Battle Won?!!

Last Friday I took the kids to the dentist. I normally wouldn't have had Kezzie checked so early but since I had a concern with some extra tissue between her two front teeth I decided to have her seen when Austin was. The dentist really stuck it to me and made me feel like a horrible mother. He said her pallet was very deep and the cause of this was her paci (even though for months now she has only been allowed to have it in her bed). He said also that the paci was keeping her two front teeth from coming together and that the tissue was growing in between as a result. He also went on to make it clear that he did not believe me that I brush her teeth twice a day religiously (probably because Austin was there getting a cavity filled). He must just think I don't care about my kids' teeth at all. With all that being said, we are now brushing three times a day and working on breaking her paci habit. Saturday (7/18) was our first attempt at doing so before remembering Sunday was going to be a busy day and she would be napping at my parents' house (and we didn't want to have her 'crying it out' with our whole family there to hear it). Before thinking that all through we laid her down in her crib after warning her that nap time was going to be without a paci, I just quietly removed the pacifier from her room. I think this caused a lot of problems for her because she just kept looking for it in her bed (I did tell her it wasn't there but I don't think she understood that). She cried for a half hour straight before we gave in and gave it to her. We decided Monday was going to be a much better day to start it anyway. 7/20 Monday at nap time I put Kezzie in her crib and showed her her paci. I told her to say good night to it and give it a kiss and then she watched me put it in her dresser drawer. She was asleep within 15 minutes. A miracle!! I think mentally she just had to know it wasn't in reach and that she just needed to go to sleep. She only slept an hour though compared to her normal 2.5/3 hours on a paci day :( Monday night she did fantastic also. Again, we had her give her paci a kiss (which ended up being more like six kisses) and then we 'put it to bed' in the dresser drawer. She didn't even cry or mention it. She talked herself to sleep like usual and slept until 3:45am. I went in her room, she told me she needed to go potty, she gave her paci a kiss, and went right back to sleep. She woke at her regular time in the morning (7ish). I was shocked she only woke once the entire night! I think we could call this battle won, don't you?!! I told the dentist that taking her paci away from her was going to be 10 times harder then potty training her. He didn't think that was very funny! And before talking to him, I honestly wasn't even considering taking her paci away from her because of how much she was addicted to it. It has turned out to be much easier then I thought though. Kezzie is handling it like such a big girl. You can see it in her face when she 'puts her paci to bed' that she wants to cry but she just sucks it up! And every time she goes to give it a kiss she opens wide and tries to maneuver her head to 'accidentally' get a couple sucks. It makes me kind of sad too because her paci was the last babyish thing about her. I can't believe how fast she is growing up!