Milestone #1

We have 3 major growing up milestones for Bennett. We've had these for a while and just haven't wanted to deal with any of them yet. Until about a month ago.

Bennett has many great loves. 2 of them are and were school buses ... and his paci. My goal had been to take away his paci before Grant was born, but I wasn't comfortable with taking it from him cold turkey. It never seemed like the right time to remove his source of comfort and then all of  a sudden he was 2 years old and still using a pacifier. Then he was 2 years and 3 months and still using a pacifier. By now, we'd limited it to only naptime and bedtime. Of course, there were those times during the day that I'd find him sneaking it in his mouth. Silly boy. He totally knew what he was doing and that it was time. We talked a lot about what were the differences between a baby and a big boy. I kept hoping he'd just hand it to me one day and say, "Mom. I'm a big boy. No more paci for me."

Right. In my dreams.

Enter his growing love/fascination with school buses. I thought every little boy should own their own school bus and found him this one to give as a small present on our road trip this summer.

When Kc saw this bus, he knew (as well as I did) that Bennett was going to freak out about it and said that we couldn't wait until our trip to give it to him. He's such a sucker for good gifts! We decided to give it to him right after dinner and made a big deal about what a big boy he was now and we had a special present for him just because we loved him so much.



His excitement was over the top! So incredibly precious. I knew that this bus would be a constant companion for the next several weeks and so we decided to capitalize on this new toy. That night, at bedtime, Kc explained that he could have one thing to go to bed with him - his school bus or his pacifier. He held one in each hand and explained again that it was Bennett's choice - he could choose to sleep with his pacifier or his school bus. 3 times in a row he said "school bus" and so we went with it. He went to bed great and then about 15 minutes later, he cried for his paci. We went in there and told him he could have his paci, sure thing, but that we needed to have the bus. One or the other. He choose the bus, again, and went to sleep. The next morning, he asked me where his paci was and I reminded him that he chose to sleep with his bus and he says to me, "I choose bus. No paci, just bus."

There hasn't been anymore tears or anxiety over giving up his pacifier. He's asked about it since then but he's totally satisfied with the reminder that he chose the bus over the paci. I still can't believe that he transitioned so well. I was all prepared for massive amounts of tears and sadness. Who knew all I needed to do was find "the" perfect gift to trade out!

Next up, sleeping in his bunk bed. :)