Solitary Vice

Hi stinky-dink,

Today at play group, we were discussing the relative vices of you, our tribe of toddlers.

It would seem that most, if not all of you have reached 16 or 18 months with potentially one vice to your name. Yours, of course, would be the pacifier.

Others had other vices, I think you're the only pacifier dependent one, but it's not my call to name vices of others so I'll just say that they existed, and they weren't particularly better or worse than the pacifier.

I don't know why I struggle so with your craving for it. You can't pass one by on the floor or table without plugging your mouth immediately. Earlier today I saw you walking around with one in your mouth, another in your hand, for emergency pacifier failure? I couldn't be sure.

After talking to my fabulous group of Mom-friends though I did see one thing in a new way. You have pretty much one vice. One. You may also have a couple bad sleeping habits and a Mom who has been called the "Food Nazi" by more than one homo sapien, but pretty much it comes down to the pacifier and I would bet my next paycheck that peer pressure will keep you from using it in high school.

I'm going to do my best to relax about the whole pacifier thing. I do panic a bit about the orthodontics bill that will be slapped down after years of pacifier gluttony, but this may be unnecessary. Maybe your teeth will straighten themselves out. Maybe the eleven months of nursing cancel out the pacifier? Who knows.

Maybe, my little pumpkin, you have to have one vice or you'd be too good. Maybe if Mamama stopped staring at the one blemish on an otherwise perfect complexion, Mamama would feel a whole lot better about the whole thing and you would just spontaneously forget you ever liked it in the first place.

Now though, you're asleep, and Harry Potter year 6 awaits.

I love you,
Mamama