Feeling a little sad...

We've crossed a major milestone in our house this week. First of all, tomorrow (Oct. 5th) marks 4 months since the boys moved in. It's been an amazing 4 months. We've had great times and some tough times but God is so good and He is ever present in our lives. We started the summer with one little boy entering full fledged into the toddler years and another who was still a enjoying the baby years. We now have two very independent toddlers! In the past month, Daniel has moved out of his crib and into a toddler bed. Zachary has moved into a twin bed. Zachary is fully potty trained and Daniel has moved into Pull-Ups. The sippy cups are gradually disappearing. The last big step was the pacifiers. Both boys were still using a pacifier at nap/bedtime. That was until Tuesday...
The real motivation came at around 2 a.m. Tuesday morning. Daniel had woken up crying and he couldn't find his pacifier. We have about 8 of them laying around his room but just recently he had decided that only ONE would work...and it had to be THAT one. As I was on my hands and knees looking for this pacifier at 2:00 in the morning I had an epiphany. I am an intelligent 31 year old women who is on her hands and knee looking for a pacifier. Who is in charge here? It was time for the pacifiers to go.
While at work on Tuesday, I asked some of my teacher friends how they got their kids off their pacifiers and there were about 15 different answers. I picked one and went for it. That afternoon I went home and got all the pacifiers. I went and picked up the boys and we went to visit my friend Shanna. She has a 6 1/2 month old named Jonathan. The boys LOVE visiting with "Baby Jonathan". When we got there I talked to the boys about how they are both such big boys now. I told them that Jonathan is just a baby. Shanna explained that Baby Jonathan is so little that sometimes he needs his pacifier. I asked Zachary if he wanted to give Jonathan his pacifiers since he was such a big boy now. He was SO excited! He handed over every one of them without a fuss. Daniel was watching the entire exchange very suspiciously. I asked Daniel if he wanted to be a big boy too and give the baby his pacifiers. He said "yeah" and came over to his bag of pacifiers and handed them all over. The next step was to see how the evening would go.
The day couldn't have been better! Everything went so smoothly. It wasn't Daniel was in his bed and we had read books, rocked, sang songs and prayed that he looked up at me and said,"pacy". Uh oh...I reminded him that he was a big boy and that he gave his "pacy" to the baby. The look on his face was heart-wrenching! :( He just looked and me and cried. He cried for his "pacy" for 35 minutes. All I could do was sit next to his bed and rub his back and help him fall asleep. That was the end of the pacifiers.
It's been 2 days and everything is back to normal. No one has cried for pacifiers and they act like they don't even miss them. Now I think I'm having a harder time then they are. With that one action, I don't have babies anymore. I have 2 little boys that are growing up so fast. Some of my sadness is that I know we missed out on so much of their baby years. It's also sadness that the baby time we did have was so short. It's hard not to feel fearful that we're not ever going to get to do the baby years again. We love these boys so much and we can't imagine our lives with out them...but it would still be nice to give them a little brother or sister.(Don't tell Sean I said that! He'll think I really am crazy!) It's all in God's hands and His time...