The day of reckoning. This has nothing to do with my health or the VA. Just a fun post about doom.
Most people know the delicate task of pacifier weaning from
a toddler. For the last—eh, I’d say six months my angel of a wife and I have systematically
weaned pacifier use of our toddler along with potty training and she has begun
reading. A,B,C and T and words that can be used in that congregation of
letters. Abigail, like most pacifier using toddlers was very attached to her “paci”.
For those unaware of the difficulty of uneventfully and easily stopping the use
of pacifiers, let me elaborate the simple task to something comparable and understandable.
Weaning a dependent toddler off a pacifier without incident
is comparable to easy and simple things like, say, dismantling and disarming an
ionizing thermonuclear warhead simultaneously throughout the multiverse quantum
fabric without disturbing infernite transwarp discriminators while maintaining subspace
field stability. So yeah—easy, yeah?
Well we did it in the span of 2 weeks…weird flex right? Just wait.
Well there was things that set us up for success and well…set
us up for today. Its been months being pacifier free, we were pretty proud of
that accomplishment. There was a small brush up at the park when she spotted a
younger kid with an identical pacifier she used to have and she posted a hit
through her local old Russian contacts. But HSA (Household Security Agency)
intercepted and prevented from happening. Though, we continued to monitor and
tap her room with a baby monitor.
As most of you know, Titus my late Doberman had a run in with a pacifier
earlier in his life and needed surgery to remove. After that National Incident
every pacifier was bagged, tagged and tracked. We knew when one was missing and
when a new stash entered circulation. We authorized a household crackdown
months ago. Seizing mountains worth of pacifiers that could supply a whole town
of toddlers. She would “lose” them and we would find them stuffed under things,
inside toys, couches, bags, ect.
So, when it came to the wean, we controlled the Pacifiers like a cartel slowly cutting supply to increase demand. All while Introducing a new alternative to the market. Like—say, a stuffed animal. As the pacifier supply dried up she became hooked on the new controlled substance, stuffed animals.
After the bust, all was quiet. We thought for months our prohibition
had been successful and the war on pacifiers was declared over. Then, like the
spectacular failure of Operation Fast and the Furious in 2012 with the ATF and
the Cartels, our stance came crashing down.
I was writing in the dining room and Jennifer was in the bathroom. Our toddler
was playing contently in her room. At one point I peeked in to see all what she
was doing. Content and playing with a tub off toys she hadn’t acknowledged for
a while I was satisfied that she wasn’t up to mischief. Then you could hear
toys crashing and I assumed that she was just digging through the tub.
Suddenly I noticed something looming in the corner of my vision, I looked up and she appeared like the twins in the shinning at the edge of the hallway, with a small toy animal crate in her hands.
“Daddy, Look, Paci!” and before the neurons in my brain had time to fire and connect a reaction to stop the tragedy unfolding before me, she pulled a stashed pacifier out of the toy crate and plopped it in her mouth.
As my only reaction I could manage to vocalize “uh oh” left my mouth, she pivoted on her heels and walked into the bedroom where Jennifer now was. I could hear “uh oh” exclaimed from the distance.
So ladies and gentlemen our day has been spent with a pacifier. We could have sworn we had them all accounted for. We figured out that she had 2 of the same dog crate toys and pulled a clever bamboozle around the same time we just began the bagging and tagging. (the pacifiers are colored so dating them is like carbon dating bones, just more accurate)
Our toddler has more foresight than her parents. That is it. Our day of reckoning.