Mommy Monday-The Frog

Charlie is now almost 16 months. (crap how did that happen!?!) Since she was in the hospital and wouldn’t stop crying that first night (or was it the 2nd??) she has used a pacifier to sooth.

And it has been a life saver. (It’s kept us well rested and sane!) At some point during her first few months we purchased a wubanub.

It’s a pacifier with a stuffed frog on it and it has been THE pacifier. Once it was left someplace….and I drove back over our tracks to find it. (it was left in the pew at church) Phew! I also found places around town where I could get another one incase of an “emergency”. (Seedlings & Nordstrom's) And it’s not like she wouldn’t take the other pacifiers w/o the "frog” it just made our life easier and it was easier for her to control and hold.

Well flash forward to the one year check up…give up bottles…wean the night cap…give up the paci. Bottles-Check. Night cap-getting there. Froggy-since one year, only at night time. Ms. Jones took hers away for naps  over a month ago (for some reason she’d use which ever paci at daycare).  And now it’s that time for us to cut the frog. Our plan all along was to keep the frog for her to hold and cut off the pacifier. Then she started teething again and was fussy…then we had company…so we decided the week my parents where in town was when we’d do it.

Well there here…and I don’t know if I can do it.

So here’s my question: Is it horrible if we let her keep it? I’m so worried that if I “castrate” the frog it will be WWIII and I’ll regret it. I know she’s getting dependent on it…and that’s why I think it’s time. But then my mother said she’d never, in 35years of teaching, had a kid come to kindergarten with a pacifier. But then Ms. Jones keeps telling me it needs to go away. There’s a younger baby there now and she has one, so Charlie wants one too again. Luckily Ms. Jones doesn’t budge-she’s like the baby whisper/Judge Judy; sticks to her guns and makes you know it’s going to be ok.

To be honest I think Adam and I are more afraid of what it’s going to do to us than Charlie. It makes life so easy. She goes to bed like no other child I’ve ever seen. It’s nuts. So if she no longer has that nub to suck, will that all change??? Will we survive? Should we not mess with a good thing??? Tonight will be the big decision: to snip or not to snip?

Deep down I know it’s time to rip off the band aid…

What do you think?