text: Pages
  
  6/24/08
  
  Progress Report: Operation Paci Fairy.
  
  It's been 10 days since the Paci Fairy came. Zoe wakes up in the morning (and after every nap) announcing that the "Pacifier took all Zoe's pacis, gave them to little babies!" (I realized a little too late that she has NO idea what a "fairy" is and I guess "Paci Fairy" sounds like "pacifier". I imagine some giant pacifier swooping out of the sky to snatch Zoe's pacis.). After one tear-stained naptime and one wretchedly sad bedtime, she has settled into falling asleep without them. The Paci Fairy gave her a stuffed Corduroy (a teddy bear from her current favorite book) and a super soft owl head/blanket thing.
  
  From time to time she tries out her thumb, which always strikes a special kind of fear into my heart. I hold my breath and gently try to distract her by asking her to play a game or reach for a toy that requires two hands. You see, when Zoe was an infant, we decided to encourage the use of the pacifier to prevent her from sucking her thumb into puberty (causing massive junior high sleep-over insecurities), needing braces TWICE, and acquiring a lisp that several years of speech therapy couldn't totally eradicate.
  
  Not that that happened to anyone I know. AHEM.
  
  I can only hope that the thumb-sucking window has passed and the new found attachment to Corduroy will be cake compared to the other possible social and orthodontic nightmare. Other kids might be able to do a little recreational thumb-sucking here and there but if she's anything like me, she would suction off her entire thumbprint, leaving only a wrinkly, damp nub until she's 16 and finally able to wrench herself away from it.
  
  Again, NOT THAT THAT HAPPENED TO ANYONE I KNOW.
  
  I knew Zoe's attachment to Corduroy was complete when I accidentally opened our refrigerator door into her head yesterday. (I love our bottom-freezer refrigerator but man, oh man, the bottom edge of the fridge door is pointy and EXACTLY toddler forehead height. WTF?) The head bonk was enough to make her cry out and need comfort. She previously would have asked to go to "CRIB. GET PACIS." but this time she wailed "CORDUROY! ZOE WANT CORDUROY!".
  
  pps. Also unacceptable? Running out of dental floss on the night you grill corn on the cob (especially when your dentist just informed you that the spaces in between your teeth caused by 15 odd years of thumb sucking, not to mention the lack of retainer-wearing in the 20 years since, may require a THIRD SET of braces. WAH.).
  
  yours truly
  
  CBHM is raising Z (born April 2006) and E (born May 2009) in small-town Virginia with Chic Geek and Sweet Dog as companions in the journey. You can email her at cluelessbuthopeful (at) gmail (dot) com.
  
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  "Once we were such girls, remember?, the mothers all said as they picked at their kids organic chicken nuggets and poured themselves pinots, their children coloring beneath their feet like good dogs, or sucking organic yogurt out of little plastic strips, or playing make-believe in their mother's dresses and lipsticks and high-heeled shoes, or napping, or watching Bob the Builder DVDs, or screaming their fucking heads off." - Jennifer Gilmore, The Mothers