The end of a chapter

Tonight is a monumental night in the Blunden household. Spencer and I were playing with the boys on our bed and I got a side view of Andrew's teeth. I thought to myself "He's getting little buck teeth." So I looked at Spencer and asked, "should we pitch the binky tonight?"

Now don't get me wrong, it is not strictly for vanity that I thought he should lose the bink. Although good dental genes are not in his favor.

About 4 months ago I decided that I was going to wean Andrew from his binky. So for about 2 days I took it away at naps. He cried, and he cried and he cried some more. Then at bedtime I would give him the binky. I guess I thought I could break him from it at naps and then once he got used to that I would take it away at bedtime....brilliant, I know. Well after a few days I realized that I needed to be consistent one way or another....so I gave in and just let him have the thing back.

Andrew is by no means a "binky addict." Since he was 8 months old he has only used it at night and naptime. With that being said, I had the best intentions to break him of it before now. But then we were out of town, he was cutting molars, blah blah blah. I kept finding reasons to not take it away. When I decided to break him of his binky habit I wanted to make sure that we were going to be home, in a familiar surrounding and give him plenty of other "constants" so that when we took one away, he wouldn't completely fall apart.

Well tonight Daddy took Andrew into his room, he got his binky out of his crib and Daddy walked him into the kitchen and told him it was time to say "bye bye" to the binky. (Andrew says "bye bye" to everyone and everything when it is time to leave someone or something.) Andrew placed it in the trash, waved to it, walked to his room, we said prayers and laid him in his bed.

First I heard him talking. Then I heard him whimpering. Then came the coughing, the gasping for breath, the "MOMMY!!!! DADDY!" We took him a drink of water, prayed for Jesus to comfort him and laid him back down. We did this twice. I am glad to say that we put him to bed at 8:00 and it is now 8:31 and completely silent.

I told Spencer, "I didn't think about him having his last nap with his binky. But we can't make him stay a baby forever." The way I look at it, I could let him have it for another six months....a year, two years....but it would only be harder for him to give it up, so in the long run I am doing him a favor....right? :-)