Byrne After Reading: Bye Baby

Bye-bye Baby!!!

Baby has been a part of our lives, most importantly Ellis' life, for the past 20 months. I honestly am not sure that all of us would have survived without Baby. Baby, we will really miss you!! I really enjoyed looking at Ellis with his baby over the past 20 months when putting together this post. Baby was Ellis' little lovey. He would fall asleep with one in his mouth and rub one in each hand (we kept about 3 in the crib each night). Looking back, Ellis even had a Baby in the hospital (they gave it to him when he got kicked out of the nursery the first night after only 45 minutes). Within the past 6 weeks or so, Brad and I tried to talk to Ellis to tell him only babies needed a paci and he was a big boy and he didn't need a baby...this talk ended with Ellis naming his paci Baby. Ellis would cry out in the middle of the night - Ma ma, Da da, Ba be. We tried back in June to only limit Baby at nap and at night and were successful for five full days and then HFMD Round 2 hit and it was all over. Since then, Ellis has been playing me, only getting baby at nap at school and then as soon as I would walk in the school door, he would stand by his cubby pointing up to his Baby. This time around, we went cold turkey. Ellis got baby at nap last Monday and then when I picked him up from school I told him to tell Baby bye because Baby only stayed at school now. The car ride, night, and bedtime consisted of Ellis saying Baby more times than I can count. The first two nights I expected much worse, but the third night was just terrible!! I had thrown out all the pacis I could find right when we got home and I'm so glad I did or else I may have caved. I did contemplate digging in the trash for one...for about 30 seconds. We are still adjusting here, it's been bad but honestly I expected this to be MUCH worse. Thank you for always being there Baby, except when you would jump out of Ellis' hands in the car and land in a spot I couldn't reach; except when you would fly like a shooting star out of Ellis' crib; except when you would play hide and go seek in the crib, bed, diaper bag, etc. We will miss you!!

We loved the Nuk sports pacis (we had baseballs, footballs, soccer balls, basketballs).