Bye-bye Nuks!

In the middle of Christmas and New Years craziness, our baby girl turned 2 years old!  Part of me can hardly believe that she is already 2 and another part feels like she has been acting like a “big girl” for awhile now.  She talks SO much and is pretty big for her age so her baby-ness seemed to slip away a little faster than Ben’s did. 

One thing that didn’t slip away was her love for her pacifiers (or “Nookers” as she calls them).  Ben was the exact same way.  We took away Ben’s Nuks just before he turned two years old and wedecided from the very start that we would do the same with Hallie.

Ben LOVED his Nuks but surprisingly, he only cried about them for a day when we got rid of them.  After that, it was smooth sailing.  Hallie…………….well lets just say she has a little of her mother’s stubbornness in her.    In order to (hopefully) make the transition easier, we decided that we would take her to build-a-bear, bring her pacifier, and build it into a stuffed animal that she could sleep with.  So she would still kind of have her Nuk, but it wouldn’t ruin her pretty smile.

We told her this would be happening and she seemed sort of okay with the idea of being a “big girl” now who didn’t need pacifiers.  She was excited when we got to the store and picked out a cute kitty that would become her new stuffed friend.

When it was our turn to step up to the stuffing machine, she watched with interest while her kitty got filled up with fluff.  Ben had been to build-a-bear before but this was Hallie’s first trip.

After the kitty was mostly full, I pulled Hallie’s Nuk out of my pocket and had her give it a kiss & say goodbye.  Then we put it inside the kitty and the stuffing guy sewed up the back.  Bye, bye Nooker, Hello new kitty friend!

They ask you to name your pet and make a birth certificate so Hallie named her cat “Meow”, picked out some little bows for Meow’s ears and showed off her new friend and her little house.

Now as you can see, she looks pretty happy in this pic.  And she really was.  Since she normally wasn’t allowed her Nuks outside of the crib, the true test would come at nap time.  When nap time came, she finally understood what we had done.  She was surprised (and mad)  that she couldn’t open up the kitty to get the Nuk out.  She cried and said “No!  No!  Not yet!” and basically made me feel like the meanest mommy out there.  Eventually she fell asleep and we repeated the whole routine again at bedtime.  Same story for the next day. 

After a few days she stopped asking for her Nuk, but now I am the one missing it more than ever.  Even though she doesn’t ask for her Nuk, naptime and bedtime are now a fight every. single. time.  She used to get excited to go into her crib, have her Nooker, and go to sleep.  Now that her Nuk is gone and there is no incentive to go to bed,  she cries, says no, begs to stay awake and “play a lil’ bit”, and pretty much ends up crying herself to sleep every time.   She also is getting up about an hour earlier every day.  I think her Nuk used to help her relax in there for awhile in the morning but now the second she wakes up she is screaming “Mommy!  Mommy!  Mommy!” until I come get her out.  On the plus side, she has developed the habit of saying “Good Mornin’ Mommy!” when I come in there to lift her out of bed and its SO adorable.

I’m hoping this phase ends soon since I really don’t like having to make her “cry it out”  all the time but like I said, she’s a stubborn little lady so we will have to see how long this grudge lasts!

Coming up next…….a post celebrating Hallie’s 2nd birthday so stay tuned!