I was beginning to think we were going to have the worst possible timing for baby #2’s arrival.
With Jackson approaching three years old, we were already going to have to deal with a lot of big transitions for him — getting rid of the pacifier, sleeping in a big boy bed and potty training. Throw a new baby into the mix, and eek — so many changes coming for him!
Initially I planned to tackle the big boy room first out of that list. I thought the switch to a new room and new bed would go smoother if Jackson still had the comfort of his paci. Once he was comfortable in his big boy room, then we’d focus on the pacifier and lastly potty training — I don’t even want to think about potty training right now, haha. That can wait till after baby!
Leading up to this, however, Jackson happened to find a second pacifier somewhere in the house. And all of a sudden, he didn’t want just the one paci in bed — but BOTH. Then that somehow seeped into his routine, and he just had to have one for his mouth and one for his finger every single time he went down to sleep. (He has the kind with the hole in the back so you can stick your finger inside it.)
Well next thing I know, he comes across another paci somewhere in the house. And then another. So all of a sudden we are up to FOUR PACIFIERS now and he wants ALL OF THEM with him in bed!!!!
I couldn’t believe it. Here we are at about the time to wean him off the pacifier completely, and somehow his arsenal has grown and he can’t go to bed without four of them!
It also just became annoying trying to track them all down at bedtime. Plus he was very particular about them. Even though there were four total, there was one in particular that went in his mouth. The others were for his fingers, or for Lamb, I don’t even know. So if you gave him the wrong one for his mouth, he’d tell you that was the wrong one and we’d have to keep looking until we’d find it.
Well one night I couldn’t find the one for his mouth and was too tired to try and find it. I just told Jackson we can’t find that one, and gave him the others. I had to repeat it a few times that we just couldn’t find it, but to my surprise he went down to sleep just fine. The other pacifiers were in his crib but he didn’t use them.
I figured this may be an opportunity so the next night I told him the same thing — that we lost it — and again he went to sleep OK without it.
Eventually I did end up finding it, but he was doing so good without it, I never gave it back. And he didn’t seem to care about the other three any more, so I got rid of those as well.
In the end, he dropped his paci before his big boy room was ready. But it was a shockingly easy process — especially when I feared we were up against four!