Bye Bye Binkie

On Saturday night I was chaperoning a youth dance at the church. Brian decided to try putting Maddie down to bed without her binkie. He said it was totally fine. She didn't whine or ask for it. After a while though, she started crying and hollering from her room. Eventually he gave in and gave her the binkie. Only after he offered the binkie did her learn that she had simply wanted a drink of water. Oops. Sunday morning, not knowing anything of the night before, I decided she didn't need to take the binkie to church anymore. She only gets it to sleep and with the switch to the morning services, she wasn't going to sleep and no longer needed it at church. She ended up throwing a huge tantrum and Brian left soon after the service started, not to return until the last five minutes. They had a knock down - drag out fight in one of the empty classrooms and even spent fifteen minutes sitting in the front seat of the truck with Maddie on his lap to get her under control. The binkie would have ended the whole show if we had just it. Oh well. We have to ditch it sometime. After we were all in bed on Sunday night, Brian told me how close to getting rid of the binkie he had been on Saturday night until his little mistake. He planned to do it again on Monday night. Monday came and we went to a "dessert party" at a friends house. Upon our arrival home, both kids were in a disasterous state. Ben was hitting and kicking and spitting on both of us because he was overtired. Maddie wasn't much better. Not the night to start the no-binkie routine we decided. Last night I was away for an hour again, just about bedtime. Upon my return, Maddie ran downstairs to greet me when she heard me come in the door. I took her back up to her bed and noticed Ben crying. I snuggled him and reassured him he didn't have to be scared of bad dreams and we said a special prayer that God would protect him in his sleep to be safe from bad guys and to have good dreams. After watching me spend so much time with Ben, Maddie got bored and came over to me and started weeping and asking for her binkie. I asked Maddie where the binkie was, to which she told me, "Daddy said it got lost, but I weally need it to go in my mouth wight here (pointing to mouth) so I could sleep wight now." I validated her concern and asked another totally random question. She perked right up and chatted with me about the other topic for several minutes until all thoughts of binkies were long gone from her little head. Then I gave her a huge hug, laid her down in her bed and didn't hear another word from her the rest of the night. She did wake once in the middle of the night. Brian went to help her. She wanted nothing to do with him and never asked for the binkie. After a few minutes she settled herself and went back to sleep. Today she kept insisting that I had her binkies in my pocket. I turned them inside out to prove there wasn't anything in there. She seemed satisfied and hasn't asked for them since, even at naptime. If it was going to be this easy, we should have gotten rid of the binkie months ago. I'm not sure it would have been easy earlier, but you never know. Now we just hope the finger sucking doesn't become an issue, because that is totally disgusting to have slimy, slobbery fingers all over your house. Brian and I aren't really as tough as I make it sound though. If we were truely strong parents, we would have thrown the binkies away. We still have all five of them tucked in Brian's sock drawer...just in case.