Mission: Accomplished . . . Mostly

When I last posted Lilly had deliberately dropped her binkies into the small space between her crib and the wall and nonchalantly dismissed the thought of a night without the binkies. I was proud. I almost – almost – declared: “Mission Accomplished.”

Lilly got up the next day and she still wasn’t interested in a binky. Took her nap. No sweat.

Man, I’m good, I thought. Yes, I lost some sleep and there were some cranky moments for all of us. But here we are, Day 6, and Lilly is seemingly off the binky. I think as long as we get through a few more days without mentioning the binky, we’re probably in good shape.

Bedtime on Day 6 was going as expected. Bath, pajamas, books, no mention of the binky when Lilly went into the crib. Lilly laid down with her blanket and sheep, and requested a performance of “Doe a Deer.” We were just about at the finish line and I noticed that her crib wasn’t exactly parallel to the wall. So as I finished up my lullabies, I gave the crib a little wiggle to move it back into place and – kaching!  – unlodged binkies fell to the floor, ringing out like a baby-centric slot machine. Lilly sat bolt upright, smiled and exclaimed, “Binkies!”

Uggggh! Remember my plan to stealthily extract the binkies without reminding Lilly of their existence? Yeah, real stealthy. I totally blew it. How Stupid! What a disaster. One short fit of OCD and I set us back to binkies at bedtime. Binkies – two.

I checked on her after she fell asleep, hoping that maybe she had thrown the binkies overboard like the night before, but she had, indeed, fallen asleep with the binky (just one, thank god) in her mouth. By the time I went in to get her in the morning, one had fallen (most likely) onto the floor and the other was caught up in the blanket. I made a mental note of where they were and got Lilly out of the room as quickly as possible. Before naptime, I snuck up to her room and removed temptation. She went down for nap without a binky. And I learned an important lesson.

We’re now on Day 10. Lilly has only asked for the binky once since Casino Night. That was the night of Day 7, when my in-laws were babysitting. I’m chalking it up to her needing a little extra comfort. She had just been diagnosed with bilateral ear infections that morning, was clearly experiencing discomfort and Mom and Dad were out. I mean, give a girl a break, right?

But, just in case, I’m cutting the binky down one more time.

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Next Up: Life After Binkies

The Mission: Accomplished . . . Mostly by MushBrain, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at mushbrain.net.