Bye-Bye Bee-Boo

As if I needed anymore evidence that my two children are entirely different from one another, add exhibit 9347: the pacifier. We call it a bee-boo in our house, mostly because that's what Logan named it. When Katherine was a baby, we just called it a pacifier. Miss Katherine had a pacifier for about 5 1/2 months. And I do mean one. We owned one single pacifier and she never really cared about it too much. Mostly we used it to stifle the shrill, brain-piercing crying when we were in public places so as to keep strangers from giving us death stares. Then she clued in to the fact that no matter how much you suck on it, nothing comes out. So, she decided one fine day to just spit it out and move on to bigger and better things (like sitting up).
But Logan has been a lifelong bee-boo junkie. He has to have his fix. After he collides with something/someone, nothing soothes him better than a long drag on the bee-boo. At bed time and nap time, nothing but the bee-boo will do to ease him into his REM cycle. And it has been this way since the nurses in the NICU plugged him in. He loves his bee-boo like Dobby loves socks.

But then back around January when Logan started speech therapy/special ed, his teacher requested that we give the bee-boo the old heave-ho. She felt (and I agreed) that if he was sucking on that thing, then he'd have a hard time learning to talk. Plus he had a couple of teeth that hadn't completely grown in, leaving a convenient gap for the bee-boo to rest. He looks kind of like those olde timey people who had notches in their teeth from chewing on a pipe all day long.

Gradually we got the bee-boo away from him during the day. He still needed it at nap time and bed time, but we were able to snatch it away from him as soon as he woke up with decreasing tantrums.

Then a couple of days ago, Casey managed to convince Logan to put the bee-boo in the designated post-nap spot willingly. "Bee-boo in," Casey said and pointed to the bread basket. And I'll be darned if he didn't put that "bee-boo in." This was a major sign to us that the bee-boo was (finally) becoming less important to him.

So last night Casey pulled the plug permanently. I don't have the fortitude that Casey does; I'm swayed too easily by those tear-filled eyes and that trembling chin. I'm so glad he's willing to be Bad Cop sometimes, otherwise Katherine would still be wearing diapers and Logan would have that bee-boo until he got married.

About an hour after Logan went to bed the crying switched from "Hey, Mom!! Bring me the bee-boo!" to "Holy Crap! She's really not coming! Gaaaaaaaaa!!!" Casey noted the change and said, "He seems to be past the denial stage and has entered the anger stage." I laughed, but it seemed that as the evening progressed he went through the rest of the stages of grief.

Some 30 minutes later he switched crying again, and began the puke-coughing. Now, Logan is no good at puke-coughing (Katherine however, was a pro which is why we own a carpet shampooer, in case you ever need to borrow it). He tries, but has never successfully made himself vomit......until last night. We heard that ominous "uuuurrrp!" and knew we had to intervene. That was the bargaining stage ("Heh, if I puke, they'll have to give me the bee-boo lest I do it again").

I cleaned him up and Casey changed his sheets and Katherine slept through the whole thing, bless her heart. While Casey cleaned up the bed in the dark to avoid awking Katherine and did the sniff test on all his bed toys, I rocked with him in our bedroom and the true sorrow of the situation seemed to come upon him. I'm not entirely certain I have ever seen him more bummed out. That was the depression stage.

Then we laid him back down on some new sheets minus his blanket (which I just washed because of a diaper overflow...grr) and a stuffed moose and he started crying again, but it was only half-hearted. Eventually about two hours after we put him to bed the first time, he gave up and went to sleep (acceptance? I reeeaaallly hope that was some measure of acceptance and not just exhaustion). I'm glad it only took two hours to get him to sleep. I have seen enough Super Nanny to know that dislodging the pacifier from a child's life can mean many, many sleepless nights for everyone in the house.
Update:

Today at nap time he cried for about 40 minutes before he gave up, so at least he's gradually accepting the demise of the bee-boo...sort of. We'll see what bedtime tonight brings. And maybe if we're really lucky, those teeth of his will grow in all the way.