The Woman is Bink-less

Ella is a special one.  She's 1 1/2 going on 20.  She likes her nails painted, a purse on her arm [when she's awake and sometimes when she's asleep], and her "pretty" or "sparkly" shoes on.  She acts like she's boss -- and don't tell her, but she is the boss -- and therefore, it should be easy for anyone to understand why Ben and I lovingly refer to her as "The Woman."

The Woman has lots of wonderful features.  She's got hair that would make several three year-old's jealous, she can scream "Snowman" when we sing Do You Want to Build a Snowman, she has a pretty impressive vocabulary, and her sense of humor has me laughing constantly.

But.

[There always has to be a but].

The Woman likes to haunt us at night time.  She was our one and only child to take a pacifier [which is an AMAZING thing].  But she was also our only child to take a pacifier [which is a HORRIBLE thing].  She has always needed it to sleep and, heaven forbid, if that bink falls out of her mouth while she's sleeping, she lets the whole house know.  Typically, she's crying or screaming.  Sometimes it's just a loud, "UH OH!"  It's not very cute when it's 1 AM.  And 2 AM.  And 3 AM.  And then she's up for good at 6 -- sometimes earlier.

Ben and I were getting exhausted from getting up several times a night with her for several months.  [I mean, really.  How messed up is it that it isn't our baby who is giving us sleep deprivation?]  One morning a couple of weeks ago we were both so miffed before Ben headed off to work that we gathered up the binks that we could find and -- snip, snip -- the binks were cut in half.  We handed them back to Ella who put them in her mouth, gave us a look that screamed What have you done to me?!, and she threw them back at me.  Excellent, excellent.  Ben left for work and I told him to be prepared for an insane wife when he returned home.

But Ella didn't really notice that her bink was gone throughout the day.  But when it was naptime, I let her have her bink that had the end partially clipped off.  She popped it out, put it back in, popped it out -- was really just unsure of what to do with it.  I didn't watch her on the monitor, but I do know that eventually she fell asleep.  The same thing happened that night.

The next day, I clipped it even lower.  She had just enough left on her bink to get a grip with her teeth to the point where she bit a hole through it.

Then after a few days of that, I took the bink away altogether.  She'd cry for a few minutes before she fell asleep, but it was never for long.  Now she doesn't even think about it.  Yay Ella!  And yay us!

But Ella's still Ella and she's still waking up at night to talk to herself or cry that she can't find her blankie that's lying on top of her. Ugh.  One day... Anybody know if Maleficent still does a sleep until kissed curse anymore?