The Littlest Addict

Gabe has a monkey on his back. Actually, for the past two days, he has had an actual monkey on his back--a monkey band-aid. He got a bite while playing outside Tuesday night that Libby covered with the giant band-aid. But that's not the one I'm talking about. I'm referring to his binky problem.

Now that we've had one of each--a binky user and a non-user--and I can compare the differences in sleep patterns between a child who uses one and one who doesn't, I don't regret getting him hooked in the least. He didn't sleep through the night until he was one, of course, but for a few months before that he was only getting up once a night and, often, that time we were able to simply re-bink him and he went back to sleep. In addition to being a simple remedy, it also meant that his diapers didn't need to be changed to avoid a leaky mess.

Norah, however, is another story. This past week--after her nightmarish weekend of being sick and teething at the same time, which resulted in her sleeping no more than forty-five minutes at a time--she's made a few steps, FINALLY getting down to just one or two wake ups during the night. But then, she requires at least six ounces of fluid in her bottle to get back to sleep, so a pair of bottles (AND the one she takes when going to sleep) means her bed, her clothes, her little plushy bed mate, her pillow, and anything else in her crib is as wet as if we'd dropped them in the pool and needs either a good wash or a semi-negligent parent who doesn't mind the smell of dried pee.

I'll take the binky addiction, thank you very much.

And it is a full-blown addiction at this point. I know this because I watch House (or used to, anyway, through the first three seasons or so). Towards the end of the third season (I think, though it might have been the second), House crosses paths with a vindictive police officer. House, being House, is a jerk and offends the officer's sensibilities. To get back at him, the cop makes it his mission in life to catch House up in his pain killer addiction.

Of course, nobody House works with knows the full extent of his addiction (and neither did anybody else to this point because it wasn't yet deemed a viable plot element). The cop gets a warrant for House's apartment and finds dozens of prescription bottles hidden throughout the house. Addicts, we're told, do this all the time. To make sure they always have a fix close at hand, they will make assurances against ever running out by stockpiling and hording, to the point where they aren't even aware they have so much of the addictive substance around.

At the time, I filed this away as possibly interesting but more than likely fictionalized information (along with my knowledge that a strike, if properly placed, to the front of a jukebox will illicit the exact song one wants to listen to) that I learned from TV shows. I have a goodly sized portion of my brain dedicated to this information. I believe it is now housed in the part of my brain that I used to use for remembering names and directions--which is just as well, why would I need to remember how to get to what's his name's house anyway? Unless HE knows how to make the jukebox trick work. Then, damn my brain!

Anyway. I think I have a bit of proof that this piece of addiction trivia is, in fact, legit, and Gabe has provided it over the past week.

For months now, we've been trying to limit his binky usage, with very little success. We've tried reasoning with him ("Big kids don't use binkies." And then we give him a list of big boys who don't). We've tried shaming him ("Norah doesn't use a binky, and she's a baby!"). We've tried bribing him ("If you let us have all of your binkies, you can have X toy." This one seemed to work at first, until he realized what we were actually asking of him--I guess he thought it was a part time trade, and try explaining a contractual agreement to a three year old). And we've tried being annoyed with him ("Take your binky out of your mouth! We can't understand anything you say when you talk with it in there."). To no avail. All of our jibes and comments roll effortlessly off his back as he mentally weighs the options of being without his binky versus not being hassled about it and finds the latter not all THAT bad to put up with. Moreover, with comments like the one about not being able to understand him (which, I'd say, we make about a half dozen times or more a day), he completely wipes them from his memory, choosing not to remember that the binky makes him even more unintelligible than usual despite our repeated evidence to the contrary.

Probably these are signs of addiction, too, but I'm too lazy to learn more about it.

Finally, this past week, I laid down a new law. It was a weak and mostly toothless law, but it had a fresh coat of paint, at least. I declared that binkies were for upstairs ONLY. At first I declared that binkies were for bedtime ONLY, but this was met with the most soul crushing crying jag imaginable. So I compromised. I told him he could use his binky freely while he was upstairs, but he couldn't AT ALL downstairs.

And he is very clear about the rule. I know this because his actions have told me. At first, he'd come down the stairs with his binky in his mouth, as if nothing were unusual, and I would make him spit it out on the stairs. He protested every time, usually pointing out that I was "Making him sad and I should stop because it's mean." But, eventually, I got the binky away from him. After that, he tried to be sneakier, coming down the stairs with his blanket over his face so I couldn't see the binky. Obviously this didn't work either, so I think he's starting to get desperate.

Today, for the third time this week, I caught him behind the couch in his little nest with a binky in his mouth. He was TRYING to be really sneaky and smart about it, but it's pretty easy to spot when Gabe is up to something he shouldn't be up to--he's quiet. After he hopped behind the couch and I didn't hear anything from him for almost five minutes, I knew something was up. I looked over the back of the couch and this is what I saw:

I don't know why Blogger is showing this sideways. I've edited the picture three times and it always ends up sideways, so screw it. Stupid Blogger.

As I said, this is the third binky that has materialized from behind the couch this week. So, either he's got a stash back there, or he's figured out a way to hide them on his person when he comes downstairs and he tosses them behind the couch when I'm not looking. Either way, pretty nefarious, I have to say.

Now, I'm keeping a close count of binkies and I won't open the gate for him at the foot of the stairs until I've given him a pat-down for contraband. If that doesn't work, we might have to get a half dozen or so of his friends together in a room with him and have a full blown intervention.

Obviously, we're going to have to keep a close eye on this kid, probably until he's in his thirties.