Giving in...

Well, where do I begin? As most of you know, last week we took Alora's binkie. She has been struggling not having it, but it hasn't been completely intolerable (except at naptimes). To replace her binkie we originally bought her a little stuffed puppy. That wasn't good enough. When it came right down to it, she just wanted her binkie. Well, I wasn't about to give in, so we decided to try having her watch a movie at naptime. That worked one afternoon, and after fighting with her for about an hour, it worked the next afternoon. Needless to say, I have dreaded naptimes because it is literally a fight. She will throw herself down on the floor and kick the door, yell, cry, scream, everything that you see on Supernanny. It was awful! Well, last night (actually about 4:00 this morning) topped them all! She woke up and WOULD NOT go back to bed! We were exhausted! Matt and I took turns telling her to go back to bed, and finally when she wouldn't we locked ourselves in our room and tried to decide what to do next. We still had her binkie, but should we give it to her? Should we just deal with the SCREAMING, KICKING, CRYING, AND YELLING? We finally decided, we're too tired and can't go on living like this, I mean, where is our sweet, obedient little girl? So we gave in. We were going to give her back the stinkin' binkie! BUT, we did cut a little bit off the tip. She still took it and tried sucking on it, but she knew it was different. We're planning on cutting more and more off until there's nothing left, and then it really is bye bye binkie. But until then, it's only for naptime and bedtime. We have learned a lot from this experience. Here are just a few things:

1. Our child is an individual. When she is ready, she will let go of the binkie and we can't force her to be ready (same thing as potty training). As much as we would love for her to be rid of it, she needs it right now, and it's not worth our sanity to have her be binkie-free.

2. I learned how to play. To keep her mind off things this past week and to keep her happy I've played and danced like never before! We have had a blast! Sometimes I get so caught up in cleaning the house, running errands, doing laundry, and all that stuff, that I would just try to keep her busy, but this time, all that other stuff waited and I gave her the attention that she needed. It was great and I plan on continuing the fun.

3. Patience. When a child is screaming at you at the top of her lungs, it takes all you have not to lose it. I have more patience now then I did at the beginning of this adventure and am grateful for the power of prayer that helped to keep me calm and under control.

4. Love. I love naptime and I love my daughter. I love my daughter even more during naptime.

Well, that's our update. Congratulations to all those parents that can conquer the whole binkie thing on the first try, but for us, it's just going to take a little longer. Oh yeah, we've already started weening Caleb off the binkie, because we ARE NOT doing this again!