We’ve been trying to break Miss T of her pervasive home paci habit for quite a while now (she doesn’t use one at school).  And by “we” I mean me, N and her grandmothers.  But mostly me, because it drives me half insane to listen to her talk around it.  You’d think that having a rubber nipple in her mouth would impede the constant flow of words.  Alas, that is not the case.

Also, I’m worried about her overbite that seems to be developing, not to mention the fact that I am sick to death of seeing that damn paci in 90% of what would otherwise be really cute pictures.

I do realize that to actually wean her from the paci completely will likely entail either A) cutting the tips off, thereby rendering them unsatisfying to suck; or B) throwing them away entirely and going cold turkey.  And of course, I always swore that with my second kid I’d be sure to ditch the pacifier at the same time as the bottle, because it took us so long to get it away from AE.

But. Miss T was such a shitty sleeper for so long that I was loathe to do anything to mess with the bedtime routine, you know?  She weaned herself off the bottle right around a year, but was still not even close to sleeping through the night at that point so I wasn’t about to take away her beloved paci.  Although now that I think about it, since she wasn’t sleeping anyway that probably would have been the perfect time.  Ah well.  Hindsight, etc.  However, I’m still not ready to mess with her sleep – I think I have PTSD from those first few sleepless years and I’ll be damned if I’m going back to that dark place.

Anyhoo, my point is that I have hit on what I think to be a clever solution.  The new rule is:  paci stays in the bed.  So she can still have it at night but if she wants it during the day, she has to sit in the crib.  This has resulted in several short “paci breaks” throughout each day, not unlike a nicotine addict’s requisite smoke breaks.  It cracks us up.  She’ll just say, “Mommy, I go sit in my bed now.”  I plop her in, she happily pacis it up for about ten minutes, and then she takes it out and calls me to come get her.  Plus, while she’s confined in her crib we get a few minutes of peace without having to worry that she’s being a little too quiet.

Everyone wins.