlotte, life has not been so…well…easy.  She is now almost two and because of the timing I used with Cate, I've always had the milestone of the second birthday in my head when thinking about taking away the pacifier.  Charlotte has exclusively used it in her crib, and I really thought it wouldn't be a big deal to lose it.  Not so…

Back in September, I introduced the concept that pacifiers were for babies and that when Charlotte was two, she would have to give her pacifier away to a certain baby we knew.  How did she take it?  Well…she absorbed the information for a couple of weeks, and then let me know she no longer wanted to see "that baby" and in November she was not going to be two…she told me she was going to be six.  It was if she was saying, "Nope, sorry, try this one on someone else."  Ok, on to Plan B…

I kept quiet for a few weeks, and decided that trying removing the pacifier in conjunction with her birthday and/or to giving it to someone we knew would be bad.  So I said after Halloween we would send Charlotte's pacifiers to a new baby at the hospital.  Then, this past Friday, the removal began.

Charlotte happily took her passers out of her crib in the morning and deposited them in an envelope.  She watched me address the envelope and she lovingly put a Dora stamp (sticker) on it.  Then Charlotte happily skipped her way to the mailbox and put the envelope in the mail.  This is going great, I thought.

Later I told her the new baby had sent her a thank you gift, and I presented Charlotte with a new doll.  She was thrilled and played with it all morning.  It was all fun and games…

…until she got in her crib.

We are now over three days into a pacifier-free house.  We've had three pre-nap crying sessions, three very early wake-ups (with a side of daylight savings to add to the earliness), and lots of "where is my passer?" along with very sad eyes.

I've been begging Cate to be SILENT once Charlotte is in her crib so she can peacefully (ha!) drift off to sleep.  Unfortunately, Cate is four, and sometimes once I've put her to bed, she forgets that she has some very important questions she needs to call me into her room to answer.  Questions like "What sound does a pony make from its nose?" "Why can't I fly?" and "What do you want for Christmas?"

So, it hasn't been perfect, but there is no going back now.  I'm hoping we're over the tough days, but I'm a bit worried that the early wake ups are here for awhile.  It's life with a young kid though--constant transitions and trying to figure out how to get more, more, more sleep.  Wouldn't change that for anything though :)