Thursday, June 19, 2014

Princess Ainsley

I’m posting this more for me than anything as I just remembered, for the first time, that this is blog is a journal of sorts.

Two things you need to know before I start:

1) Monkey is a princess.  She will even tell you as much.  Once the tutu and tiara (or any dress or her bathing suit) are on she will go around the house and say, “I’m a princess!” or “Princess Ainsley!”

2) Monkey is a child who loves to sleep with her pacifier.  She used to have it all the time, but we were able to quickly transition it to just naps and bed time.

Last Saturday we decided to stop using the pacifier all together.  I’m telling you, this child took sleep training better than losing the pacifier.  Before last Saturday we could put her down for a nap with a book and pacifier and she’d read herself to sleep.  At bed time, we’d give her a pacifier and she’d just roll right over and fall asleep.

But now.  Now she screams and cries and begs “Mommy hold you” (still working on those pronouns). It hasn’t really gotten any better. 

During yesterday’s nap I had to go back in and let her get out to chose a better book (somehow all the good board books end up downstairs) as she was pointing saying “this one.” So I got her out and she made a beeline for a pacifier that was on the floor near her changing table. Somehow we missed it during our collections.

But the real story is bedtime last night.  She screamed and cried and again begged, “Mommy hold you.”  So I eventually went back up.  Got her out, held her for a while, and used the two lines we’ve been using all week, “Ainsley’s a big girl” and “Ainsley’s a princess” and that “Big girls and princesses don’t need pacifiers.”

Then I asked, “Are you a princess?”

As I held her she looked and me and softly replied, “No.”

No comments: