The Banishment of the Binky

My sweet little 2-year-old princess needs to be done with her binky. I keep putting it off (hmm, another bit of procrastination). Yesterday, we couldn't find it at nap time, so I decided to not look too hard. And she went down without it. It was "lost".

Charity was so sad. She wanted to look for it. We tore apart her bed, no bink. She looked at me sadly, and said "Pockets?" So we checked my pockets. Nope. So I tucked her in.

And she cried. Not for too long, 6 or 7 minutes maybe. But it was so sad.

Then by bedtime, I had found it and stowed it away, determined to perservere in my mommy cruelty. And she asked for it, looked for it, pleaded for it, cried for it. She looked at me sadly with her beautiful blue eyes and said "miss it."

Now this sweet little one doesn't have many things that are hers that are really important to her. She's got her mommy and her daddy. She's got her room. And she's got her binky. And I took it away. And she was sad. Oh, I hate it.

She cried again at night, longer and more sincerely. She cried today at nap time. And Matt put her to bed tonight while I was out. I called to say I was coming home, and she had cried for a good 45 minutes. Oh, this is hard. It makes me sad.

I can take her crying through her vaccinations; they are really important. She can cry through her tantrums; she's mostly just mad. But I really hate making her sad about something that really doesn't seem that important. But we've started, and I guess I'm not backing down. Even for big, sad, sweet eyes.