The problem we've had is twofold. First it's affecting how his teeth are growing in. You hear about it all the time: doctors, nurses, dentists, your uncle's fourth cousin twelve times removed all tell you that a soother can alter how their teeth grow. You hardly ever see it, unless you are a dentist probably. Well Calvin's teeth have been dramatically affected. Genes or because he sucked on a binky for so long? Who knows and frankly who cares. The point of it is that we need to get rid of the monkey. Since Calvin had a hard time learning to sleep through the night I am very afraid of giving up the monkey. He's part of the routine. As soon as Calvin has that soother in his mouth his eyes get heavy and he's ready for bed.
Second problem we've had is he started chewing them up. He will chomp on them with his teeth until the tip is nearly ripped off. This is a huge safety issue! We remove the binky from the monkey, buy a new one, and sew it on. Then repeat this process.
I realize that giving up the monkey is as much my addiction as it is Calvin's. I really enjoy sleep now. But we've known for some time that we are going to have to take the plunge. Yesterday morning Calvin woke up and showed me a chewed up binky. I told him (for the millionth time) that he can't chew them or they are going in the garbage. I then told him that the monkey is broken, since he now understands that concept. He kept repeating 'monkey broken' and I agreed.
For his afternoon nap, we were heading up to visit Grandpa so he slept in the car. I didn't have to worry about him not going to sleep because of the lack of monkey. Crisis averted, I thought long and hard about just giving it up cold turkey. Looking for an excuse to not give up our crutch, I thought well he has a brand new cold, and it wouldn't be fair to force him to give up his method of falling asleep while he's sick. So while Sean was bathing him I ran out to go buy some new soothers we could sew onto the monkey.
When I got home Calvin was all ready for bed and reading books with Sean. I went in and handed him some little soother unlike any he used before and said 'this is the new monkey'. He held it in his hands, repeated out loud that it was the new monkey and we started our go to bed routine.
Each night he has his monkey and usually a car or train. Tonight he was clutching the new coast guard truck that Grandpa had let Calvin pilfer from our visit up there earlier. He was pretty excited about the coast guard truck so it served as a good distraction.
It's music to my ears on a normal day, but especially sweet today. No monkey, and he slept through the night. I am so proud of him (and me) for a successful day of giving up the addiction.
(On the way home from Grandpa's we stopped in at Wendy's for a hamburger for dinner. Sometimes it's the only meat Calvin will eat for a couple days, so I figure it is better than nothing. Today, even with his cold in full force, he wolfed down his burger. Then said 'more'. So I bought him a second one, and he wolfed that down. The whole second burger. It was like the good old days when he used to eat a lot of food. During the mad consumption, there was a boy who was maybe 7 or 8 years old playing peek-a-boo with Calvin around a planter between our two tables. His Dad was on the phone (sounded like business call) the entire meal so the boy was fully engaged in playing with Calvin. They both had a blast, and did high fives and waved and said 'bye friend' to each other as we left.)