Baca Fairy

Once upon a time, I said that Luis would be out of diapers and rid of his baca (pacifier) by his third birthday. While Luis was, in fact, out of diapers several months before his third birthday, December 22, 2009 came and went with no sign of departure for the baca. My excuse is that there was just too much going on with pregnancy, family in town, the holidays, etc. But I just didn't do it.

As my pregnancy progressed, I began to feel more and more pressure to break Luis of his pacifier habit before we had another pacifier user in the house. Then, when we were at the dentist last month, he reinforced that it was time for the Baca to go. So I steeled my resolve to do it and made a plan. After talking to many friends about their experiences, we decided to go the Baca Fairy route. The Baca Fairy, for those of you who don't know, is a fairy who comes in the night, collects up all the Baca's from your house and gives them to new babies who need them and leaves a new toy as a way of saying "Thanks!" (for some people, the Baca Fairy magically turns all of those bacas into a new toy, no re-gifting involved).

The week before the big day, I started to talk it up to Luis, explaining that the Baca Fairy would come and take the bacas, and that she would bring a toy. We also talked about how the dentist had said that the bacas were hurting his teeth, and we'd look daily in the mirror to 'admire' the 1/8" gap between his top and bottom teeth when he smiled. Luis was clearly a little gun shy of this idea.

I picked the Thursday before spring break as the Big Day, mostly so that we could be (hopefully) totally Baca Free before returning to school, as I did not want his teachers to have to deal with any of his possible withdrawal issues. Unfortunately, said Thursday arrived just 3 days before Luis and I were scheduled to take a 8 day trip to the East Coast.

Luis had his last Baca sleep on Thursday at school. That night, at bedtime, I told Luis that the Baca Fairy had taken all the bacas while he was at school, and that she'd come back in the night with a toy. He seemed to buy that story. I was prepared for all kinds of hell at bed time - sadness, anger, confusion, but mostly a lot of tears. I made a point of not planning to do any work, or anything really productive that night, as I imagined lots and lots of trips to put Luis back into bed, to console him, etc. I was ready to fight this fight.

Except that Luis went to bed without a peep; didn't even come down once. The next day, at nap time, he asked if there were any bacas. When I reminded him that there weren't, he took it in stride and went straight to sleep. It's been two days now, and all seems to be going well. Luis has barely looked back at his Baca days. It helps, a lot, that he LOVES LOVES LOVES the present the Baca Fairy brought him - a "airport rescue fire truck" (which really just means a neon green fire truck). He's told me at least 25 times how much he loves it.

Now, I'm just a little worried that on our trip, without the baca OR the toy, that he won't be so hip to the idea...