Broken Paci

When I decided Sunday morning that Joel's afternoon nap would be the last with his paci, we all prepared ourselves for some major drama around bedtime that evening when we planned to tell Joel that his paci was "broken". After his bath, I handed him his teddy bear "Teddy" and of course, as always, he put out his little hand for his paci, as "Teddy and Paci" have always been a pair... he never had one without the other. So, I gave him his broken paci, explained it had broken and asked him if he thought we should throw it in the garbage. He loves throwing things in the garbage, so he quickly took paci over to the garbage and tossed it in, without a single complaint. So, I thought, well, that was fun, but the real drama is yet to come when we put him to bed with just Teddy and no paci. But... bedtime came and went and Joel didn't make a peep. We did have to show him the broken paci a couple more times, but not a single whine out of Joel about the situation, and this is kid who has thrown himself onto the ground when a puzzle piece doesn't fit quite right on the first try. I am still baffled that the loss of paci did not even warrant even a mild tantrum, or at least a little whining!

And perhaps the funniest part of this story is that, the paci in the picture below, is in fact, the real paci... but this one just "broke" today, for this picture, and I won't be showing Joel this one. The paci that broke on Sunday was a fake one that looked JUST like this, but was actually Grant's. I did NOT have the guts to cut the real paci on Sunday, because that's just how convinced I was that Joel may not go to bed or maybe even ever sleep again without his paci:) I just laugh now thinking about how much I pondered and thought about how and when to get rid of this thing, and then leave it to Joel to not even care.