The Paci Wars (and other evidence that I don't know what I'm doing as a parent)

I am starting to have a problem with N's pacifier use for 2 reasons:

1. She sucks on it just out of boredom (not to sooth herself).
2. She talks with the fucking thing in her mouth.

My original plan which I began yesterday when she turned 4 was to keep paci in her room during the day and she could "visit" anytime she likes, but that seemed to be a clearly unworkable option. It was causing so much problem she refused to go into school yesterday and today, something she has never done. Today she said to me, "I don't want to be 4 anymore. I want to be 3."

So I decided that I needed to pull the troops back and regroup, which always feels like I have lost the battle even when it is my choice to change my plan. The plan now is that paci cannot go in the car and D and I will say, "Excuse me?" whenever she talks with it in her mouth or ignore her until she takes the paci out.

I don't care if she sleeps with it or watches tv with it, but she mostly just lets it hang in her mouth like a cigarette that is lit but not inhaled. And so what is the point?

Truth be told, I am just so annoyed with N in general. The paci is only part of it. She is also all about defiance these days. I have been hearing a lot of "I want tos" and "Now!" Like having Veruca Salt at my side on a daily basis. I look at little G and think he is so cute and sweet and easy now but I will not be able to stand him in 3.5 years either, I'm sure. I thought this infancy stuff was the "hard" part when N was a baby. When she is 13, I will think this age 4 business was easy stuff too.

Most of the time I can delude myself into thinking I have a handle on parenting my child, but right now I am clearly floundering. The pacifier habit. The refusal to poop on the potty (even when she has skid marks in her underpants as she scrambles to get on her pull-up before the poop flies out her butt). The general attitude I get from her too often for my personal taste.

I may have to develop a drinking problem.