The short-lived return of the pacifier

The Friday before we went to Chicago Jeff stopped in at daycare to run Isabella to the doctor (she'd been sick and I was pretty sure she had an ear infection and her tubes weren't working... but she was fine). When Jeff stopped in at daycare Isabella was hanging out with a pacifier in her mouth. This was surprising because she stopped using her pacifier around Christmas, or so we thought, but, we failed to inform daycare of this! I still can't believe we never told them she had stopped using her pacifier (even though she actually hadn't, I guess).

I wasn't ever too concerned about her using a pacifier, I had just already received a lot of advice about how to get her to stop using her pacifier. I decided to not stress about it and when she was done, she'd be done. So... around Christmas, when Isabella was over-extended by lots of activity and teeth, when she was really upset we would offer her the pacifier and she would rip it out of her mouth and throw it on the ground. We decided we weren't going to force something on her that eventually we would turn around and try to get her to stop using it, so that was it. And it seemed so easy. I actually thought about it a few times after she was done with it and thought about how lucky we were that it wasn't some big ordeal to get her to stop using her pacifier.

But, I guess she actually wasn't done...

So, then I got to thinking, had she been wanting it at home and we weren't giving it to her? We decided in Chicago we would bring along some pacifiers and she could go ahead and have it.



It seemed to work well in the car, she was pretty content the second 1/2 of the drive, but she didn't fall asleep (and I really thought she would). Then as the day went on she got a little more difficult, we easy resorted back to popping the pacifier back in her mouth. But she like to take it and play with it and drop it on the ground, kind of a pain....

Then that horrible night of sleeping we tried to give it to her and she ripped it right out of her mouth again and threw it down. We then decided - she was DONE with the pacifier.

So, I talked to them at daycare and told them the situation and said she didn't have to go cold turkey, but maybe if they could offer her the blankie instead. I'll have to talk to them again to see how that's going. But now that I know she's been using it, we've started to think that maybe when we thought she was signing "water" she was actually signing "please pop a pacifier in my mouth". It seems to make more sense, the sign she does just kind of looks like water and when she does it and I get her water, she's not always so interested in it. Still trying to decipher that one.