Leaps and bounds better!

Last November we took both boys to the doctor together.....Drew for his 2 month checkup, and Grant for his 2-year checkup. Grant was horrendous! He freaked out at the beginning when the nurse tried to weigh him, and the wailing never stopped until we left. It was completely chaotic, with two nurses in the room (one for each boy), then our doctor had to talk to us over all the screaming. Grant had been great at 18 months, so this was completely out of the blue, and made me nervous about ever taking him again!

Today we went for his 3-yr checkup. So much better! I was guessing that it would be, because he's been there a few times this year (although only once as a patient) and hasn't freaked out. Plus, it's a lot easier to reason with a three-year-old, I now know. I'm sure age three will have its issues, but Grant is starting to seem like my easier child now....he has actually become a somewhat reasonable, rational person! He still has plenty of crying fits, but he understands a lot more about the world around him. And now he knows that doctor's offices are just normal places where the people are very nice. So he can assume that nothing horrible will happen....whereas a two-year-old might not be able to see things in such a big picture.

Anyway, he is fine (and big....around 90th percentile in height and weight....although his weight included a ziploc bag full of Teddy Grahams that the nurse must not have noticed). He said some funny things to the nurse and he was just relaxed as could be (he also knew that he had candy waiting for him if he was a good boy). We had to take a potty break.....we're now at the point where he does pretty well leaving the house with underwear on......and then he had to get a few shots. Of course he hated them for a minute, but immediately was asking for his candy afterwards. So they must not have been completely awful!

PACIFIER UPDATE: "Anonymous" wrote a few days ago suggesting the Paci B Gone website. I looked at it and it looks interesting. Thanks for the link, whoever that was! Basically, it's a 7-day program that involves teaching your child about a pacifier fairy who comes in the middle of the night and will take his pacifier in exchange for a stuffed duck. Every morning the child wakes up with his duck and then gets rewarded with stickers, etc. for making it through the night without his paci.

The main drawback is that it costs $60 (they say it's fully refundable if it doesn't work). And Grant isn't really into stuffed animals too much, so I have a feeling he might not be so excited about waking up with a stuffed duck instead of his paci. So I'm trying a couple of other things, and I might do this if it seems like we're getting nowhere after a couple months. Mainly, the past few days I've really been trying to crack down and only let him have his paci for sleeptimes. And I'm trying to distract him when he randomly asks for it any other time. If he hurts himself or gets in trouble, he'll immediately ask for it. And once he thinks about it, he has his mind set on getting it! So I'm trying to distract him with Little Einsteins (his favorite show right now) or by suggesting we go outside. And yesterday we bought him chewing gum......hey, if it works on a nicotine addiction, it just might work on this pacifier addiction! He has no problem chewing it, and Drew cannot understand why he can't have some too! So we will see how that goes.....