Bye Bye Baby.

April 12, 2010 at 7:55 am | Posted in milestones | 10 Comments

J was putting O to bed on Friday night. I was eavesdropping over the monitor.

J said “O, do you want your binks?”

O responded. “No. Binkies in bag. Big boy toy!”

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He did end up taking them to bed with him on Friday. But on Saturday morning, when I asked him what we were going to do, he told me that we were going to put all his binks in a bag and give them to a baby.

We didn’t QUITE do that.

But we did coordinate a mini-bink “hunt” and have them put them in a bag. He carried the bag from the house to the car, and then again from the car to the Build-A-Bear store.

Once inside the store, he was a bit overwhelmed with the lights and the noise. But he picked out a chocolate puppy, and we had it stuffed.

And yes, I did ask the girl to stuff his blue bink in there for me.

Because it was THIS blue bink.

(I mean, seriously. I barely remember how little he was in that picture. About the only thing that we still have is that blue bink! I couldn’t just throw it away.)

And when it was time to pay, he handed the bag of binks over to the cashier in exchange for his new puppy.

(The cashier was great, by the way. She congratulated on O for being a big boy, and gave him extra stickers. And she was all business with the binks, knew without even asking that I wanted her to throw the rest of his binks out. Said, “Harder than you thought it would be, huh?” Which it was. For a moment, anyway.)

We named his puppy Wilf – it’s a take on a “family” name – the combination of J’s grandfathers’ names.

And I have to tell you – O LOVES Wilf.

First nap without the binks was rough. He was awake for two and a half hours before he managed to fall asleep. Not unhappy, mind you. Just playing and talking in his crib.

When he woke up?

Fever. Saturday afternoon it was pretty mild – 100.8.

But Saturday night was pretty awful. It was the trifecta – a barky cough, high fever (measured at 103.5 around 3am), and lots of puke. We couldn’t give him tylenol because of the puke. But we did try lukewarm bath. And the poor kiddo just cried and shivered. And by 5am, he didn’t want me to leave his room, though we did finally manage to get him to keep some tylenol and a few sips of water down.

He woke up at 7:30 pretty NORMAL. No cough. Appetite was fine. Runny nose, and when the tylenol wore off a definitive fever*.

Naptime on Sunday was better – he fell asleep quicker than on Saturday. Last night was rougher – took me an hour to get him into his crib, and when I left he was still crying “MOMMY!!!! MOMMY!!!!”

But.

He hasn’t asked for his bink ONCE.

He’s done so well, and I’m SO proud of him.

So thank you for all of your who suggested that we get his buy in on giving them up. I was really leaning that way anyway – the idea of “losing” the binks just seemed so, well, DISRESPECTFUL to me.

I think it’s going to take him a little longer before he adjusts to the new sleeping routine without his bink at home.

But in all respects, this weekend went really well. I am happy to be past the whole “when are we going to do this?” decision.

But.

Bittersweet, too.

Bye bye, baby.

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*We kept him home today because he’s clearly fighting something off. Didn’t have any overnight wakings last night, and as of 8am this morning, he’s still sleeping. I have high hopes that this weekend’s sick was just a virus, but if he’s still feverish by tomorrow, we’ll call his doctor.