Di and Eli and I had a magnificent Memorial Day weekend. Given the fact that this will be my last official weekend before the bad bad summer busy season, we family-ed it up like sailors on leave before going off to war. Hmm, that analogy seems off.
Anyhoo, we had a great time. BBQ’s, porch sittin’, digging in the mud. We took many trips to the park for swinging and ball throwing. My blood pressure went down a good 30 points.
But somewhere over the weekend it dawned on us that it’s time for Eli to lose the pacifier. I’m not sure the official cut off for pacifiers. Heck, I’ve seen 25 year olds with them. Or were those cigarettes? But our doctor really wanted him to ditch it after 1 year.
On the pacifier addiction spectrum, Eli is pretty tame. He definitely likes them to sleep, and if he finds them on the floor (it’s gross, but better than finding a used tissue on the floor), he’ll pop it in for good measure. But we did feel bad about denying him his comfort.
We didn’t make a big production of it. We just stuck him in his crib, sans paci. He immediately started howling. We felt like jerks. By depriving him his special thing were we damaging him? Is this how Southern Playwrights are created?
But suddenly, he stopped. Di and I looked at each other and said, “Best. Parents. Ever.”
Before we went to bed we checked on him. The little stinker had a pacifier in his mouth. He had them stashed all over his crib like tiny contraband. All of his stuffed animals had been tossed out of the crib in a desperate attempt to find his stash.
Well, the last few days haven’t been great, without the pacifiers. But tonight was the first night he got so sleep without howling. Hopefully he’s over it and can focus his attention on something else. Like an unhealthy obsession with Grovers.
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