Good bye, sweet plugs!

Baby plugs, pacifiers, soothies, nuks... whatever you call them, it's time for them to go!

Bentley used a pacifier for the first 3 months of his life at which point we took away the "0-3 month infant pacifier", and introduced a harder to suck "3-12 month infant pacifier" (I'm not kidding, they do sell these different types!). At that point in my parenting career I was still reading (and following) the baby owner manual's fine print. Bentley found the rock hard 3-12 month soothie variety to be too much work so he gave up the pacifier. That was the end of that and good riddance!

To be fair, I should point out that Bentley took up thumb sucking in place of the pacifier. I know there are 2 camps of thought on this issue, and many parents prefer the pacifier to the thumb. I'm in the camp that believes it's a hassle to always be looking for a pacifier, that perhaps pacifiers are shoved in babies mouths too often as an easy out, and that most pacifiers are ugly! To each his own though. :-)

The twins, to my dismay, are not competent thumb suckers. This is probably because there are two of them and we're a bit quick to provide pacifiers when they're getting restless - it's been easier to just keep the peace than to try and wean the pacifiers. We just wanted some sleep and quiet around here!

The twinlets are now 8 months old though - and still using their favorite 0-3 month pacifiers (oops! as I said, we just want quiet time around here!). Jackson is becoming more obsessed, it seems on a daily basis, with his favorite companion. He'll crawl from one end of the house to the other if he catches a glimpse of a green soothie! It's not uncommon to find him in the morning with 1 in his mouth and 1 in each hand (he takes his sister's pacifier out of her mouth, and he crawls around until he finds the spare in the crib). Genevieve isn't nearly as bad, but she does like the plug at nap time and bed time.

As a loving parent (and one who thinks Jackson looks ridiculous with a round green pacifier in his mouth half the day!) I've decided it's time to go cold turkey and ditch the "non-nutritive sucking" (as the books calls it). There's a definite possibility Matt and I won't be able to handle a plug free existence, but we're going to give it our best shot so we don't end up with 3 year olds who still carry around their own plugs. :-) Hopefully after a few restless days of naps and night times we will emerge unscathed?

It was good while it lasted... good bye little baby plugs!