A Pacifier?!

I was out running tons of errands yesterday with both kids and my cousin Sam.  It was around lunch time, nap time, and I was expecting them to sit still.  Recipe for disaster, right?!  So we are in Best Buy having my new notebook checked out by the Geek Squad and the kids start getting cranky.  I brought Em a toy phone to keep her occupied but forgot Will's car.  Yikes! 

So I dug in my purse.  I know I always have something in there.  Even I was surprised at what I ended up finding- a pacifier.  Will has not taken a pacifier since he was 6 months old.  So why do I carry around a pacifier?  Security? Denial? Refusal to let go?  Maybe them all. 

When he was little I couldn't leave the house without one.  It would calm him down, put him to sleep, make him happy.  It was our security blanket.  So when he gave them up one horrific weekend, I had a harder time letting go.  I kept trying to give it back to him. 

The bowl full of pacifiers sat on the counter in the kitchen for another few months until Andy finally threw them away.  I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  My little baby might still want them.  Except at this point my little baby was 9 months old.  There's the denial.

I think I carried that one around in my purse (I may have been surprised, but I had to have know it was there, I do clean out my purse... sometimes) just because I still want him to be my baby.  I want him to still be small, needy and cuddly.  I just can't let go of those last little bits of his infancy.  Why do they grow up SO fast?

So at 13 months I am sitting in Best Buy with a pacifier, debating what to do.  Do I give it to him?  It's just a toy to him anyway.  He wouldn't really know what to do with it, right?  Well, I gave it to him, and he knew.  In his mouth it went.  And in it stayed. 

Yikes.  What did I just do.




Will- 4 months with his pacifier