Pacifier Heaven

I found this photo in the creative commons section of Flickr. This is a photo taken at the outdoor museum in Skansen, Sweden. Apparently they have a children's zoo and in the house of kittens, little children can give away their pacifiers. What a great idea!

Ricky will be three years old next week and I can't believe it's already been three years that I was in the hospital, gleeful that even though I was fully dilated, he wouldn't come out, so I actually needed that c-section I coveted all 37 weeks of my pregnancy.

But finally, after almost 3 years, Ricky gave up his binky. Mark and I were actually more frightened at his withdrawal than we needed to be.

We kept telling Ricky that binkies were only for babies and every time we saw a baby with a pacifier in his/her mouth, we would point it out to Ricky. It also helped that his friends in our playgroup do not use binkies - only the babies do.

So we stressed all the "big boy' things he will be able to do when he turns three years old and said that part of growing is also letting go of things that you do not need to do anymore - like sucking on a binky.

So one day last week when we hosted the playdate, Ricky picked up his binkies and gave them to Baby O. He was so proud of himself and I was proud of him too. But that night, as to be expected, he called out for binky and cried a little bit, but now that it's been about 9 days, he never asks for it - but says "I want to sleep at Grandma's house. I have 2 binkies there!" Little does he know that I asked my mom to nudge those toward binky heaven....