Pha-Pha / No pha-pha

John calls his pacifer a pha-pha (the "ph" being the "f" sound, I sort of made up the spelling). He loves his pha-pha dearly and we've been trying to wean him off it for about a month now. Well, my wonderful DH has been, I'm a bit weaker in this department. But John is doing great, he only gets his pha-pha at nap or bed time and even then, not all the time. We really are making good strides.

Tonight, I gave John his bath as usual and brought him to the bed for diaper / jammies / snuggles / prayers. This is our usual routine, I do bath, Vito gets bottle and all three of us meet up for prayers. Bottle usually arrives at the same time that John lands in our bed.

Tonight, bottle was a few minutes behind schedule (traffic jam in the kitchen perhaps?). As I was trying to distract John as we waited, he looked up at me and asked for pha-pha. "Daddy will bring bottle in one minute" was my reply. He looked intently in my eyes and his eyes welled up with tears -- "no pha, no pha" was all he said, as he had a terrified look. I felt like he was telling me he knew his pha-pha days were limited and he was going to lose it forever. Luckily Vito made it in with the bottle, John calmed down and we started our prayers. The moment had passed and John didn't ask for pha-pha again, and went to bed without it. But I remember that look in his eyes, my little boy breaking my heart...

Much credit to "Big Daddy", he's much stronger with this weaning than I am.