Weaning off the pacifier

at my sister's place for Xmas dinner, and playing on sis' Iphone

Mini is addicted to her pacifier. Or should I say, she used to be until 2 weeks ago. All of a sudden, I just stopped giving her the pacifier whenever she asks for it. We just told her it's broken and there's no more.

She whined of course. She whinged. She screamed and shouted "GOT!!". But, we calmly told her there's no more pacifier and that she's a big girl now, no need for the pacifier. She whinged and whined some more. 

Ash is still on her thumb. SHe has been since she was a baby. The reason why we decided to stop Mini from the pacifier and not Ash is because Ash only sucks her thumb when she's about to sleep. And the 'thumb' doesn't stay in her mouth throughout. Whereas for Mini, she wants her pacifier ALL THE TIME. And she would want it when she's sleeping too. Not so good, right? 

So, we decided to try to get her off the pacifier. Besides, she'll be going off to play-school next year; we don't really need her to be asking for her pacifier in school.

WHenever she asked for it and when we tell her no, she'd whinged for a bit and accepted it. She'd go about doing her thing. Of course, we tried also to distract her and not leave her out cold and dry. I was pretty nervous especially at night or when she's tired during the day and needed her pacifier to snooze. But, thankfully, it wasn't as difficult as I expected her to get. 

The only time when we felt really bad for her was when she didn't get a good night's sleep during the first couple of nights. At times, she would sob in bed with her eyes closed. Like the Malay saying "mandi tak basah, makan tak kenyang, tidur tak lena". As of now, she's slowly getting the hang of it and so far, she's stopped asking for it. We have been doing our part too (and warned everyone to do the same ) by not mentioning the word tee-tah (as she calls it) to her. 

After all the stressful anticipation, it wasn't terribly difficult weaning Mini off her pacifier. You might have heard stories of  kids giving parents a hard time when they were similarly weaned off. Or at least, that's what I heard. And which was why I was completely nervous at the start. It took me a while to pull the plug. Now that I've done it, I feel relieved that it went down relatively easy for Mini, which naturally, is a good thing. Plus, for me, I feel it's the right age too because at this age, she's still a little..err..blur so she'll buy anything you sell to her..hehe.

That's it. One down, one more to go : her diapers. Potty training hasn't been completely successful..*sigh*