Goodbye Pacis

Well, at 3 1/2 Lorelei finally said goodbye to her pacis. We were aiming to do it at age three, but for many reasons it got put off. We decided things have settled down and we have a couple of months before any trips, so now was ideal. It was a little heart-breaking for me...hard to describe but its just part of her that was still "little" with our girl who is getting so grown up.

We gave her about 5 days notice (although we had been mentioning it since she turned three, just not the exact day) and started talking about the paci fairy coming. She picked out her own box at the store and then drew on the inside and out with markers, then covering it with stickers as well.

Friday night was THE night. Since she had to package them up, she got to pick out stuffed animals to sleep with in place of the pacis. Because her stuffed animals were currently taken away for punishment, this was an extra-special treat. I told her she could pick out any she wanted. As she went into the laundry room (the taken-away toy area) she said, "Hi guys!" to her bagful of stuffed animals. She picked up as many as she could possibly carry and took them to sleep with. Since she has so many of these already, we had a hard time justifying getting a new one for the occasion, and this seemed to be fine with her.

And the paci fairy came! And she even left "farkles"! :) It was so fun hearing Lorelei on the monitor completely surprised and saying in a whisper of excitement, "The paci fairy came!" After she called us into her room she made sure to show her dolls and said, "Look Christina! (Only named that because she was my cabbage patch doll. If Lorelei named her it would probably be Braidy Braid. :) ) The paci fairy came! And she left farkles!" Lorelei got an official certificate along with a note from the paci fairy that she was to have a fun afternoon celebrating with bowling and a treat for being such a big girl!



Saturday nap was very rough with her crying for her pacis.

Bowling that afternoon was a lot of fun. Both kids were ecstatic. They loved cheering for each other. Makin loved raising his arms up and yelling, "yeah!" When Brad would bowl Lorelei would say, "Remember Daddy, hit lots of pins, okay?" They used a children's bowling metal ramp thing about half the time and then rolled it the other half. There was also a laser lights show for part of the time and they loved dancing and running around chasing the lights. Brad was glad it only lasted about 10 minutes as they were a bit distracted from the bowling. :) Lots of fun to take them both for their first bowling ever!

Since it was already late, we decided to save the treat for another day.

Saturday night she did great. Sunday she did very good also, still asking for them each time for bed and sometimes during the day too, but no crying...so assuming we are going to make it through just fine. On Sunday morning we were talking about it at breakfast and she said, "I hope my pacis are okay." :( We reassured her that the paci fairy would take good care of them. But, broke my heart a little.