Leaving babyhood behind, far too quickly for my taste

Intellectually I understand that Gabbie is not a "baby" anymore. However, every time we start to leave a babyish habit behind, I am a little bit sad. Currently she is without diapers, eats on our regular plates with our regular silverware, drinks out of a regular cup, and falls asleep by herself in her big girl bed. The only baby habit we had left was the binky, and it was far past time when the binky needed to go.

Gabbie, 5 months old, with The Bink

The Bink, as we called it, has been a fairly constant companion to Gabbie since we finally gave in and gave it to her when she was 10 weeks old (we are not planning to hold out this time). It has been easy to let her have it. We limited it to nights and naps (and in the car on long trips) only when she was about 18 months old, and that system has worked well for us, unless she's hurt and then it's hard not to give her something that helps comfort her so quickly. Sure, she got plenty of hugs and cuddles too, but The Bink has been our ace in the hole for all kinds of situations.

But she's closing in quickly on 2 1/2, and we are now fairly committed. The Bink has to go. Gabbie helped us along in this process last week at daycare. We had one Bink for daycare and one Bink for home. After her nap one day they couldn't find The Daycare Bink. Searching high and low yielded nothing, but they figured it would turn up when they cleaned the classroom at the end of the day. When it didn't, they gave her a loaner binky for nap the next day, and after nap they caught her about to put the loaner binky in the trash. When they asked if she had thrown away The Bink the day before, and she answered, "Yep!" before running off to play.

So, down to one Bink, we decided it was now or never. She didn't use The Bink for most of her naps at daycare last week, but I gave in a lot this weekend due to the whole single parenting gig while Aaron was at deer camp. Yesterday she went down for nap without The Bink with no problem, but then some noise by the school's maintenance crew woke her up and scared her, so they gave it to her. Last night, Aaron lied to her (and I told him it was all on him now if she caught him in the lie, which is something she's really good at) and told her that he left The Bink at school and so it would be a little while before he could go get it, and then he asked her to lay there and try to go to sleep in the meantime.

Five minutes later she was asleep and slept soundly all night with no Bink. Success! For one night at least.

This morning we sat her down for a little chat and told her that if she went all week without using The Bink, that the Binky Fairy would bring her a big present this weekend. She will do pretty much anything for even a little present, so we'll probably be heading out to the store soon to buy her the promised present. I'm so proud of my girl for being so big, but I'm still a little sad that yet another artifact from her babyhood is going away.

I'm also preparing for the battles that are likely to occur when or if she sees the baby using a bink.