I want to thank everyone who left comments on Help Wanted.  They were so helpful, you have no idea. 

After reading all of your suggestions and talking to other parents (including my own), I’ve come up with a pretty good plan that I think I’m happy with.  And, surprisingly, it doesn’t involve taking the soother away.  For now. 

I’m definitely going let her keep using the soother at nap and bedtime, as well as during the day when she really, really, needs it.  But, like I was told a few times, she is still so little and really, what harm does it do?  When she’s old enough to understand better, which, at the rate she learns, might be sooner than I think, we are going to do one of the ceremonies that you’ve suggested.  Haven’t decided which one.

This is an un-plan that I can live with.  Thanks!

I need your help.  I need you to leave comments because this time and this time only I am in need of parenting advice from total strangers (or non-strangers from those friends and family who read.  Hi!). 

I am looking to get rid of Eirinn’s soother.  For good.  She doesn’t have it all the time, but would if I’d let her.  I don’t mind her having it during sleep times; at night and during her nap, but I’d really like to break her of it during the day and I don’t think you can have one without the other.  I’m having visions of a five year old Tornado Eirinn wandering around Zellers with a ’sooder’ hanging out of her face, sucking on it like Maggie Simpson.  I’ve seen kids like that.  They’re usually the ones wearing an adult sized diaper and a bottle full of Gaterade under their arm.  I don’t want Eirinn to turn out like that.  We’re going to tackle the diaper during Christmas vacation, but I was hoping that we could say sayo nara to sooder before then.

For a couple weeks, I’ve been laying subtle hints to her that soothers are for babies and she’s not a baby, she’s a big girl.  But she doesn’t seem to care.  Being a baby sounds pretty cool to her.  I’ve also pointed out that her friends at daycare don’t have soothers because they’re big kids and doesn’t she want to be a big kid?  Apparently, no thank you.  She’ll stick with the baby deal for now.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m still a soother fan; which, in Parenting Land, is like admitting to feeding your child chocolate covered mothballs for breakfast.  But I’ll admit it.  My name is Jen and I willingly encouraged my daughter to take a soother.  Not only will I admit that, I will also confess that I have every intention to offer it to any subsequent children.  It has on countless occasions calmed her, which has often been a difficult task, and allowed her to fall asleep.  It has done it’s job soothing her.  And I haven’t witnessed any of it’s “well documented” evil-doings; no speech delays or impediments, no misaligned teeth, only one ear infection in her life.  It has, quite honestly, been a lifesaver for me.  But everything has it’s time and place and I’m pretty sure the soother has reached it’s expiry date.  I think she’s old enough to learn how to sooth herself and how to fall asleep without the aid of a pacifier.

She also still gets a bottle before nap and bed, but I’m not ready to give those up for a very practical reason - she still isn’t eating a well-rounded diet (not for lack of my incessant trying) and needs those two servings of milk.  She also has inherited some of my anal-retentiveness and will only drink milk from a bottle and water from a cup.  No Milk Shall Be Consumed If Presented In A Cup.  So, for now, bottles stay.

Like I said, I need your help.  I need gentle, creative, effective ideas for easing the soother out of all of our lives.  Also, please leave any of your own soother stories, so I know we’re not alone.

I had to take a half an hour off of work this afternoon so I could go to 3 different stores to find Eirinn’s specific soother.  No other soother will do.  Apparently she chucked it overboard on a walk this morning, reminescent of our lovely stroll through the nature area.  Only this time she has improved upon her surreptitious covert operation because it wasn’t until nap time that it was discovered missing. 

When my panicked mom called, desperate that I may have stuck the soother in my purse at lunch, I thought the gods were speaking, telling me that it is time to lose the sooce.  That thought lasted, oh, about as long as it took for those same gods to nudge each other, smirking and giggling, shaking their heads at how easy it was to punk me.  I started sweating.  My blood pressure immediately elevated.  My mouth went cotton-dry.  My nervous, bouncy leg was keeping time to Flight of the Bumblebee. 

I stood up with a jolt and announced to everyone who could hear “I’LL BE RIGHT BACK!“