Goodbye Pacifier!

Sunday was the big day. The day Dylan finally said goodbye to his pacifier. Our intentions were always to get rid of it when he turned 2, but that didn't happen. We found excuse after excuse as to why we should keep it around. Maybe it was us that had the problem. HA! So for the past week Dylan and I have had many conversations as to what would happen to his paci come the weekend. On Friday I asked him what was going to happen to his pacifiers. He said "Tie them to a balloon and they go up to the sky. Moon gets a paci and the paci fairy gets a paci". At that point I knew he understood.

Let me back up a tad.....We had to come up with an idea on how to get rid of the pacifiers. I've heard of many great suggestions but this one I came up with on my own. Dylan loves the book Goodnight Moon and we have a song we sing about the moon, so I thought this was a perfect idea. It was important that Dylan be included in all of these decisions so I did ask him if we could send his paci's to the moon. I explained that he was a big boy and a big brother and he didn't need them anymore. When I asked if this was okay, he simply stated "yes Mommy". I proceeded to tell him that the moon and the paci fairy on the moon needed some paci's. He never once said no or became sad.

So on Sunday morning we told him it was time. After nap time Zack took Dylan to the dollar store to pick out balloons. He was extremely excited. We had no idea how many balloons it would take to lift 2 pacifiers into the sky. At first they came home with 2 but that wasn't enough. I looked at Zack and we both agreed we couldn't go back on our story now. We had to make this work. So Zack went back to the store and came home with 6 more balloons. Yup, that's right we spent $8 on BALLOONS! Oh well, its for a great cause and for a little guy that means the world to us. SO WORTH IT! So Dylan had Elmo balloons, star balloons and one smiley face balloon. He helped Zack tie the paci's onto the string. Then it was go time!

I tried to get a picture of Dylan holding the balloons prior to going outside, but he was so excited we couldn't get him to look at the camera. So we proceeded to go outside.

We had him hold the balloons and give his paci's a kiss goodbye. For the last time we explained where they were going and how they would get there. He repeated back what we said, but with a smile on his face. Could this really be this easy? I was afraid he'd have a meltdown when he let go of them. He was giggling and smiling the entire time. It was very sweet to see him kiss the paci's goodbye. That boy melts my heart!

His face during lift off was priceless. His mouth was wide open with a GIANT smile. You can kind of see it in this picture above. And off they went.................

The one thing we feared..............the balloons getting stuck in a tree! In this picture it looks like just that, but we got lucky. They floated right on by. THANK GOODNESS! We stood outside and watched them travel up to the moon until we couldnt see them anymore. Dylan waved to them with a smile on his face.

In this picture he was saying "I'm a big boy!". We were wondering how long he would be okay. It was a bittersweet moment. My little boy is growing up. We knew it was time awhile back, it just took us this long to part from those darn pacifiers. After we took this picture, Dylan and Zack went and played golf in the yard. Dylan never brought up the paci again for the remainder of the day. At night he went to bed without any problems. He looked on his dresser where we kept them and stared for a moment, but never said anything. He climbed in bed and that was that. No problem. Goodbye Paci!

We are so proud of Dylan! Just another reason why he is so awesome.