It's the construction workers fault

Our neighbors are doing some remodeling, converting their garage, adding a new garage and now some backyard landscaping. Today a "little digger" was there moving dirt from their backyard down the alley to a dumpster sitting on the street at the side of our house.

B was fascinated by the digger. We went out to watch it for awhile but it was too loud & cold for him. Instead he parked himself at one of our bedroom windows to watch. He would start yelling "DIGGER! DIGGER!" every time it got to the end of the alley. After a few minutes, he got quiet. I thought maybe he had gotten bored. But then it got too quiet, very suspiciously quiet.

I called to him and he came running out of my room laughing. That was when I saw him, looking at me gleefully with a pacifier in his mouth. He found the missing pacifier that I couldn't hide because I couldn't find it.

It's been over a month since we took the pacifier away. Things are much better that first week but he still isn't great about going to bed.

It scared me to see him with it. What if we were going back through all the problems we had when we went cold turkey? I decided to just let him have it for awhile. After 15 minutes, I found him joyfully sucking on the pacifier on the couch. Just sitting and sucking. I felt bad about it, but I plucked it out of his mouth saying "Pacifiers are for babies and you're a big boy." He cried "Have it, have it, have it" and then "I baby, I baby, I baby" and then he moved on to playing Thomas trains.

Tonight, he went to bed as usual. A little crying, a little playing and then sleep. Actually, he was asleep before 9pm. That's probably the earliest he's fallen asleep in a month. A coincidence??