This is the “Paci-strosity”. It’s about eleventy-seven of Baby Bug’s pacifiers all looped together with hair elastics to create a creature-like pacifier-blob. It’s not one long elastic string because that would be a dangerous strangulation hazard. (We have to think about these things, we mothers.) It’s a tree branch of sorts with lots of waggly pacifier arms bending every which way. It’s a pacifier monstrosity!

Baby Bug loves it. A whole bunch of pacifiers in one place! It’s baby mouth heaven for her. Obviously, she has an oral fixation and I’m going to have to really watch it when she becomes a teenager wants to start smoking cigarettes. But for now, we are attempting to keep the pacifier usage to “nap time” and “bed time”.

Ha ha ha ha ha hah hah.

This never works very well because we have so many pacifiers. What can I say? I’m a paranoid mom who thought all hell would break lose if I ever got stuck somewhere without one. Because of my spending-like-pacifiers-grow-on-trees habit, we now have a very large collection of them. And they are all over the place! Just as I take one away, Baby Bug will find another one somewhere deep in her toy box or under the couch and pop it in her mouth. It’s an endless battle that I’ve only been fighting half heartedly. It’s just so much work, trying to train your kid out of a bad habit. Am I really ready for three days of crying? No.

However, I’ve been thinking I need to coral them and cut all the nipples off or something because this pacifier business is getting out of control. Not to mention she has the scary rash from her constant teething drool that is only made worse by her preferred brand of pacifiers.

I bought a new kind of pacifier to help with the rash and we are slowly switching over. I only bought two this time so I’m not quite ready to get rid of all the other ones. I’m still a paranoid mom afraid of being stuck somewhere without one. But I need to come up with a plan to keep her from all the old ones without actually getting rid of them completely. This is how I stumbled upon my brilliant “paci-strosity” idea. I came up with it completely by accident.

Last Sunday, while in meeting (church for you new readers), I banded all the pacifiers I could find in the bottom of my purse together with my many many hair elastics (I’m also paranoid of being stuck somewhere without a pony tail). It was just something to keep Baby Bug quiet. I’ll try anything to keep her from squealing and embarrassing me. I had no idea that I would create a magic toy that would entertain her for hours and also lead to my new twelve step fight against pacifier addiction.

It worked like a charm. Baby Bug snuggled into my arms and played pacifier roulette, sticking one pacifier after the other into her mouth, until she fell asleep from pacifier exhaustion. She was so quiet! my mom said after meeting. What a good baby you have. Ha!

Once she had fallen asleep, I snuck out the old bad pacifier and stuck in the new “breathable” pacifier. No problemo. She sucked away in her sleep like nothing ever happened, all the while holding onto a nippily limb of the paci-strosity as if it were a beloved blanket or teddy bear. I think I have finally discovered Baby Bug’s “lovey”. She loves her pacifiers. The more the merrier!

When she woke up, I tossed the paci-strosity into my purse and she was fine. It solved two problems. No more random pacifiers showing up in odd places and now they were all there together and special. So special in fact, it makes our nap time and bedtime routine more pleasant now. She can’t wait to be rocked to sleep because it means she gets to hold her sweet loveable paci-strosity. I think if I had to wean her (which I’m not but if I have to, I have a plan…) I could just let her fall asleep with her paci-strosity. She seems to love it even more than me.

What a funny kid.