We're BINKY FREEEEEEE!!!!!

Do any of you ever listen to that smart (but very annoying) talk show host Dave Ramsey?  He writes and talks all about becoming debt free.  At one point in his radio program he allows people to call in and make the announcement:  "WE'RE DEBT FREE"!  After they scream this, he plays a triumphant song and there are cheers.

I think there should be a radio show that parents like Jeff and I can call into and make the same announcement about our freedom from binky's (pacifiers, whatever you call them).  I am dying to just yell from the rooftops that WE'RE BINKY FREE!!!

We actually have been for about a month now...I'm just getting around to posting about it.  Looking back, I think I was more addicted to those little plastic things than either of the girls.  It was just so easy and so nice to have them waiting in the girls' beds.  For them to suck on for comfort seemed to be such an important part of their sleeping ritual.  We were doing fairly well at slowly working them out when we all got so sick...then we took two or three steps back...I just didn't have the energy to even try to say no to those magical binkys.

When we were all feeling better, we finally took Emily Gray's advice (thanks Emily) and cut a little slice in the nipple of both binkys (Norah thank goodness has never really been into binky's...just the twins).  Laurel sucked on hers a couple of times and then declared it "BrOken" and promptly threw it away.   Maisy continued to try and suck on hers for a couple of days and finally decided it wasn't giving her the satisfaction she craved and gave it to Laurel (who had been telling her for days that it needed to go in the "Gaabadge") to throw away.  For a couple of weeks after, every time the girls would lay down to sleep they would very seriously say the following..."Binky's BrOken...Gaabadge".  We would agree and that was the end of it.  So easy...

I put together a collage of some of the many photos we have of the girls enjoying their binkys.  I actually felt a little bit of sadness putting it together...just knowing that the twins will never be this small again and never (hopefully) need to suck on a binky again.  Those days are gone.

A while ago my good friend Tawny shared a funny, funny chapter with me from Erma Bombeck's book "Motherhood, The Second Oldest Profession".  I have to share it here because at the time it made me laugh so hard I cried:

Pacifier Pioneers

"A group of mothers was discussing the ten most significant contributions to the quality of their lives one night.  Most of the suggestions were quite predictable: penicillin, fire, electricity, the automobile, ...."

"I don't care what women say, the number one choice for me is the pacifier.  How many women would be with us today were it not for that little rubber-plastic nipple that you jammed in a baby's face to keep him from crying?"

"Today, it is as much a part of a baby's face as his nose or ears, but thirty years ago the pacifier was considered a maternal crutch, a visual that screamed to the world, 'I can't cope.'"

"I was a closet pacifier advocate.  So were most of my friends.  Unknown to our mothers, we owned thirty or forty of those little suckers that were placed strategically around the house so a cry could be silenced in less than thirty seconds.  Even though bottles were boiled, rooms disinfected, and germs fought one to one, no one seemed to care where the pacifier had been."

"We found them under beds, buried in sofa cushions, thrown in ashtrays and lost in the garbage.  No child ever got sick from 'fooler around the mouth.'"

"I kept the pacifier a secret from my mother for as long as I could.  But one day she dropped by unexpectedly and demanded, 'What is this?'"

"'Do you know that if you keep using this pacifier, by the time the baby is four years old, her teeth will come in crocked and her mouth will have a permanent pout?'"

"' Do you know, Mother, if I do not use that pacifier, I may never permit her to become four?'"


" We American pioneers of the pacifier have given it the respectability it deserves.  After all, what other force in the world has the power to heal, stop tears, end suffering, sustain life, restore world peace, and is the elixer that grants mothers everywhere the opportunity to sleep...perchance to dream?"

GOOD BYE BINKY...THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE TO OUR FAMILY...WE WILL MISS YOU....BUT WE ARE GLAD YOU ARE GONE!