I Spy With My Little Eye...

...and what do i see?

MY TUTU (pacifier)!

Lol. That was my daughter - the pacifier addict!

And oh the faces she would pull when we took just a little too long in helping her extricate her precious from the small red tupperware container poised high up on the shelf. Lol.

This post is a "tribute" somewhat to that little girl who needed her "fix" everytime she went to sleep. Her "love affair" with her tutu even started to extend to beyond nap times. If it wasn't because my mom made it a point to NOT let her chomp on it any longer than necessary (only during sleep times, other than that NO tutu for Janine), I think the pacifier would have become a permanent fixture on her face! Because her mommy here would, on A LOT of occasions, be forcefully and purposefully shoving her tutu into her mouth and allowing her to munch away at the little pink plastic at times no where near sleep time...all in the spirit of trying to keep her quiet during church services and (especially!) during car rides!

Anyway, if there is such thing as a PA (Pacifier-holic Annonymous), my daughter would probably have stood up in the midst of the assembly of babies and declared "Hi, I'm Janine and I haven't taken a pacifier for TWO MONTHS!" Yup! the little girl has been pacifier free for the last couple of months. She no longer needs it to lull herself to sleep or to use it as some sort of security blanket or just because she had a "craving".

Everyone is of course VERY pleased. We no longer have to go crazy whenever we forget to pack her pacifier with us. Or quickly snatch it away from her and make our umpteenth trip to the toilet to wash her beloved because she had either dropt or flung it to the floor.

How did we do it? Ahhh...we didn't do anything actually...she did it to herself! Hahaha! She had unwittingly thrown her pacifier into the bin ON HER OWN ACCORD. We of course capitalised on the situation and quickly proclaimed to her that her precious tutu "no more" because it is "yucks" already. The poor girl was looking quite forlorn staring into the bin for a while before deciding that, while it may have been her long time companion for so many many months, it's just too eeky to put something from the rubbish bin into her mouth.

The next few days that ensued were probably the hardest for her (and us as well!). She would ask for her precious only to be painfully reminded that she had thrown it away. The girl had to go "cold turkey"! And what a lot of tossing and turning she would do before she could fall asleep. We struggled along with her too because it seem to take her forever to drop off to sleep, and when you are sleep deprive yourself, it can get very frustrating. There were moments when I entertained the thought of retrieving her extra pacifier (we had resorted to keep one in each home to minimise damage control when we forget to pack her pacifier with us) from the refridgerator so that she can just please go to sleep!! Thank God we didn't cave in and perservered on because now we are savouring the "fruits" of our labour ;o)

In a way I am going to miss her pacifier days. I get a kick hearing her call so endearingly for her tutu or seeing her twist the little gadget in her mouth, with or without her hands, into the "right" position (FYI: NUK brand pacifers or milk bottle teats have a special shape so there IS a "this way up" position) or to see her grinning away behind her pacifier or (when she still a wee baby) to see little arcs imprinted on her cheeks after some tutu time. But of course there are BETTER things to embrace...like being able to capture sweeter, prettier shots of the girl sans pacifier...and more importantly, NO NEED TO SCRAMBLE when we discover (much to our dismay) that we have once again left her pacifier on the table top.

For the record, she dropped her addiction earlier than I did when I was a kid. According to my mom, I was still slurping away on my pacifier until I was slightly over 2 when finally, after months of wear and tear, it went flat and I was convinced to throw it away. Haha...she is better than her mommy in a way :P