Braden is finally paci-free! I know you all thought the day would never come. So did I. We had no real plans of trying to get rid of it any time soon. We discussed sometime after Christmas, but then we decided he would eventually do it on his own. Honestly, I dreaded it more than anyone. I was the one who would suffer every nap and night time. But on Tuesday (January 11) Braden had his paci downstairs (which we tried not to allow) and I took it away and put it up on the fridge. He fell on the kitchen floor screaming "I want it!" I thought to myself "this is a problem!" But then it became nap time and of course I gave it to him and he slept 3.5 hours! THAT is why I didn't take it away. I knew his sleep would never be the same. But over dinner we talked about what a big boy he was and how Kate takes a paci because she is a baby and that he is so big he probably didn't need his anymore and he agreed. I told him if he made it all night that he could have a doughnut. Sold! So Ben comes home from dinner and we agreed to try but did nothing drastic like throw them all away! We ended up giving him one we cut the end off of and he complained it was broken and that he bit it off. We said sorry and to try to go to sleep. He did cry and whine a little. But then he just played in his room. We heard him up as late as 11 but since he wasn't crying we just let him play until he finally got tired enough and got in bed and went to sleep. He slept all the way until 7! I was so happy. Then he cried about five minutes at nap time the next day and by the night when we did our night time routine he told Ben "I don't need a paci!" And that was that. He has hardly even asked about having one since then. I'm so proud of him and cannot believe it was so easy. If I had known it wouldn't be a big deal I would have done it long ago. His naps have been about half as long so that is very sad to me! Somedays I'm tempted to just throw him a paci and say go back to sleep! Ha ha! What can I say? I LOVE nap time! But I love my boy more and am thankful that it was such an easy transition. The Lord certainly answered our prayers! Sorry for such a long story, but I wanted to remember this one day.
