Goodbye Binkie- The Process!

I think I had a harder time with this than Hayden, at first anyways. I dreaded the day when Hayden and the binkie would part ways. I had prepared Hayden for quite some time before it actually happened. We had limited his time with the binkie to just "sleeping hours" and that seemed to work really well. He would ask for it in the car occasionally and sneak it every now and then while kicking back and watching cartoons. He was also very anxious to take naps and go to bed at night knowing he would get his binkie. You can now see why I was not looking forward to ending that certain aspect of it.

I think that "3" was pretty old to have the binkie, but it was my ABSOLUTE cutoff. I had told Brian that being the sensitive mom that I am, I wanted him to be able to understand why we were ripping away his "comfort." I also wanted to do the process in a not so "traumatizing" manner.

A few days after his Birthday, I decided I had made up enough excuses to not get rid of it yet. I made a day of it. We called bff Cooper and asked if they would like to join us at Build-A-Bear, where we would be stuffing all the binkies I could find, into a bear of Hayden's choice. A friend of mine had done this with her little girl (thank you Lindsey). Here is our process:

First you take the binkies and you boil, you boil:

Then you take them out and let them coolNext, Bag em' up

Then, take them to Build-A-Bear Workshop, pick a bear, stuff it, shove in all binkies plus cloth heart, sew it up, and then...go give him a bath.

Last, pose with Binkie Bear in front of store. Look happy because this may be the last smile for a couple days.

He liked his bear until he got tired. He actually hated this thing for quite some time. I kind of expected it. He would chuck it, say he hated it, etc. He still doesn't really care for it, but he doesn't despise it anymore. It took a few days and a few napless days and then things returned back to normal. He still likes nap time and goes to bed without trouble. He does however, like to be "in charge" of Teagan's binkie and let him know when he "needs" it. Funny boy!