Bye Bye Binkies!

Right after our trip to DC, we decided it was high time to rid Henry of the bink.  Not long before the trip, we took him to the dentist, concerned about a large gap in his mouth that kept his top and bottom teeth from touching in the front.  The dentist took one look and said, "He's got a bink!" and said it is time to get rid of it.  Yikes!

Amelia gave up hers just a few days after her second birthday.  She had two pretty difficult nights and naps right after that, but we managed.  It seemed to help that she passed on the binkies to a baby--Baby Parker (who's 4 now!).  Sorry, I couldn't help putting a picture of her big hand off!

 We decided to follow the same lead with Henry and we had been talking about it for some time and Henry knew the plan.  This time we would give all of the binkies to Baby Owen (Henry's second cousin) since Henry was a big boy and Baby Owen was, well, a baby.  We packaged all the binks up in a little gift bag and then headed over to Owen's house. Henry immediately handed the bag off with no problems (I love Owen's face in the picture below.  "What do you want me to do with that, kid?" .  We called everyone we could think of and told them the news.  Henry was so proud of himself. 

The first bink-free night was a breeze. We hardly heard an extra whimper from him.  Day two was a little trickier.  That day, he asked for the bink at naptime, but seemed okay with the answer that Baby Owen had them all.  He cried for about 20 extra minutes that night.

And day three he had lots of problems biting and was generally pretty crabby.  He never mentioned the bink again after day 2 and went to bed with minimial extra crying on day 3.  Once that was over, everything has been smooth sailing.

Thankfully Henry didn't start thumb sucking like his sister did when she got rid of the pacifier.  And that noticeable gap where his top and bottom teeth didn't meet?  Gone!

The next stop is passing on the diapers to Baby Owen!