Bye-bye binky!

We said goodbye to a good friend today...the binky. When I was pregnant I didn't want to use a pacifier at all. I had this image in my head of a 5 year old in the grocery store with a pacifier in their mouth, and I didn't want that to be my kid. So I just decided my child would never use one...that was until Alison was a couple of days old. We couldn't get her to stop crying and all of the variables had been checked off our list. It was late at night but I called a pediatric nurse to see what was wrong with my wailing child. I'll never forget her words. She said, "Oh honey, just give her a pacifier. She just wants to suck." It never occured to me that the solution could be so simple. Rick, Rachel and the girls had just gotten to our house to meet Alison and I was about to loose it. Rick took one look at me and said, "let's go." He took me to CVS in the middle of the night to buy every kind of pacifier they carried. We sterilized them and shoved each one in her mouth to see which one would stick. From that moment on I was no longer anti-binky, but I still didn't want her to be the 5 year old in the grocery store either. Alison turned 19 months old yesterday and we decided she was old enough to say good-bye to her companion. Today after church I handed her the pacifiers and told her she was a big girl now and it was time to say bye-bye to the binki. She threw them in the trash and said, "bye-bye binky". I laid her down for a nap expecting her to cry for awhile, but I didn't hear a peep. I'm just amazed at how easy it was. I think Ben and I are having a harder time letting go of our baby than she is of letting go of the pacifier. I know that night the pacifier came into our life was a hard one, but sometimes I wish I could just go back for a moment and hold my tiny peanut again.

Alison thought it would be really fun to eat lunch with her snow hat on. I guess meatloaf tastes better when you're all bundled up.