Pulling the Plug

This weekend, we decided it was time.  Time for Oliver to give up his plugs (that's what we've been calling his pacifier since he was a couple days old).  We'd spent some time thinking of how to make this transition.

I thought about doing what my mom did to mine.  She cut holes in the ends.  I declared them broken, threw them in the trash, watched the trash truck take them away, and - supposedly - that was the end of it.  But that didn't seem right for Oliver.  For one thing, I'm not sure that being broken would have been enough.  He has this stubborn streak, and I think he would have kept them anyway.  For another thing, he LOVES trash trucks.  We have a library book called "Trashy Town."  It's about a trash man named Mr. Gilly who drives around Trashy Town picking up all the trash.  Oliver yells "Mr. Gilly!" every time he sees a trash truck.  I'm afraid he would have started saying, "Mommy, look, Mr. Gilly.  Mr. Gilly has my plug!" every time we went for a drive.  

And, so, we came up with our own plan.  Oliver loves pillows, but he didn't have one of his own.  So, yesterday, we took him to Ikea and let him pick out his very own pillow.  Our conversation on the way to the store went like this:

Oliver, do you know where we're going?

"To the store."

Why are we going to the store?

"To get Oliver own pillow."

Why are we getting you a pillow?

"Because big boy."

Why are you a big boy?

"Because sleep with plug anymore."

He picked out his pillow (a fuzzy red one).  He left his plugs on a shelf at Ikea and said good-bye to them. (I picked them up on the sly a minute later. We couldn't litter, and besides, what if we NEEDED those yet?)

When we got home, he got to play in his brand new sandbox.  This was also part of "being a big boy."  (He had no idea we were getting it for him anyway, so why not butter him up a little more, right?)  Here he is, enjoying the sand.

I moped around after we got home.  This big boy thing was getting to me.  And besides, I wasn't sure who needed that plug more - Oliver, or his parents at 2:00, or 5:00, or 6:00 in the morning.

We put him to bed at 8:00 after he spent 5 minutes waving out the window in the general direction of Ikea saying good-bye to his plugs "just a little more."

It took 2 hours for him to fall asleep.  He fussed and cried, we went in and out.  We got him a band-aid for his finger.  We threw the band-aid away.  We put cream on his finger.  And then Seth sat in his room for half an hour, and he finally fell asleep.

At 5:00, he woke up, and wanted Daddy to sit on his floor.  As I was laying in bed, I heard his little voice say, "Daddy,  please give me my plug just one more time."  (Yep, that's really what he said.)  Seth sat on the floor for another 30 minutes.  Oliver fell asleep.  At 6:15, he was up for good.

This afternoon, he didn't nap.  He played in his bed for an hour and watched me sitting outside his room reading a book.  Then, he got up and spent the afternoon playing in his sandbox.  He had a bath, and then he ate dinner.

This was him at 5:38.  Then he slept through a diaper change for the first time in his life.