Or at least as clean as I can make it while suffering from a huge lack of interest in cleaning it. :o)

The carpet is vacuumed and the kitchen floor is mopped. I still have yet to wash the bottles, straighten the kitchen, and clean the bathroom, but those will have to wait till later. I was going to do them this morning as Gracie napped, but I ran out of motivation when my mailman showed up.

I love my mailman. He's a great guy. I just wish he'd deliver packages more often for me! :o)

So I am trying a new experiment. I have read in many places that babies are infinitely flexible folks (except for the few that are already set in their ways), and that the best time to try new things with them is before they hit toddlerhood, where everything is changing so quickly for them that they feel the only control they have in their lives is to maintain whatever it is that they're used to. This is why you're supposed to introduce a cup before a baby turns 1; wait too long and the baby will be attached to his bottle well into his second or third year.

The whole pacifier thing has ALWAYS bothered me. I haven't much wanted to use a binky, but Grace made it very clear from the get-go that she was going to have a binky and that was the end of it. I didn't have much of a choice. And I remember the first two weeks of her life when she would cry and cry and cry unless something were in her mouth. Yes, I nursed her on demand, even if I had just nursed her an hour before. I rarely put her down. I tried to meet her every need before she had to cry for it. But it was no use -- she wanted a pacifier. Once I realized my milk never came in and that she would have to be a bottle baby, I bought some pacifiers, and Grace has turned out to be an extremely happy baby.

But I have fears of Grace being one of those kids who has to take her binky out of her mouth in order to say something, and I never want that to happen. So slowly I am trying to wean her off her binky. One of the parenting magazines that I read had older kids who would set their binky on the windowsill for the pacifier fairy to take to another child who would need it, but Grace is too young for that kind of thing. So slowly I am phasing out her binky.

I used to attach her binky to her clothing and let her suck on it whenever she felt the need. Now she goes all day without using it, except in the car (when I remember) and in the crib. Yesterday we went shopping, and I forgot her binky at home. I do have an emergency one in my purse, but I wanted to see if she could make it throughout the afternoon without the binky. She did whine a lot as we were driving, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. It wasn't full-out screaming, just little moans and whimpers. So that experiment has been successful -- although I will not take the emergency binky out of my purse yet. I will still carry it in case something drastic happens.

And today I didn't give her a binky when I put her down for her nap. There is one in the crib, which she may have found to soothe herself to sleep, but I wasn't the one who put it in her mouth. I would check on her to see if she fell asleep on her own, but if I open the door she'll wake up. She's a light napper. I think in a few days I'll even take that binky out of the crib and see how she does. This morning when I went to get her up, she was fussing a lot because the only two things she'd thrown out of her crib were her binkies, and she's quiet if she has her binkies. But maybe she'll eventually forget about her pacifier and start just chatting to herself in the mornings instead of crying so much.

That's the hope anyhow. Wish us luck! :o)