Nummies

Nate was a binky baby.  It started in the NICU when he was born.  He was being fed by IV while I was pumping and storing milk for him.  He wanted to suck, so they gave him a binky.  He LOVED it, so we kept giving him them.  Most of the pictures we have of him from when he was a baby have a binky featured prominently.  When he was about 18 months old we decided that we would limit the binky to naps and bedtime and so we started to see more of Nate's face in pictures and he started to talk a whole lot more.

The binkies remained.  Nate was an active sucker and you could see his whole body relax when he had   his binky.  He didn't have them when he was awake, he didn't go out of the house with them, and quite frankly, getting rid of the binky was not that important to me.  I know that makes me a bad mother... I should care about his teeth, I should break bad habits while he is young, blah, blah, blah.  Every mother has her thing... this was mine.  I just didn't really care about getting rid of it.

As Nate got older he started calling with nummies instead of binkies.  When asked why, he would reply "because you put them in your mouth and you num on them: num, num, num..." it was freakin' adorable.  However, it was starting to bother me that he still had the nummy... still needed it to sleep... still sent the house into a panic when the precious nummy could not be found.  So, we, along with our dentist, set a deadline... 5.  The nummies would be gone by the time Nate turned 5.

I was planning on doing it on his birthday.  There would be so many other distractions, I thought that would be a good time.  However, last night I noticed that Nate had bitten a hole in the last nummy in the house.  I explained that he couldn't suck on it anymore because it would be unsafe.  He seemed ok with it and when I asked if I could cut the nummy in half he said ok.

He fell asleep holding the half a nummy.  No tears, no hysterics, no staying up all night.  I was a little surprised.  At bedtime tonight the half a nummy could not be found.  Nate asked for it once and when I said I didn't know where it was, he dropped it.  No tears, no whining, no nothing... I was amazed.

Now I am just proud.  Proud that he is such a big boy, proud that he is secure enough to give up that security blanket, proud of how he is handling this transition.  Proud... and just a little tiny bit sad that he is  is growing up.

Nate at 9 days old with his nummy