So Long Nuks!

Lily coloring Heart Bear's castle

Heart Bear watching Lily hard at work

For almost three years now Lily's Nuk (otherwise known as a pacifier) has been her loving companion. Yep, her addiction started early- pretty much the day we brought her home from the hospital. And we were thrilled. The Nuk worked like magic. Of course her love for her Nuk had some downsides. If we happened to forget one or loose it somewhere (without having a backup) we were in trouble. I remember getting up multiple times a night to put her Nuk back in (until the glorious day she learned to do it herself). If she happened to drop it in the car (and I couldn't retrieve it because I was driving) she would throw a fit. And of course there is the (what can only be) hundreds of dollars we spent on the darn little things. Sadly this probably isn't much of an exaggeration. You see, to avoid the above problems we always had to have multiple Nuks on hand. And somehow we managed to loose them EVERYWHERE! And again I'm serious. After we visited my parents last summer in Wisconsin my mom found one of Lily's Nukes at her hairdresser (where we had literally spent 10 minutes). Amazing. I have no doubt that we have spread Lily's Nuks all over our house, yard, neighborhood, church, local Target, city, state, and country. So it has been a far more expensive and a times maddening journey than we expected, but in the end I still think it was worth the contentment and peace it brought our little girl (and us most of the time).

So with Lily's 3rd birthday fast approaching we knew that it was time to eliminate the Nuks. We thought about doing it at various times during the previous year but decided that with the baby coming that we would just let her keep this one thing. And, to be honest, we knew that it was going to be a major struggle. And everybody else knew it too- it was pretty obvious how attached she was to her Nuks. So we waited until we were done with all of our spring travels and until all of us were healthy and then we braced ourselves for this little battle. We decided that we would just go cold turkey. We figured that this would make for a really difficult week or two, but that it would be easier in the long run than trying another more gradual way. So a few days ahead of time we told her that she was a big girl now and that in a few days we would be throwing out her Nuks. She actually seemed okay with it (at least at that point).

So the day before I took her on a special little date. Lily and I went to Build-A-Bear and I let her pick out, build, and dress her very own special friend. She named her Heart Bear and as you can see she is about as girly as you can get!:) This was our first time at Build-A-Bear and I have to say that it was really fun. We told her that Heart Bear was her special friend that she could hold and squeeze if she was feeling sad or upset about not having her Nuks anymore.

The next morning came around and I told Lily that it was time to gather up all her Nuks so that we could throw them away together. I threw the first two away. She melted down in the hallway and for about five minutes I just held her while she cried. And then I offered her her chocolate Easter bunny as a treat. She stopped crying and enjoyed her chocolate bunny. And then something incredible happened. She started helping me look for the rest of her Nuks and SHE threw them all away herself!! I waited and waited for the crying and fits to begin again, but a few hours passed and she was perfectly fine until nap time. At nap time she cried again (I knew that not having her Nuks while she slept would be the hardest) but she was fine after just a few minutes. The rest of the day she was fine. She woke up twice that night asking for her Nuks, but we were able to get her back to sleep fairly easily. The following night she woke up once. And that was it! No more fits or crying or anything. She gave them up easier than we could have ever imagined! Joe and I were absolutely amazed (and thankful). I am so proud of our little girl! So long Nuks- it's been nice knowing you. Oh wait a minute, we still have Nuks (it's just now they are blue instead of pink). Oh well, one down and one to go!