One major milestone we reached this week is that we got Lewis to give up his pacifier. Well, I will have to restate that a little bit--we took his pacifier away from him (he didn't have a choice in the matter). After a dreadful trip to the dentist last month, where the dentist exclaimed "I have never seen so much calculus (hardened plaque) on someone so young!" I knew some changes had to be made. We don't give Lewis sugary snacks, we don't give him juice, I brush his teeth every night before bed. However, using the pacifier all night was causing saliva to pool at the bottom of his mouth, causing tooth decay.
So, on Sunday, as I listened to pacifiers carelessly being dropped out of the crib and Lewis caterwalling for two hours before settling down for his nap (as I found out later due to a dirty diaper), I decided--why not just get rid of it now? It is not going to get any easier the later we wait.
So, the dreaded evening arrived. And....nothing really happened. Amazing. Lewis took a little longer to settle down to sleep and woke up briefly at 2 am crying, but other than that, he did just fine. Granted, the naps nowadays are a little shorter, but he may adjust. I had heard stories of parents doing something elaborate to get rid of the pacifiers, like decorating a box to give to the "Binkie Fairy" but I had no time for that. I just told Lewis his beloved pacifiers were gone, showed him his crib that there weren't any in there, and said that I thought he was a big boy and could go to sleep without them. So, we are hoping that he'll continue to adjust and do well. But at least a dreaded milestone is over (now on to bigger and better things, like sleeping in a big boy bed and potty training).
I plan on posting some pictures of our outing the other week to "Touch-a-Truck" (a little boy or girl's heaven on earth where they can climb into, touch, etc. diferent kinds of tractors, trucks, cranes, police cars and so on). However, I've been sick for the last week or so and have spent my evenings comatose in front of the TV.
2 comments:
Good for you (and Lewis)! I didn't play any of the little binky games with Joseph, either. He was OBSESSED with his binkies. He got to a point where he had to have the same one...the other ones tasted different. We let him go for a while, but it got really exhausting making sure he didn't lose THAT binky. The last straw was when he started biting the tips off. We were afraid he was going to choke and so we pulled it cold turkey.
So happy for you that it's going so well for you both!
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