Bye Bye Binkies!!

The Smith household has been full of change over the past several weeks! The weekend of Kieran's birthday - our little man decided he was to become an escape artist and pole vaulted himself out of his crib. Of course this would happen...with Aiden, we moved to our new house and I remember wanting to get him settled into his own room, so we set up a with a big boy bed at 18 mos. and never looked back. Aiden was such a sleepy boy...you would just tell him to get to bed, in he would crawl, and with a book and a snuggle he was off to lala land!

Wild man Kieran, on the other hand, I think both Chris & I could've been satisfied not moving him out of his crib until he was like - FIVE! But, as our little man has often proven to us just how quickly he likes to keep up with his older brother, he found his way to freedom much earlier than his parents would have liked. So...we made the decision to forge ahead and move Kieran into his toddler bed.

This transition has not been without its bumps. On most nights Kieran finds himself out of his room 2-3 times before settling in. Moreso, it's the random four a.m. visits that are much less appreciated - especially when Kieran is convinced that since he has awoken and is feeling full of energy it MUST be morning!! At least we have gotten him back to sleep on most of these nights, but the best way to describe is...we are surviving!

And...because Chris & I are gluttons for punishment, we made the discovery shortly thereafter that Kieran had bitten through 1/2 of each of his binkies. With the fear of him biting them off completely and choking on them in the middle of the night - we had two choices: (1) replace the binkies or (2) endure a visit from the binkie fairy. Again, we decided to jump feet first and removed all binkies from the house. Honestly, it was not as bad as I had feared. Kieran really didn't cry for his binkies - and anytime he asked for them we simply replied "all gone". In fact, I haven't even heard the word binkie for several days until we were going through pictures this past weekend and a picture of Kieran with a binkie appeared. All of a sudden he was on a quest for binkies again, but it quickly subsided.

In short...our little man has made some BIG strides over the past few weeks in this phase of him growing up. He is still my little boy, and in some ways, I hate watching him grow up so fast as there is a small part of me that would love to keep him as my little baby forever. However, it is fun to hear his conversations develop...and to watch his understanding of the world grow. We think he is so much fun and he brings a lot of laughter into our household. Now...if we could just find a way to tame that wild instinct in him, we would be golden!