Thanks to a new family member on the way, Oscar gets to fast track his "big boy" plans. We have a number of things we'd love to happen before August including potty training (omg, does it ever end?), big boy bed (I'm certainly not buying a new crib now, and Oscar is the size of a freshman in high school), and stop using the paci.
Being honest, I really did not have a huge deal with the pacifier. Oscar only uses it at night time (and weekend naps). He happens to be a super stud go-to-bed kid. There's a bit of normal toddler negotiation, but once he's in bed with his stuffed animals (his "guys") and his paci, he's telling us "nite nite" and shooing us out the door. Not to mention, he likes to wake up slowly. He lies in bed for 30-45 minutes just contently waking up. Not a bad gig, huh?
Of course our dentist has been encouraging us to wean him from the paci. We always had an excuse to, "try it next week." Most often it was someone was going out of town. Most recently, our whole smoke detector system was wrought with malfunctions and all the beeping and alarms really freaked Oscar out. But one day a couple of weeks ago, I didn't even give it much thought, and walked into Oscar's room, grabbed the paci, and clipped a small bit off the tip. Thank you, pregnancy hormones.
That night, we went through our normal routine, and when it came time to crawl into bed, Oscar grabbed his paci, looked at it and said, "Uh oh. It's broken." I tried to be as emotionless as possible and just kept saying, "it's ok.". I wasn't worried about taking the paci physically away. As long as he wasn't sucking on it, he could hang on to it for as long as he liked. After trying to figure out the malfunction, he looked at me and said, "Does it need batteries??" I laughed and said no. Then he calmly tossed it to the end of his crib and said, "Ok!"
Was this it? Was this all it would take?
It wasn't quite THAT easy. While he's completely forgotten about the paci, his nighttime and wake up routine aren't unaffected. He's definitely started fighting bedtime harder and has even cried for 10 minutes after we leave the room for the past several nights. The worst was yesterday's name, which didn't happen. I'm not at all convinced he's done with naps. I think he's just working through this transition. In any event, we're not putting him in a big boy bed until this smooths itself out (and I hope it does). I'm still very proud of Oscar for kicking the paci to the curb!