Bye-bye Binky.... sort of

I have been wanting to get rid of Michael's binky for a very long time now. But every time I really thought about doing it, some convenient excuse would pop up - like the transition to big-boy beds, or our trip to Utah, or a really nasty cold. All of these things allowed me to push off this ugly task, but I'm afraid I've run out of excuses.

So, Kamaki and I made the decision that this past weekend, the binky would go bye-bye. We wanted to give him plenty of time to adjust to this transition before our next big transition came along - you know, the one that will be tiny and loud and strange and occupying a lot of Mommy and Daddy's time.

My friend Jen just went through this with her twins and I decided to follow her lead by snipping the ends off all the binkys I could find. Unfortunately, I could only find three. Oh well - the rest will pop up eventually and I'll just hope that I get to them first!

At bedtime, I handed Michael his binky as usual and he immediately noticed something was very wrong.
"Momma! Binky! What happened?"
"Uh-oh, it's broken!" I said with great sympathy.
"Fix it!" he demanded.
"I can't fix it sweetie. Here, try this one." And I handed him the next binky. We went through this same routine with all three of the binkys and I finally told him that if they were broken, we needed to throw them away. He agreed - everything was going perfectly!

Out we went to the garbage can where Michael threw two of the binkys away - then realized what he had done. That's when the sobbing started. He cried and begged and pleaded with me to get his binkys out of the garbage can. I tried to reason with him that they were broken and now very dirty and we could not get them out. The binkys were gone. More sobbing. And I mean sobbing - of the chest heaving variety - for many, many minutes. This also greatly upset Tommy who could not understand why I wouldn't give Michael his binkys back.

I honestly don't know who this was harder on. I sat and rocked Michael on his bed while he cried and I seriously had to hold back my own tears. It felt so wrong to be intentionally inflicting such grief on my small child. I knew it needed to be done though, so I persevered.

Alas, he was clinging to that third binky as if it were glued to his little hand. There was no way I was going to get that away from him. I finally got him calmed down and he laid in his bed, sucking on a broken binky with a tear streaked face. That was my limit. So, I tucked him in and walked out of the room.

Last night, the last binky mysteriously had a little bit more snipped off. It will continue to have a little more snipped off every night until he is finally able to throw that one away too. When that night comes, you better believe I'm making Kamaki deal with it!

Now if I could only figure out how to get Tommy to stop sucking his thumb.....