Miles and the extraction

For a few months now, I have been talking to Miles about taking away his binky because he is a big boy. We started putting one binky at a a time in the trash on trash day to go bye-bye in the trash truck (one of his favorite things). And then I told him that when he had one more, we could go to a store to put his binky inside a new animal. Sometimes he would get really excited about it, telling me he wanted to put binky in a giraffe or elephant or hippo. Sometimes he would tell me that we should put Hannah’s binky in the animal.

Two weeks ago, he had his last binky and I thought it would be a good idea to at least take him to Build-a-Bear to see what it was about before we made the final extraction. But while we were there, he was so excited, that he told me he wanted to put binky in a puppy. So we did it. Chris wasn’t quite on board with the whole idea, but Miles is almost three, so I knew we needed to do it.

I have never seen him love a stuffed animal so much. I couldn’t get a picture that wasn’t blurry because he was hugging it and swinging it side to side.

And then we went home for naptime in which he didn’t nap, but it was hard to determine if he wasn’t napping because of the binky or just because it wasn’t a nap kind of day, he’s been having more and more of those lately.

The first night was definitely hard. He screamed for Daddy for about an hour before I went back in there to calm him down. And every night since then has been fine, but naps were a bit harder to come by. He went 8 days without a nap before I finally suggested to him that he take a nap in a pack n play just like at grandma’s house. That’s all it took. He only did that for a few days, and since then, he takes naps as regularly as he did before.

Tantrums have gotten a little worse because I think there’s still a little bit of residual emotional trauma going on, but he’s almost three, so it’s part of life. He has become a mouth breather at night, so we use a lot more chap stick now. And, I think his teeth have already started to come down a bit more.

But major parenting milestone accomplished.