I did it all for the Gookie

We knew it would be a heavyweight among parenting challenges: getting rid of the pacifier.

It looked as though we might avoid the drama when Corrin, on the eve of her 4th birthday, announced that 4 years old was too old to be sleeping with a gookie. She went to sleep determined this would to be their last night together, but it wouldn't be that easy.

The next night we tucked her into bed. Despite th determination in her eyes, she shuffled into our room 30 minutes later and acquiesced, admitting (and I quote) "I just can't let it go just yet." On her own, she set a new goal for herself—four more nights. But as that deadline loomed she seemed to regress. She even began sneaking off to her room for afternoon "under-the-pillow" rendezvous with gookie. We contemplated several other ideas before coming up with a successful strategy: We made a giant illustrated poster of her gookie (below) and invited her to color in a section after every night spent sans-gookie. Several nights into the plan, it was clear she had kicked the habit. She threw her pacifier into the garbage herself within a week.