The Binky Bandit

Our baby girl is a thief! Baby O has been caught snatching the binky from another baby recently while at the babysitters!

It is a cute story really. Our babysitter watches three other children aside from Olivia. There are two three year olds...Justin and Madison. A few months ago Justin's mother had another baby and his name is Jordan. Jordan is close to three months old now. He is still quite tiny and not able to interact with Olivia yet, whereas Olivia is starting to get to the stage where she likes to play with other babies. One of the kids favorite things to do is to go for walks. Everyday the sitter loads the two babies into her side-by-side double stroller, the kids hop on their bikes...and off they go. On a recent walk the sitter noticed that Jordan started crying pretty hard, out of the blue. Not sure why, she stopped and walked around to the front of the stroller to find that Olivia had Jordan's binky in her mouth. It is a mystery how she managed to snatch the poor child's bink, but somehow she reached around and got it! And she has done it a few times since then. She has her own binky but I guess stealing one from another baby is much more exciting! I just love that story and had to share it with all of you. Here is a picture of Olivia with her friends...

The binky is a blessing and a curse at the same time. I tried to postpone giving one to Olivia as long as possible after she was born. But after a few long nights I gave it a try and she has been obsessed with it since then. She really only needs it when she is fussy. It helps to soothe her like nothing else. I try not to give it to her unless she absolutely needs it. Well now she has gotten to the stage where she is able to put it into her mouth on her own with no problem. And since we keep it attached to her bibs most of the time I find that she pops it in even when she really does not need to. But there are limits to the binky. I will give it to her at bedtime. But if she wakes up crying for no apparent reason she must learn to fall back asleep without it. In the beginning this was a challenge but after a few nights she learned to survive without it. I know we may face a huge obstacle when we decide to take it away from her for good, but until that day I am going to let her enjoy the comfort she gets from having it. Not to mention, it gives us a little bit of peace every now and then to know that it works like magic!

Well today is Olivia's 7 month Birthday! I cannot believe that we were just meeting this little person just 7 short months ago. And look how much she has changed since then! But we do not have much new to report right now. I think she is getting very close to attempting the crawling task. She pushes up very high on her hands when she is on her tummy but she hasn't gotten onto all fours yet. We are looking forward to watching her reach this milestone, but we need to prepare ourselves for what is to come when she becomes mobile. In the meantime I think we better watch those sticky fingers on Miss Olivia, as we now know how much she likes to snatch things from others! Is this the face of a thief?