No More Paci Girl!

I really wish I had a picture to go along with post, but I don't... and really this post might be quite boring to most of you, but it's really for our own recollection later...

I've been teasing Miriam lately about throwing her last pacifier away.  I'd say things like, "You don't need that paci anymore; we should just throw it away!"  Then she'd say "NO!" and then we'd laugh.  It was our little joke.  She's been weaned down to only using at naptime and at night for quite a while, but recently she has taken to going into her room for some "quiet time" to look at books and suck on her paci.

Sunday morning this little conversation happened again while getting ready for church.  A little while later she started walking out of her room with the beloved paci so I reminded her that we were leaving for church and she needed to put it away.  She replied, "No, throw paci away!"

At this point I realized that I wasn't sure if I was really ready for this.  I've known that no more paci would probably mean no more naps.  However, I wasn't going to argue with her, so downstairs we went and she promptly threw her paci in the trash.  We all clapped and really played it up with her and told her we were proud of her, etc...

Fastforwad to naptime.  This is when she (and I) really regretted the whole throwing away the paci thing.  She didn't sleep and screamed for quite a while and just seemed heartbroken!  Bedtime was not much better and she woke up several times during the night.

Each night has been better and she's now going to bed happily and sleeping well all night again.  However, she has not napped since Saturday.  Fortunately she's done pretty well and hasn't been too crabby overall.  We're still putting her in her crib every day in hopes that she'll continue to at least have some "quiet time" and maybe fall asleep if she needs to.  Once we get to summer break I'll probably like the freedom of her not needing to nap so that we have more flexibility in our day, but right now Esther, Peter and I really enjoy our quiet reading and game time while she's upstairs!

We're hoping that her next big decision will be to throw away her diapers and potty train herself!