Bye Bye Byers

Could we all share a moment of silence, please? We're experiencing a death around here, of sorts. We are in mourning, and it ain't pretty. Please help us to pay our respects by taking a look back from the beginning...

(Well, from the beginning of our digital age, anyway.)

Ah, poor Olivia. For she has parted from her pacifiers at last. May they rest in peace -- I know we aren't.

I have not exactly been proactive about weaning her from the addiction. John took the initiative and told her that big girls don't suck on "byers", so when she turned five they would have to go away. Not in the trash, he assured her. That seemed to lessen the blow a bit. So long as she knows they're in the house somewhere I guess there's always hope.

She seems to understand that it's time: John has spoken to her quite a bit about how they're ruining her mouth and how her big-girl teeth won't come in right once the tooth fairy starts paying her visits. As it is, we already have a vampire on our hands.

Here she's saying, "Help! Give me back my byers!" Not really. Actually she hasn't even asked for them back. But do you see the fangs? Really. Look closer. On at least one occasion someone has asked if she was missing both her front teeth, and they looked twice when told she wasn't missing any. Plus she's got that cute little gap between her front two. She got that adorable little trait from her daddy, before braces cured his. I'm almost sorry for hers to go away some day, too. Of course, we keep spending money on this house like we have been it may not.

We haven't seriously tried to take away her pacifiers since the one time when she was two and we decided little brother had been around long enough and it was time ... two is the recommended age to give them up, after all, and it was the age they were taken away from her big brother, with barely a hiccup.

Not so with Olivia. Oh, no siree. It was one miserable month. That's how long we lasted, so you can't say we didn't give it the old college try. Then we took a trip to Switzerland where she refused to sleep and ended up coming down with pneumonia. The byers came back.

Since then it's been one thing after another ... it just never seemed important enough, then daddy deployed and then we were about to move ... how could I take away her one great comfort? And Lord knows it was a comfort for me, too, and I was just glad she didn't suck her thumb: at least I wouldn't have to chop that off in the orthondontist's office some day. Besides, when her baby brother was nine months old he spit his pacifier out of his mouth and never wanted it back. Further proof To Each His Own, and to Olivia it was, most definitely, her byers.

And still would be, if she had her way. Oh, woe her. It's nothing personal, baby doll -- it's the orthodontic bills I don't like. And you still have your blankie, yes? Please don't look at me like that. And go back to bed while you're at it.