Ava and her Pacifier

Oh Ava and her pacifier. She loves it so. She calls it a "pat" and begs for it whenever she's grouchy, wants to be comforted, and will even tell you she wants to go "night-night" in order to get it. With a new baby on the way we decided that it was probably time to break our dear daughter of her reliance on "pat". So, last Friday night we cut the tip off of one of her pacis and gave it to her to fall asleep with. Of course she cried and fussed. We let her cry for a few minutes and when I went back in to comfort her she threw the broken paci at me and declared, "TRASH". I picked it up and explained that she could hold her blankie and her puppy but this was the only paci she could have. This turned into a full hour of desperate screaming. It was verging on a panic attack. We entered the room every 15 minutes or so to comfort her and the child was so frantic that she begged for everything she could think of and asked for milk, wa-wa, juice, up, you name it she wanted it. Most of all she wanted her beloved "pat". At the end of the hour Michael decided Ava had been through enough psychological damage for the day and gave in. Within 5 minutes the child was sound asleep. And that's the end of trying to wean her off the pacifier, at least for the time being.
Plane rides, weaning from the pacifier, and potty training. Yikes! Ava's had an exciting month to say the least! We've had a potty chair for well over a month now and at first Ava was scared of it. She's now to the point where she tells us when she needs to poop and will sit on the chair but has yet to pee or poop in the chair. She likes the novelty of sitting on it. But, yesterday Ava peed in the potty at daycare!!! We are thrilled and can't believe how fast she's growing up. Now if we can keep the momentum going perhaps we’ll get this child potty trained. Our next parental feat: moving Ava into a big girl's bed.