Goodbye Binky Post #4

Tuesday, January 24, 2011 marks one of the worst days of my life. 

On Monday evening, DHH learned that his last binky, apparently his very favorite White Binky, fell victim to Old Age.
It got old and broke.

(His dad clipped it.)

But he just knew it was old and broken.
 It made him upset that it was broken, but he, on his own accord, threw it in the kitchen trash can.


He just threw it away.

TOO EASY.
This is too easy, we thought.  Its gotta be worse than this.
It was.

He didn't go to bed easily, and we let him stay up on the couch and cuddle.
He seemed to enjoy The Bachelor, but of course that's a whole other #horribleparentingidea thing, right?

He woke up more than an hour earlier than normal and wanted to go find that broken white binky so I could fix it.

He didn't nap in the afternoon.

He was a terror for the most part.

By 3PM it was Fit Central around here.
Any disappointment that happened was A BIG. HUGE. DEAL.
There were rockings, cuddlings, tolerating less-than appropriate behaviors, distractions, and some cajoling.

By the time his daddy came home after 5 PM, he'd been crying for an hour and a half solid about how I wouldn't let him watch (another) Mickey movie, and by the way, he was sad about no more binky.

Dan distracted him by letting him play Duck Hunt on the very old ninetendo that we use like twice a year.  This was a good thing for him.

But when that time was over, it was back to The Worst Times Ever in the Life of DHH.
"Daniel feels sad, miss that white binky! Daniel want to suck on that white binky!" he said between wails.

I don't know how we survived until 9 PM.  It was just a mess of crying, trying to comfort and distract.
It was not good at all.

It was Dan putting Daniel back to bed every two minutes.
Down, up, down, up, wail, cry, pat, rock, go to sleep, buddy.
For an hour and a half.
So incredibly difficult.

For some reason, perhaps just exhaustion, he caved at about 9 PM when Dan agreed to put the old, broken blue binky in the freezer, in case that would fix it.
I don't know why he came up with that solution, but somehow that thought crossed his mind and he agreed.
So the blue binky went in the freezer, and DHH went to bed soundly.

He slept until 7:30 AM, then came to find me as I was drying my hair.  "Its daytime, Mommy.  Daniel go fweep and no white binky.  Daniel fweep all night and no white binky!!!!!"

He was triumphant.
I praised him.
I pulled out a toy I bought long ago for him and didn't give him for Christmas because he had too much already - a trash truck.  He loved it.
He said, "Daniel is so excited about new truck, Mommy! So excited!!!!!" while we opened it.

When I returned from work today, I put him down for a nap with minimal sass and relative ease.  He requested a cup of water and to sleep with a Mickey book, and that was it. No mention of the binky.

Maybe its all over.
Maybe we're past the inconsolable grief of losing a prized possession and way to soothe.

Last night was so bad that I went to bed at 9 PM, too.
I had to otherwise I would have dug through the trash to get that binky out of the garbage so he could go to sleep already.

It was one of the harder moments of being DHH's mom.


**** And note that during this time, my little daughter staged a nursing strike, which added more stress.