Growing Pains

When you are a three- (almost four-) year-old who still uses a pacifier, you tend to chew lots of holes in the nipple of said paci. See, the thing is, babies don't have teeth. And big kids do. Friday night, we were down to one "good" noodle (aka pacifier). And no one could find it. The last time this happened (just a few months ago), I sent Dean to Walgreens at 7:30 at night. Because we are just that ridiculous. This time, we decided to give noodle-free life a whirl. After all, before we moved, Sadie had pretty much given it up. But then we moved, and everything changed, and chaos reigned, and we were back to pacifier 24.7.

Anyhow, last night Sadie wasn't protesting (much) about the missing noodle, and once I bribed her with the promise of buying a toy at Target if she could sleep without her pacifier, she was too busy obsessing over what she would buy to care much about the missing noodle. And then, as luck would have it, I spotted the missing "good" one. I'm smart, so I grabbed it and hid it.

We made it through night 1 with no real problem. As Sadie reports, "I just closed my eyes and went to sleep. It was easy!" Night 2 went smoothly as well, which is good considering we had my mom babysitting. Last night the "noodle fairy" came and collected the remaining pacifiers so she can give them to babies (who apparently won't mind that they all have holes in them?!). In reality, they're in my underwear drawer. I know it's crazy but I can't bring myself to throw them away just yet. The noodle fairy left each girl a stuffed dragon. Because, oh yeah, in the midst of all this, Ella decided she didn't need her noodles anymore either (hers have long since been destroyed, but she uses them to rub on her blankets) AND AND AND she decided she didn't need to suck her thumb anymore.

And that, people, is a weekend full of growing up with very little effort or influence on my part. Lazy parenting at its finest. I never realized how little I saw Sadie's little mouth until I spent two days looking at it. The mouth is cuter than the pacifier.