Binki Blues

Now that vacations are done, and we have the month of August relatively free any responsibilities (before school starts that is), I thought I should work on Katie a bit. Being now that she is 2 1/2 and still uses a pacifier to go to bed, sleeps in a crib, and hasn't started potty training, I thought I should work on one of those things. Although Kyra was in an adult sized bed when she was only 18 months, I still like the control of having the crazy one enclosed in her own quarters for the time being. And potty training, although feasible, seems like a bigger task then I'm willing to tackle (not to mention she has the con*stipation issues that might make the whole process harder - that's a whole other story). So, taking away the pacifier won the final verdict.

Taking away the binki with Kyra was a relatively easy task. She was exactly 2 years old, and we simply snipped a hole in it while she wasn't looking. She took one look at it, said it's broken, and wanted nothing more to do with it. She never cried over it or asked for another one. Easy peasy!

I've known from the start it wouldn't be that easy with Katie. For one, history is a good indicator. She had a difficult time transitioning from a bottle to a cup, and an even harder time from warm milk to cold (let's just say she boycotted fluids for 36 hours to the point of being limp!) This is a strong willed child, who doesn't give up without a fight. Anyway, unless I am willing to let her bring a binki to her first day of class, the time to take it away is now.

So, I took the same approach I took with Kyra. I cut a fine hole in the binki then put it back in her bed. When naptime arrived, she grabbed her binki and shoved it in her mouth. Of course something didn't feel right, so she looked at it strangely and gave it to me. "Oh sorry honey, it must be broken, do you want to throw it away?" Oddly, she said yes (aha my plan was going better than expected). Of course after she herself threw the binki away, she wanted "anoder." When I told her there wasn't any more, she wanted her's back from the trash. We battled back and forth, until she weepinly agreed to sleep with a stuffed piggy. Ten minutes later I heard screaming from her room, in which I came back to find all of her stuffed animals thrown out of her crib, and a red faced girl, screaming "NO PIGGY! BINKY!" After close to an hour, she finally went to bed.

I was so close to buying another binki, thinking I can't go through with this. My only hope was knowing this too shall pass. Of course today is day 4 of the journey, and she still went to bed crying. The crying is lessoning with each day, but I do hate to see a child cry to sleep. Thankfully Kyra was kind enough to share her favorite stuffed animal "doggy" (I know, we certainly are creative with names) to help her get to sleep. So, hopefully by the end of the week, she should be a pro at falling asleep on her own. And with that mastered, potty training should be a breeze!