Happy New Year! Everywhere I go people seemed to be filled with a sense of newness. The feeling of having a clean slate is powerful, and resolving to be a better person, to use less plastic, to be more dedicated, to always wear lipstick feels almost as good as it actually happening.
Henry is unfamiliar with the custom to resolve, but it seemed appropriate when he lost his pacifier and I went ahead and made a resolution for him. No more pacifier.
Over the years we've probably lost hundreds of "bahs". I stopped buying a new supply long ago, but this last one seemed to have nine lives. The beat-up piece of plastic with the chewed up rubber no longer even resembled a pacifier. If you saw it you'd want to give it a proper burial. It violated the health and safety codes of most developed countries. It became a family joke. Henry would hold it up and I would examine it with squinted eyes. I'd make a face and say "ugh, that's disgusting" and Henry would laugh his big laugh. I asked him what was going to happen when it finally broke apart and he'd say "I'll throw it away and not need it anymore." That sounded reasonable to me.
Then it vanished into thin air yesterday. It may, in fact, have literally disintegrated. Henry fell asleep without a problem, but when he woke up in the middle of the night he was totally distraught. He screamed and demanded that I find it. I reminded him that it was lost and gone forever. He cried and yelled for about 15 minutes and then he stuffed Moo Cow's head into his mouth to ease his oral craving and fell asleep.
The scary thing is that it's in this house somewhere and I'm hoping and praying that I find it before he does. If I do, then it's over. Henry will be the kind of person who doesn't use a pacifier and his mom will be the kind of person who always wears lipstick.
