Eating my words - Follow up

Who's that girl? Oh, would be a big girl that has successfully given up her pacifier, that's who! Some of you have asked how it went so I wanted to give the rest of the story.

If you couldn't tell, I was anticipating a pretty bad night when I took her pacifier away. To be honest, it was probably the best opportunity that I would have for awhile since Jared was out of town for a full week and there was no telling how long the girl would be upset about it. He would have caved in a heartbeat.

That night, she slept her normal 12 1/2 hours with no problems whatsoever. Harper woke up that morning just like any other morning. She knew she had misbehaved and the paci had paid the price. It wasn't until nap time that next day that it sunk in that she wasn't getting it back. We definitely had some tears at nap time when I told her no paci.

But night #2 was the full blown meltdown. The Squirrel asked for her paci as we were getting ready for bed. I replied, "No Harper. No paci. Your a big girl now and big girls don't use pacis.". You would have thought I had told her I was shipping her off to Siberia. That bottom lip jutted out and the tears started streaming down her face. We continued this conversation two more times, went through our routine of songs and prayers and I laid the girl down in her crib. She gave it one more try with "paci?", let out a huge wail and I scurried out of her room feeling pretty guilty.

I grabbed the video monitor so I could keep an eye on her and she was pacing back and forth in her crib crying out "Paci!!! Paciiiiii!!!!" It actually made me laugh because all I could think of was "Atreyuuuuu!!!! Falkorrrr!!!!"



After about ten minutes of screaming out "Never Ending Story" style, she crumpled to the mattress, softly whimpering "paci, paci, paci" and then promptly fell asleep only to wake up at 7:30am. Really, it makes me cringe to think of the first time she gets her heart broken. I'm envisioning a teenage girl blaring whatever the 2026 version of "With or Without You" might be and sobbing into her pillowcase - Lord help us!

We repeated this scene the next night for about a minute and a half and other than a few passing requests which she quickly brushed off, we now have a pacifier free big girl!

And just as I say this, Harris has started the habit of waking up between 1am and 2am only to be soothed by his pacifier being put back in his mouth - I really need to stop being an enabler!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone