Goodbye Dear Friend

We have said good-bye to a very dear friend this past week. This friend has been there for the past two years, through good times and bad. It (or perhaps I should say they) has/have comforted, soothed and entertained. But, it/they have become somewhat of an addiction - and I had to do it.

I remember a nurse remarking on the fact that Grace could suck her binky, and keep it in from the day she was born - By five months Grace would not fall asleep without one binky in her mouth and one in her hand. I will freely admit that I abused the binky - and I loved that it could quiet her so quickly. By a year old we upped the binky count to three at all times - one for each hand, one for the mouth and there was usually a fourth floating close by. Shortly after Grace's first birthday she started calling "it" a "Binka".

I started to fear the binka - it started to overtake our lives. Dropping one in the grocery store, long car rides, misplacing one at Grandma Kates - all brought more tears than one person could handle!

But recently it has gotten worse. Dear, sweet Grace has developed an obsession for other babies binka's. At first it was just Max's - "Bubba's binka" then she had to have cousin "Daisy's binka", at night she would cry and cry for Daisy's - I had an old green hospital one I got when Max was born and I made the mistake of giving this to her to "soothe" her in the middle of the night. The next day she walked around with the green one, Daisy's, Max's and her own. She had her own possey of binka's - and they were ruling our lives!

So - my last post was about illness - Grace got put on antibiotics that she wouldn't take - so I decided not to give her a binka one day until she took her medicine, a nice little bargining chip. This worked the first and second time, but the third time she got all the medicine in her mouth and spit it right at me. I was so mad! I told her she didn't get her binka until she took her medicine. Well she cried for two straight hours the first day. (This broke my heart!) But we did it, she even napped without it. That night getting ready for bed she cried and cried and cried. (I had tears running down my face while we said family prayers that night, I felt so bad for her.) But she did it - and she has not taken anymore of her medicine either.

On one hand I'm crazy, my kids were already sick and I chose to take away the "Binka" - what was I thinking, on the other hand, if she was sick anyways - why not kill two birds with one stone? I'm a mean mommy! Actually, I feel like this is the first grown up "I did it for your own good" decision I have made...

Fast forward 5 days, Grace still asks for her binka, today she cried the entire way up to Hyrum (60 straight minutes of crying.....) But she has stopped crying during the day (except in the car), she still wants it at night and nap time - but I'm hoping that she stops asking for her dear friend eventually.