No More Paci!!!!

For a while now, Fenn has only used a pacifier (lovingly referred to as his 'paci') at night, and as much as I hate to admit it, at home during naptime.  But he hasn't used a paci at school for a really long time.  For some reason, he just wouldn't give up his paci when napping at home.  Maybe it was because he naps in his crib at home, but on a mat at school.  Anyway, we have known we needed to get rid of the paci once and for all.  Everything I have read says to get rid of it by the time they turn 2...which is next month.  {I can't believe he is about to be two years old!}  Because of having a newborn in the house and everything involved in trying to adjust to having another baby, we just have not put any real effort into getting rid of Fenn's paci.  A couple of times, we have tried not giving it to him at night or during naptime, but he would cry and cry and would not go to sleep without it.  We have tried to talk to him about how he'll have to throw it away soon.  Or sometimes we have told him he would need to give it to another little baby that needed it.  Once, I even asked him if he wanted to throw it away and he said, "Yes".  So we marched into the kitchen and he threw it into the trash can.  {Of course, we had back-ups on hand just in case it was a fluke.}  Still, he wasn't ready to give it up.  And we were just too tired to go through the nights and nights of letting him cry it out.  So we decided to just wait.

Recently, we discovered that Fenn likes Barney despite the fact that we had been avoiding introducing him to our household.  Neither of us was ready to stomach all the sugar sweet Barney stuff.  But one day, Fenn started singing the Barney song.  You know the one... "I love you... You love me... We're a happy family... With a GREAT big hug and a kiss from me to you... Won't you say you love me, too?"  And he would even do the movements to the song, like hugging himself and blowing a kiss.  {Obviously something he learned at school!}  We have to admit it's very sweet and have been singing the song with Fenn now.  So, we pulled out a few Barney books that Dan's sister, Debbie, had handed down to us.  One of the books had pictures of Barney sleeping.  So I used that as an opportunity to start pointing out to Fenn how Barney was sleeping in his big boy bed and did not have a paci.  I've done that a couple of times over the last week or so.  Well, last night we were reading that same book before Fenn went to bed.  And I started telling him he was a big boy like Barney and didn't need a paci.  And I started chanting "No more paci!... No more paci!  Yaaayyyy!!!" and jumping up and down.  And Fenn joined in with me.  So we put him to bed without his paci and never cried one time.  He never asked for his paci.  And he slept through the night, too.  We were afraid he would wake up in the middle of the night crying for his paci.  But he didn't.  He did ask for it first thing this morning, but we reminded him about Barney and the "No more paci!" chant.  And he was fine after that.  Hopefully, it's gone for good.

These are a couple of photos I took this morning.  Fenn was jumping up and down {hence the out of focus photos} and chanting "No more paci!"