Good Bye Binky...

We have been wanting to wean Austin from his binky ever since he was 18 months old. We felt like that would be a good age for him to be done with his binky. When he was around 16 months we started only giving him his binky at bedtime. As soon as he would wake up we would put them in a basket on his dresser & he would forget about them until it was bedtime again. He was doing so well with it that I thought weaning him would be a piece of cake. When he was 18 months old I took him to get his immunizations & he got sick. He cried for his binky constantly & I just didn't have the heart to take it away just yet. He had one in his mouth & one in his hand for the majority of the day. We lose binkies all the time & he was finally down to only two. A couple weeks ago one of the nipples ripped, so we cut it off. He still wanted to carry it around with him even though it was broken. Austin communicates so well & talks all of the time. We just felt like he was getting too big to be talking sentences with a binky in his mouth. (For the record, we don't judge parents who let their kids have binkies well beyond what we did. I had a binky until I was 5! ) He loves Toys R Us so we started telling him that one day soon we were going to take him to that big toy store & let him pick out a prize if he would give his binky away. We told him that only babies need binkies and he is a big boy now, so he can play with toys instead. I wasn't sure what he thought of it until I needed to run to the grocery store one day. He woke up from a nap & I told him that we were going to go to the store. He said, "And get a prize & throw away binky?" So, last Friday night Austin & I picked Luke up from work & headed to Toys R Us. We let him run around and play with toys, trying to find one that would be special enough to replace his binky. After an hour and a half he finally found one that he got excited about. We set his binkies on the shelf at the store and said good bye to them with his prize in his hand. (Of course I grabbed them when he wasn't looking and they are now hidden in my bedroom drawer.) For about three days he mentioned his binky about once a day & whenever he asked for them we would just say, "Remember you gave away your binky & you have your new prize?" We were amazed at how well he did without them considering how attached he had been. He hasn't had any problems sleeping without them and he has been binky free for 8 days now. :) I got a little teary eyed when we were leaving the store because our little boy is growing up way too fast.

Looking up and down the toy aisles at Toys R Us

Looking at all the books

He finally found a prize that he loved! He chose a Little People Train.


We put his binkies on a shelf and said good bye.

He picked out a Little People Train and a ball. For a couple of days he kept saying, "Thank you mom & dad for my new train!" He is such a polite little guy. We couldn't have asked for a sweeter boy.

Here are a few pictures of our little boy growing up with his binky: