Benjamin is going on Day 5

of being pacifier-free! The day we went to the Embassy, we let Benjamin have his pacifier and loveys (lovies?) in the car since we made him get up so early. The rule for quite some time has been that he only gets them in his bed, and on rare occasions, like Thursday, in the car.

But we noticed that day that he had chewed his pacifier to pieces, so we had to take it away. At home that night, when he went to bed, we offered the other (brand new) one instead, but he didn't want the orange one. He kept saying, "No orange! Blue? Blue? Blue?" over and over. Since he refused the orange one and the blue one was out of commission, he got to go to bed without one. We weren't sure how that would go, but he didn't cry at all and went straight to sleep.

The next night, I offered the orange one again, but he still didn't want it. "No orange!" He asked for his pacifier a few times ("Tuh-tut" in French), and then asked for Daddy (maybe he thought I was just being mean and he'd have a better chance with Daddy!), but went to sleep pretty quickly and with no crying.

I guess by then he realized it was orange or nothing... because the next night he asked for the orange one. But he waited too long, because we already knew that he could sleep just fine without one, so we told him no, that he is a big boy and doesn't need a pacifier anymore. He didn't argue much, so we'll see how long it takes him to stop bothering to ask for it at all.

You wouldn't think a former long-time finger-sucker and a former long-time thumb-sucker could be so heartless, would you? But then, fingers and thumbs don't get chewed off and have to be replaced, either. Benjamin got to switch to real cups months and months ago for the same reason, he kept chewing up his Nuby sippy cup spouts and it's hard to find replacements here, so we just put them away.

By the way - people at church were impressed he knows his colors already. Nothing like having your own personal preschool teacher (my mom) around for a month. Good job, Mom! He is also getting better at numbers - when we were driving to church Sunday, he saw airplanes. But he didn't say "Airplane," he said "Two airplanes!"