bye bye binky, binky bye bye

i am flabbergasted right now. i think we may have done it. i think we are off the bink. wow. we are on day three of no binky. sure he calls out for it every now and then, "Bink-y!" (which kinda breaks my heart and I may or may not have totally cried that first night as he searched frantically for it and sobbed so sadly. he clung to me so tightly as he went to sleep because i've totally taken away his security blanket and he was scared! so our sleeping rituals have gone a little less smooth without binky, but surprisingly it's been easier than i thought it would be.

which i NEVER thought i would say. and i have a confession to make: i'm scared without binky too! in the past, if j got too cranky/crying i could stick that binky in there and....silence...instant calm. but seriously, what do i do now if he has a meltdown in public??! how do i keep him calm in sacrament meeting??! how are we gonna get through our 5 hour airplane flight at the end of the month??! i'm looking for answers here, these are not rhetorical questions. help!

i've tried to replace binky with a cozy, uber soft, stuffed animal named "puppy" (he's pretty darn cute.) every time j calls out for binky i say to him, "hug puppy! here's puppy!" i know i'm probably just creating another separation anxiety induced security blanket here but hey, puppy won't change the shape of j's mouth. so i'll take it. but what's worked for you (or you all--since i'm not sure who exactly reads this except for my mom hah!)???

through this all, i've come to realize that both scott and i relied on the binky too much. because it's easy to give in and it's easy to have a fail-safe way of keeping your kid calm and quiet when he needs to be. because, let's be honest my j is a talker. he talks talks talks and i usually haven't a clue what he's saying (but i know most of it revolves around basketball, dad and toy story.) but yes he's a talker and kinda loud. he's my climbing, curious, silly, wild child. but i realized something else over the weekend (at stake conference actually)...it's OK that he's loud and talkative. obviously, scott and i take him out to the hall if he's being disruptive. but he's a toddler. he likes to be crazy. and i don't want j growing up thinking he can't speak up and say what's on his mind. that he has to be quiet all the time.

here's where i guess i project myself on the situation. i wish i had spoken up more when i was younger. mainly throughout junior high. i wish i would've not been scared to stand up for myself in certain circumstances and not let people walk all over me or make me feel that what i had to say was unimportant or didn't matter. maybe junior high and high school does that to everybody, i don't know. but on a whole, i was scared of hurting other people's feelings. which is great and all but sometimes you gotta look out for number 1.

so i want j to be strong and always stand up for himself, because i won't be there by his side during school (or maybe i will. in camo in the bushes making sure nobody treats him meanly. hah.) truthfully, the whole thing freaks me out and i know i'll bawl on that first day of preschool/kindergarten/whatever. not because i'll be sad he's growing up, but scared that someone's gonna be mean to him, steal his toys, not include him, say mean things, or heaven forbid tell him naughty things and teach him about the middle finger.

i totally understand now why my mom wanted to know every detail of my day at school. you gotta know if you need to go all ghetto on some kid/parents. who knew that a binky would inspire all this right? binky=stand up for yourself? in my world it makes sense. so i'll end with a Downtown Abbey quote since everything about that show calms me (my personal "binky" :) "Isn't it the business of parents to worry?" Yep. Boy it's stressful.