Bye Bye Binkie (written 4/29)

When Jake was 18 months, the pediatrician said it was time to say goodbye to the pacifier.  Andrew and I told him what was going on, but he clearly had no idea.  It was an awful 8 days for all 3 of us, and after looking at the American Dental Association statement on binkies and the American Pediatric Association's website, I decided it definitely was not worth pulling the plug.  We gave his binkie back and he started sleeping through the night again and was back to his old, happy self.

Jake is now 2 years plus a few months and has a much better understanding of what we say.  We decided it's time to say bye to the binkie a couple of weeks ago, and the transition has been SO much better this time around.  This might not be our best parenting move, but for a couple of days I'd ask him if he wanted his binkie or the iPad for nap time.  He'd unfailingly pick the iPad and had no issues falling to sleep binkie-less.  So we experiemented for a night without his paci, and he ended up in our bed sleeping on top of Andrew, but he slept.  And we slept.  And it wasn't THAT bad!

The day after our overnight experiment we took Jake's binkie to the toy store and told him he could have a toy instead of his beloved pacifier.  We found a train that he seemed really interested in, and sure enough he set his binkie down right in the aisle and never looked back.  He hasn't asked for it and has slept at least decently well every night.

Now we have to get him off the iPad, because a couple of nights we've woken up at 1am and he's still been awake playing on the darn thing- that's 4+ hours after bedtime!  His brain's going to turn to mush if we're not careful!  We figured out how to have it stop working after certain amounts of time, so starting tonight we're going to work back to him just having a few minutes before falling asleep.  I'm sure that'll be much easier and happier than just pulling his paci cold turkey, although I'm certain he's going to be crazy mad when it turns off.  Good thing he and McKenna don't share rooms! (Update July 1: he's falling asleep just fine without it and has been for several weeks now- phew!)

I'm so proud of my cute little boy and the progress he's made with his language development.  He understood the situation and literally said "bye bye binkie."  Hopefully we won't have to say "hello braces" for letting him use it while he slept until he was almost 2 1/2 :)