My dairy queen...

She loves cheese. Always has. Be it tasty, fetta, or a really pungent parmesan, she'll eat it by the handful. I classify it as a "healthy" snack, but really, it's full of fat and we all know it. Easier to just ignore that though, given how picky Peggy's become lately. I need to believe that cheese in abundance is good for her!

Lately, she's also been into milk. Requests it a few times a day, and can tell the difference between "Mummy's milk" (skim) and "Peggy's milk" (lite white). Ice cream has always been one of her favourite treats, particularly if it is of the "choc-ate" variety.

Peggy does not like fruit.

I purchase, slice and serve all types - mandarins, kiwi fruit (this is one she is anti than most, she'll at least have a lick), apples, pears, grapes... What else is there in June? I a hoping that once summer comes around and berries and magoes are back in rotation, she'll start a new love affair with those. But I've all but given up on the current fruit selection. I know that you are supposed to keep going, keep trying, keep believing that they'll eat the things you want them to, but really, short of holding her nose, I do not seem able to get her to open her mouth when fruit is on offer.

Cheese is just... easier.

Cheese, and dry Weetbix. These are Peggy staples. With milk on the side.

Dummies.

Hmmm. One of the most frequent discussions I've had with other mothers of young babies is the Dummy Chat. Do you give one? At what age do you give it? When do you get rid of it? How do you limit its use? Are there an ill-effects? Do you regret that moment when you first stuffed it in your screeching baby's mouth?

Well, I am a dummy fan and my answer to that last question is HELL NO.

I have documented Otis' love of dummies here. He was into the dummy from Day Dot. The little lips moved with a silent, urgent suck that was a little alarming to me at first. A rogue midwife actually recommended a dummy, and the love affair began. I think Otis was about 18 hours old.

You read in all The Books about dummies being dangerous sleep props that should be banned from about three months of age.

There was no way Otis would unclamp his lips long enough for me to remove it at that age.

There was no way I would have had the courage to bin the one thing other than my nipple that settled my often cranky boy.

I never really had a dummy plan. When he started to babble, I started to withhold the dummy more and more, as I felt it had the potential to inhibit his speech. Glad I did that. By about 18 months Otis was only having his dummy for sleeping, or if he was feeling particularly emotional for whatever reason. Sickness, of course, also equalled dummy.

I had some vague ideas about throwing it away when he was two, but honestly, the dummy was helping me get through each day. By then I had a toddler and a baby, one obsessed with a dummy, the other spitting it out and defying my efforts to plug up her cries. Eventually Peggy got her dummy groove on too, and before I knew it dual dummy love was the order of our house.

There have been many stressful dummy-related moments, being small and wielded by temperamental littlies, they do tend to go missing in the middle of the night. However, there have been many more moments wherein I have praised God for creating dummies and wondered how any mother ever coped without one (actually, one is never enough, a bouquet of dummies per child is what is needed).

Otis has a favourite type, the Nuk ones that come in pastels, and make a very slight squeak when sucked. I introduced these orthodontic ones when he turned one, to try to save him from bucked teeth.

Peggy isn't so choosy. Her attachments are Ted Bear and Wrap. Any dummy will do.

Easter just gone, I got the idea from my sister to use the Easter Bunny as a means of ditching Oti's dummy for good. He was, amazingly, all for it at first. He loved to tell all and sundry about how big a boy he was becoming. He lapped up the lavish praise we bestowed on him - in hindsight, we really laid it too thick.

About a month down the track, Otis fell apart.

I've never seen anything like it.

Not only were we battling with a non-sleeping 18 month old, but now we also had to attend to our 3 year old every hour or so throughout the night. The penny finally dropped after one particularly rotten night when I curled up in his bed and had his hold my ear all night, just so that he could sleep. It wasn't pleasant.

I worked out that he needed something to help him wind down and drift off. If it couldn't be me, perhaps it could be his dummy?

The suggestion alone completely revitalised him. When he took the first few sucks on the brand new lemon-coloured Nuk dummy, his eyes rolled back in his head and he appeared to be getting high.

Since we returned it to him, he's started sleeping all night again and having naps in the afternoon.

He's happy.

And so are we.

Maybe Santa can take the new ones next Christmas?