There is a God

You say a lot of things when you're pregnant that you realize are utterly asinine once you are dealing with a real live bundle of baby parts.

Among my many lofty, uninformed "how to raise a perfect child" proclamations was: My child will NEVER use a pacifier.

Exhibit A:


Exhibit B:


Exhibit C:


Exhibit D:


You see what I'm getting at here.

My will to not use a pacifier dissolved less than 24 hours of birthing The Bean. At some point in those first 24 hours I was given a screaming child and, no matter what I did, the noise wouldn't stop. After trying all the tricks I knew and desperate for sleep, I freely admit I sent The Bean to the hospital nursery so I could take a nap and regroup.

Imagine my surprise when they rolled a completely docile child into my room two hours later for a feeding. Said child was peacefully staring at the world around her because there was a pacifier stuffed into her face making all the noise stop.

Yes please. I'll take ten.

Fast forward to yesterday.

Yesterday wasn't my day. The Bean has been a hellion lately--very likely a direct result of taking her to four different states in as many weeks. Naturally, on our first day back to the house I had roughly 403 errands to run.

Over the course of these excursions, the unthinkable happened. WE. LOST. THE. BINKY.

All the parents out there understand the gravity of this situation. All you non-parents, imagine you just lost the $100K payment you're supposed to make to a mob boss in twenty minutes.

No, that metaphor is not too extreme.

Oh sure, we have other binkys. But not THE binky. And I don't know how, but you can be damn sure she knows the difference.

Not having the time to retrace all our steps, I decide to roll my dice with the back up binky.

Our day did not go well.

Every time The Bean got fussy, I would pop the back up pacifier into her mouth. She would glare at me, giving me the "you and I both know this isn't the right binky, but I'll suck on it. Just know that I know."

This worked until 4:30.

4:30 is a fun time in our house these days. It's DEFCON A MILLION meltdown time. At 4:30 the screaming starts and there is no solution. It continues until 8 when I thank God for making screaming so exhausting for infants and she passes out for the night.

On this particular day, I ran through all the activities that turn The Bean's face-melting screams into mere spine-breaking cries. I was on the last known possible solution of changing her diaper when I looked out the window (which happens to have a clear view of the driveway).

There in the driveway, like a desert mirage taunting desperately tired and broken people, was THE binky.

I promise you, the binky was not there when we got home. I looked. This was clearly the work of a kind God who felt for me. Who saw that if the screams were to proceed another minute longer I would have shot myself in the face and left Bear to raise The Bean.

I never ran so fast in my life. Within 5 seconds, the binky had been retrieved, washed and plugged into The Bean's wailing mouth.

The next 40 seconds of silence was priceless. Literally. There's no telling how much I would've paid for those quiet seconds.

Oh sure, the wailing started right up again after those 40 seconds, but I felt like I had the upper hand now because at least we had the RIGHT binky.