28 month old and Fawell to Dummy

Daniel turned 28 month old last week. There were a few challenges for Daniel in last couple of months and he had overcame them very well.

1) Recovery from holiday - Daniel has done well on this. He recovered from jet-lag very quickly. We backed on Sunday and Daniel was invited to play with Justin at their house on Monday. I thought Daniel would be really tired after 5000 miles travelling and would probably be cranky at Joanne's house. But he got very excited to see Justin. He kept going on about his China trip. Daniel shouted '(I've) been on big... big... aeroplane.... ' with his hand pointing the sky. 'Been Beijing...Been Olympic stadium... seen PO PO...' Also, he was really excited about Justin's new toys. Justin got a new cooker and lots of other new toys following his birthday in January. Tuesday when i dropped him off at nursery, he was fine, didn't cry or whinging, he seemed to go back to routine straightway. In contrast, i felt so tired after coming back from holiday, it took me a week to recover.

2)Farewell to his beloved 'Ga Ga' - 'Ga Ga' is how Daniel call his dummy. We got Daniel completely off his dummy the second week after the holiday. Daniel stopped to use Dummy at nursery since 14-15 month old, but we continuously used it to settle him at night.
I wanted to wean him off dummy a few times in the past but it didn't succeed
Before China trip I've really made the resolution to wean Daniel off the dummy, but Terry said he cant go on a long-haul holiday with Daniel without dummy. Then we waited until we came back from China, one morning when we woke up, Daniel was happily eating his breakfast at his little table, he neatly put his dummy on the table, I said to him ' you are a big boy now, big boy doesn't use dummy, shall we put dummy in the bin...' he nodded ' yes...yes...' Just like that we went cold turkey. Daniel was OK all day during the day until the bed time when he asked for his Ga Ga and I told him 'Mama put dummy in the bin', then there was this ear-splitting scream. We had a-week up and down at nights and Daniel refused me for couple of days as I threw his beloved dummy in the bin. after a week, Daniel's sleep has gone back to normal.

One night last week while driving home after work, I was tuning the radio, then there was the talk about getting baby off dummy, someone phoned in talking about how they got their son off the dummy. He said they got his son off dummy when he was 2.5-3 years old, It was such a big thing, they actually had a little ceremony for his son by the canal before they threw the dummy in the canal. The presenter praised him 'you are really thoughtful!' The radio talk spurred me on writing this. The funny thing was Daniel now started to laugh at his friend at nursery who still uses dummy. One day he came home said ' Bradley is such a baby, he still got Ga Ga on...' Sometime when he saw other baby crying he would say ' baby lost his dummy'.