Well My baby grandson is almost 10 months old can you believe it?

I can’t remember I think the last time we checked in with you (he and I ) was when he was about 4 months ago? They grow so fast and he is already walking – he just doesn’t know it yet and I don;t point it out to him because he is much too young. I mean come on. I just started keeping up with his crawling, climbing and other forms of transporting himself – flying…

He has had a couple of spills and tumbles and i tell you he has quite the little personality now. He talks and says

I have the best Grahams anybody could ever hope for

Clear as a bell. You think I am kidding? hrumph… I heard him, Kind of I hear him a lot, we all do because he is loud. I mean loud and nonstop

For someone like me. where constant noise causes some very unpleasant things, it is really hard to hear him whining crying cooing talking. Wow you may think I am a cold and uncaring Grahams, with a low frustration level and how can I be upset at a baby for the noise? Well I save all the frustration his parent. just one but we won’t go into that its about Caden not his …parent. well not that parent anyways.

And really to be more specific, it is parent / parents who get my ire if they have forgotten to bring the all important mute button with them from home. This one little piece of rubber can make all the difference in the noise level , thusly making a world of difference in my tolerance levels and the thing snowballs. It is such a simple thing, but so maddening too. Let me explain and tell you a story.

I think we all know what a pacifier is? How about Binky or nuk. Mute Button?

There are a bunch of different names for it but they all refer to the piece of plastic or rubber in various shapes and colors that we buy for our babies or bring home from the hospital in order to soothe the little dears, or to let them soothe themselves actually as they suck on them and sucking is a soothing thing for babies.

It is all fairly harmless in the beginning and some babies love them and some don;t care. None of my boys really cared too much for them but the girls.. it’s just a fact don;t read too much into it. My daughter Lauren, my grand baby mama was obsessed, addicted , attached, maddening with these things and it is so hard as a parent to know what you are supposed to do or whether they should have them after a certain age, as advice varies widely, or even where the damn thing gets to half the time.

One thing is for sure, if you have the kind of baby that gets attached to things that they can stick in their mouth in order to feel better, than if you decide to continue with the Binky/nuk/mute button (BNMB after the age of say 4 ..days, you are going to have a big problem on your hands if you don’t have that BNMB and a couple dozen for back up.

You think I am playing? No I am serious.

See the thing is that once the baby is mobile, it’s a crapshoot whether you will find where they decided to spit the binky out and I tell you they melt into the floor, like chameleons, it is nearly impossible to see them laying there and add a screaming crying baby while you look, you won’t find it. Not til you have gone to the store and bought another one and got the baby to settle down and you finally can take a deep breath because it is quiet. Then you will trip over it and possibly fall and break something, most likely waking up the baby who has been awake all day and is just so loud.

It wasn’t there 10 minutes ago though was it?

You might as well just buy, or register for, a whole boatload of them if you plan on using them to quiet and or sooth your child.

I am just trying to save a few steps and some time down the road for you. Remember, I am mother to six and grandmother to one, I think I have some kind of authority. I would say that 15 a year is a reasonable number so just decide how long you will let your child have the BNMB x 15 then add another 15 for the extra year it takes after you start trying to wean them from their security.

They are in cahoots with socks I am convinced.

So my daughter, grand baby’s mama Lauren was the Binky queen. She had a bunch in every color and shape and we had coordinating Binky clips which you could loop through the Binky then clip to the clothes – they are handy little things unless you happen to get your baby hooked on the type of BNMB with no hole to hook it through, then they are useless and you are left frustrated and cursing as you look for yet another Binky that you saw in the baby’s mouth,

a mere 2.875 seconds ago…

I have thought about inventing some sort of device to keep the Binky attached to the baby. Something like duct tape would be a super solution to this problem.

When we decided to tell Lauren it was time to give up the Binky, because as we all know babies don’t know anything about when it is time for them to have comfort ripped away, or when they are full or hungry or thirsty. Not a thing. At the time in the year 1995 (that is the year we started this process of weaning), it was not recommended to let them have them past when their teeth came in. No not their adult teeth, their first teeth. Well I wasn’t convinced that there would be lasting damage (there isn’t) and I leaned on that little thing for as long as I could. But logical parenting books prevailed and it was time to take the Binky away. We rid the house of every extra Binky we could find. You would not believe how much they charge for the dumpsters that handle strictly the BNMB. But we got them all out and feeling mighty proud of ourselves we sat down Miss Lauren whose BNMB was stuck tight in a vacuum to her face as we explained it was time to give it up and that was that. We were at her grandparents for moral support fearing a huge to do, lots of crying and teeth gnashing. She handed it over without any argument much to our complete amazement, but see we were new parent s we didn’t know any better. We learned though, oh boy did we. We listened for her during the night and she slept, the next morning going in to get her, we were greeted by our little girl – with a BNMB stuck in her face. Now where the heck she got it, we have no idea to this day. But even more puzzling was the fact we repeated this little scene many times over during the next year and the only thing that changed was the things we told her. For example;

• there are kids that have no binkies and need them and you are a big girl.
• you are going to have buck teeth (this was way down the list – and I might add not a really good thing for leverage as the baby at this age has no clue what buck teeth are
• we will buy you an ice cream. neve,r and I mean this, underestimate the power of bribery this one almost workedand finally after half-dozen more attempts;

we perfect the bribery approach.

We knew we had her down to a low supply even though we still had not been able to locate the stash..later we learned that they were in her pillow – not the pillow case, the actual pillow.

One night we sat her down and told her about the Binky fairy. Much like the tooth fairy, the Binky fairy comes to collect binkys that have completed their mission and need to go back to the Binky fairy’s castle so she can redistribute them to new babies… she was to put her Binky under her pillow and the Binky fairy would come and leave her some money. She was the tooth fairy’s sister after all.

She got $5 for the Binky. She slept with that money curled up in her fist for at least a month but she was a trooper. As long as she had her five, she was fine.

The moral of the story? Beats me. There are pros and cons to using a Binky. I wouldn’t get too hung up on taking it away at a certain age, unless your baby is nearing 20 years and still hasn’t detached then you might have some serious issues.

Now when you become a grandparent you don’t have to worry about the ages and stages and all that. You simply need to have the Binky, Need. there is no option if you want to have a little peace and quiet. I love my little monkey man and we talk a lot during the day but silence is golden and when you become a grandparent you can call it the mute button and not worry about the weird looks you get.

My suggestion is to buy some extras and don’t let them leave your house. And if you lose them in the house, wait ten minutes and try to be quiet, you will trip over one guaranteed.

Here to demonstrate the phenomenon of the mute button is my little monkey man. He is just like his mother, seemingly born with the inherent knowledge of stashing binkys. We put him in the crib and turn around and turn back around and its gone. I mean gone – good and gone is the kind I am talking about. It is uncanny.

Little Monkey Man in the Mute Button

He is such a ham.

we will see you next time on Graham’s Cracker Crumbs where Caden and I try to make sense of something. ❤

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