A Sure Sign of Genius

This little girl loves her binky. When she was three days old, we went to the pediatrician to have her jaundice levels checked. As she rooted around for my collarbone to suck on, the pediatrician laughed and said "She's going to be a binky baby!" and she was right. From the time Clem was three days old, we have been on constant binky patrol: looking for clean binkies, extra binkies for the diaper bag, lost binkies, sterilizing binkies...and we promised ourselves by the time she got all her teeth in, we'd start weening her off that crutch. I thought it would go terribly, and when we tried cold turkey it did go pretty badly. But then I started asking Clem to give up the binky. When she woke up in the morning, I'd ask for the binky and 99% of the time, she'd hand it over. If she needed a binky at a transition time (especially after school and into the carseat) I'd ask her after 5 minutes or so if she was done with it and she'd nod and hand it to me.

Since this is a time thick with frustration and a few tantrums here and there, there are times that Clementine goes to the shelf where we keep them and asks for a binky. I always give it to her but ask for it back in 5 minutes.

She knows when she needs it and knows when she doesn't!

We've always maintained that this kid is a genius. I'm pretty confident that weening herself from binky is a sure sign of her genius. We still use binky at bedtime (but not at nap--isn't that funny??) but we are so thankful that this little bug has made it so easy to break the binky habit.