This post may get me the virtual stink-eye from quite a few parents and make me a few mommy enemies.

As of last night, Nellie Rose is pacifier-free.

She’s been off the paci with the exception of bedtime and naptime for months now. The kid’s never been too attached to her pacifier. Josh mentioned today that he’d like to try a paci-free bedtime tonight. I thought, what the hell? The older she gets, the harder it’s going to be to say bye bye to the paci so I thought I’d give it a shot.

I had a feeling that we wouldn’t have much of a struggle. We weaned her from her swaddle in one night at 6 months, she was drinking from a sippy cup by 10 months, took whole milk instead of formula with no fuss and only cried for 10 minutes when we weaned her from being rocked and held to sleep around 9 months old. In short, the kid is adaptable and rolls with the punches.

It would appear that Operation Paci-Free Bedtime has been no exception. We put her down tonight without paci, said night night and turned out the light and sat on the couch to watch 127 Hours expecting to hear her at least whining a little bit.

An hour later, I realized that Nellie hadn’t made a peep. She wasn’t even phased by the absence of Paci. Not even a whimper.

I know that a lot of you are probably snarling and frothing at me right about now. I admit freely: I have an easy baby. Sure, she has her meltdowns and Hobby Lobby fits but overall she is a very easygoing, adaptable child and we are really blessed. I could also be declaring a paci-free house too early; it is, after all just the first night. Nellie may have just been too worn out after a day of running, squealing, and throwing her goldfish crackers at our waitress at Chili’s to care about her lack of pacifier. She could be laying in her crib at this very moment, dreaming and scheming of ways to make our lives a living hell the next few nights. We may be in for a battle of wills, but considering her personality I really don’t think so. We’ve been informed on more than one occasion that we aren’t going to get this lucky twice. We’re fully expecting our next child to look something like this:

So no worries. We’ll get ours. I try not to be smarmy about Nellie’s easygoing nature, so when people ask me how I got her to take a sippy so early or how I managed to get her off Paci so easily all I can really do is shrug and say, “I got lucky.” Because that’s really all it is. It has nothing to do with Josh and I or our ability as parents.. Nellie just takes life as it comes and accepts things for what they are.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to say the same for Baby #2, A.K.A “Taz” Green.