God bless our garbageman! He's a regular little mother's helper....

This past weekend was a momentous one. Not only did M and I install (incorrectly, and then correctly) our new set of surround sound speakers without swearing or getting mad at each other, but Monkey THREW AWAY HER PACIFIER!

Let me repeat myself. Monkey willingly threw away her pacifier. It is gone. As in literally in the garbage, in the garbage truck, now in some godforsaken landfill...the point is, it is GONE FOREVER. Yes, my abuse of caps indicates how proud I am of my little girl. Ahem - my big girl.

Monkey has been addicted to the paci (aka the "please") for a while now. She was doing really well without it, and then got that nasty upper respiratory infection that required us to gas her with a mask three times a day. She (and we) were so traumatized by this that we let her have the pacifier whenever she asked for it, and lately, she asked for it all of the time. Literally it would be the first thing she asked for when she woke up. Before mommy, before milk....it was the please. And, since she wanted it in her mouth all the time while talking, it had to go. We didn't want her language to be delayed because she was talking around a pacifier.

Last Friday M and I went into Monkey's montessori daycare for a meeting on how to ditch the paci. We met with her lead teacher, Veronica, who told us this wonderful crazy story about how Roman (Monkey's favorite classmate) had given his pacifiers to the garbageman, and since he's obsessed with garbage trucks this worked brilliantly for him. I thought it was a great story, but M and I were going to just have Monkey collect and throw all her pacis into the garbage, then bring the garbage to the basement. No showy theatrics with the garbage truck for us. And besides, we didn't know what the garbage collection schedule was.

We'd been telling Monkey that her paci was going to go away for a while now, so this weekend wasn't a surprise. She's not a fan of surprises, and likes to know what is going on - routine is a toddler's friend, I tell you.

Saturday morning Monkey asked for a bagel for breakfast (I told you she's a New Yorker!). There weren't any in the apartment, so I threw on a sweatshirt and baseball (yes, Yankees) cap and out we went to the deli. With a paci.

On the way back, I noticed that the garbage was being collected. I decided what the hell - let's go for it!

We walked up to one of the garbagemen, and asked if we could throw away her pacifier. The guy must have kids, because he gave me a wide smile and said "whatever you need...". They even paused what they were doing to accomodate us.

Monkey gave the pacifier to the garbageman and said "bye bye paci", he made a big show of throwing it into the back of the garbage truck, and then they flipped the switch and crushed the garbage in the back! Something crunchy was in there because it made a lot of noise and splinters came flying out. It was awesome. I was SO proud of her! And god bless those garbagemen, pausing in their thankless job to help us out. They were wonderful.

We went upstairs and collected the rest of her pacifiers with daddy's help. Each time she threw one in the garbage bag we whooped for joy and clapped, and told her what a big girl she is. Then we ran back downstairs and got lucky enough to find another truck going by. Monkey threw the bag in the back of the truck and we were done!

She's asked for it since, but each time we remind her that she threw them away. And you know what? She's been just fine. My little girl is such a big girl!