Sunday, July 22, 2012

We Did It


Got rid of the binky that is!

Sarah has officially been weaned off of the binky for over 2 weeks now! The best part is, we all survived the transition from obsessive binky behavior to not needing it at all. I'm not going to lie, this was one thing I was completely terrified of getting rid of. The binky guaranteed us a good night's sleep and helped Sarah take a good long (2-3 hours) nap nearly every day. And the thought of disrupting those things, well it panicked me. I may not need as many hours of sleep a night as others, but nap time is my down time and I was worried.

From the time she was about a year old, we started limiting binkies to only bedtime or naptime. But recently she started asking for them more and more and needed more than one in order to go to bed. So a couple of weeks ago, there was one sitting on the counter that she kept reaching for over and over. I got irritated and in a "mommy temper tantrum" threw the thing in the trash. Sarah stared at me like I was crazy and then went to go get it out. Lucky for me, it was covered in dirt.

So she said "Ewww, binky yucky."
I told her "Yep Mommy threw it out because it's yucky." 
She nonchalantly said "Bye binky." and put it back in the trash. No tears, no fuss.

Needless to say I was floored, and saw an opportunity. I told her it would be great to throw away all the binkies and if we did she could get a DreamLite. (She's been asking for one since seeing the stupid commercial.) She wasn't too keen on the idea at first, but she warmed up to it. So after reluctantly agreeing, we ran downstairs and packed all the binkies in a ziploc bag. She kissed each one and told it "buh bye".

We ran to our Wal-Mart which happened to have some DreamLites and she slept with that instead of binkies. There were a few bumps in the road: talking in her sleep, crying out for her binky, and skipping naps to put lotion in her hair. But overall it went pretty smoothly. So now we are binky free and I have to say I kind of miss her binky smile.

The only time Andrew has ever taken a binky

Isn't this face adorable!
But even though her binky face is super cute, I am super happy to see it go! No more scrambling to find at least 2 binkies whenever we leave, no more anxiety over losing them, and hopefully soon a correction of her binky teeth! She loves her DreamLite and is super happy to be a big girl now! She tells everyone about why she has her unicorn and you can tell she's proud of herself.
Putting in the batteries

Taking it out of the box

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Good for you!

We are working on the binky weaning process as well.

I got Wilson a paci-plushies for his bink and it really is cute.

We are doing the same, only naptimes and bedtime. Or if we have epic meltdowns.

Sarah Siders said...

She is such a gorgeous girl. I do love being able to see all of her face now. But I know all these feelings of wanting to hang onto the thing and the fear of what sleep time will be like without it. We debinked John a few months ago b/c we just got so tired of having our lives revolve around it. We ended up cutting the ends out of the binks so they wouldn't taste good to him and that worked great. But I love how she was totally ready to give them up. Such a big girl!