The peanut has been a diehard binky (pacifier) fan from the way back. His speech therapist tried to get us to break him of the habit back when he was getting speech therapy last year, and his dentist has told us that he must be free of the binky before his third birthday. When we first started giving him the binky, I first refused to believe he would accept it, then refused to believe that he would use it beyond his first birthday. Boy, was I a fool. That kid LOVES the binky. He hoards them, hides them around the house, can't sleep without them. Or so we thought.
The time has come to break the beepee habit. We started by telling him that the beepee fairy would be coming to our house and he needed to leave all his beepees for her. In exchange, she would leave him a special gift. I thought it might be a special little toy or something, but as the beepee fairy date approached, it became clear we needed to pull out the big guns. Whenever we asked him what he'd ask the beepee fairy for in exchange, he told us he'd just ask her for more beepees. Doh! So we conjured up this idea that a live fish in a tank would be good, because the bubbles would be good ambient noise in his room and the fish swimming around might keep him company at night when he awoke without a pacifier.
So yesterday we flew home from Rhode Island after a marathon trip to see Granny and grandpa. We were exhausted, and the peanut was coming down with a terrible cold. or croup? hard to say, either way, we all felt pretty drained. I then hopped back in the car and went to the pet store to get an aquarium. It turns out you can't just pop into the pet store and get a few fish, lickety split. It takes time, deliberation, lots of instruction from the guy in the fish department, and then about an hour of set-up to get an aquarium up and working. I set it up in the laundry room, then after the peanut went to bed we moved the fish into his room. It turns out a 10 gallon tank with gravel and fish is really heavy! who know?
In the morning he was more concerned with the fact that he had a really gross diaper and felt miserable from his illness than the whole fish/beepee fairy thing. Once he had a minute to enjoy the fish, his next question was "When will the beepee fairy bring me some new beepees?"
We never win.
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