Goodbye ol' friend

I say that as if someone has passed away, but no. I'm actually referring to a certain object that has been with Chloe Jo since she was about 2 months old. Her pacifier. While I've never been a huge fan of the pacifier, I did let her have one. I really hate seeing toddlers walking around with a pacifier in their mouths (and sometimes they are wearing a teddy bear back pack with a leash held by their mothers *shudder*). I have nightmares of waking up one day and Chloe Jo is three years old and she is still taking a pacifier. Therefore, I have been slowly weaning her since the beginning of the year. Some days I just didn't want to deal with it and I let her have it, but most days I would only let her have it at nap time and bed time. Well, Monday morning that all changed. See, she doesn't actually need it to "pacify". She just wants it to play with. She only had two paci's and she lost one on Saturday giving me that push to take them away completely. I first cut a hole in the remaining paci. After giving it to her to try and her promptly spitting it back out, I just threw it away. That's right. They are gone forever!

And this has actually been working out better than I had ever thought it would. I envisioned many sleepless nights and many battles to come, but so far, so good. Monday night she fell asleep with me after crying for just a few minutes. When I took her to her own bed, though, she promptly woke up and cried for at least an hour. She wanted to sit up in bed and stand up, but every time she did I just laid her back down and told her that it was time to go to sleep. She eventually did fall asleep and only woke up once that night when we repeated the battle for about 15 minutes until she fell back to sleep and slept until the morning.

I was prepared to have another battle last night and to my surprise, it never happened. When I put her in her crib she rolled over, hugged on her lovie and went to sleep. She did wake up once at 11:00 p.m. and cried. I went in there and laid her back down and told her it is time to sleep and she went back to sleep. I just stood there for a few minutes thinking that it was too good to be true. It was true. She slept until the morning.

Chloe Jo continues to astound me. She really is well behaved and she minds very well albiet sometimes she has to have a little "persuasion." Having her in our lives is such a blessing and we thank God for giving her to us. "For this little one we prayed." (Thanks, Courtney, hope you don't mind) We are so blessed.