Giving Up The Pacifiers

My baby turned 3.5 this weekend and with that came our mandatory giving up of the pacifiers. 

This girl was ATTACHED. Look at that face. A friend recommended putting the binky in a Build-a-Bear. Genius! Except I'm pretty sure AJ would have figured out a way to rip through to get to that binky again.

Here's what we did, though, and it seems to have worked. So far. Only 4 days in.

• We talked to her about it about a month in advance then reminded her every day until the day of
• We planned a "No More Paci Party."
• We watched the Sesame Street/Elmo TV episode where Elmo gives up his Binky. This went a long way of helping her not feel alone and gave a voice to her feelings, which she can't really express. It also helped us to acknowledge that, yes, this is hard, but it's important as we get bigger. She watches it every day when she feels sad and misses her pacifiers
• For the party, we decorated a box that we would put the pacifiers in to give to a new baby. AJ dictated a few words:

• I got a few little gifts for her and wrapped them up and put them out in the morning and told her she couldn't open them until she gave up her binkies. She put them all in the box and we sealed it and took it outside before she could change her mind. Then she opened her presents.
• We got her a bike a few days later. We made a huge deal of her being a big kid and how proud we were of her, etc. Here she is riding it with Dada:

So far, she's been sleeping without it. She mentions she wants/misses her pacifiers most days and we say we know it's hard, but she's doing great. We give her some comfort and remind her that she's big and how proud of her we are. I don't know if it helps, but she does get to sleep.

The fact that I'm still nursing her helps (yes, go ahead and judge. I about threw up when a former coworker she breast fed her kid until he was 3, I was so disgusted. Clearly I didn't plan this, but that's a whole other post). Generally it went pretty smoothly.

She's a quiet little thing (something I DO NOT understand) so I never know what's going on in that little brain and who knows if it will continue. But so far so good!