The Paci Patrol

I swear some days its never ending. Squirrel loves her pacifier. LOVES her pacifier. All three of us take turns giving it back to her when she spits it out. She has a three second memory: Suck, spit, oh no where did my paci go? Rinse and repeat. Literally. Since she has GERD, she is constantly being wiped/rinsed off. I have the smell of spit-up permanently ingrained in my nose. I can't imagine what her sense of smell is like right now. If I were her, I'd just shut it off for the next few months. I mean really, think about it: What a wonderful flowery smell...barf...what a lovely sour milk/flowery smell. Is that cookies I smell baking? ...barf... Oh goodie, cookies and milk. Ugh.

Back to Paci Patrol. We finally got a clip for her paci at Target. The only problem with that was we had to drive an hour and a half to get to Target. We live in a city of roughly 50,000 people. Not a metropolis by any means, but a fair size city. The surrounding area probably has double that number. We have 2 Super Wal-Marts, numerous grocery stores, a good sized mall, hundreds of smaller retail stores, and I have to travel an hour and a half to get a pacifier clip for my daughter. What?? Apparently, the Soothie pacifier (while sold at Wal-Mart) doesn't rate the necessity of a clip. And you can't just use any clip. There is no little handle or clip worthy area. You have to have a Soothie brand clip. My question is why would Wal-Mart carry this brand pacifier and neglect to carry the corresponding clip? It makes as much sense as Books-A-Million carrying Books #1, 2, 4, 5, 6 of a series. Uh, where is Book #3, I ask. To which I hear, Oh, we don't have that one. So I ask, Can you order it for me? The reply: No, our warehouse doesn't carry it either. Okay, that is the dumbest thing I have heard in a while. Why even carry the series then? Make sense to you? Me either.

I have digressed. Squirrel loves her paci. When she wants it. So I spend my day putting her paci back in her mouth. Then DH and Monkey get home and they help me spend our evenings putting her paci back in her mouth. Oh I long for the day when she can do that on her own. But at least Squirrel will suck on her paci. My niece will not. She has to have the paci held in her mouth nearly constantly. I feel for my brother and SIL.

When the paci doesn't do the trick: This happens most often in the van. Squirrel is not a happy rider. She will tolerate a van ride for about 20 minutes. Then if we're lucky, she goes to sleep. If not, she screams. And screams.

And screams.

There will be no long trips for us in the near future.

Everyone looks at my kids and this is what they say. Oh, she looks just like her daddy. Its true, both girls look a lot like DH, but not like his baby pics. Both Monkey's and Squirrel's baby pics look almost exactly like my baby pics. However, Monkey has grown into looking more like her daddy now. Even Squirrel looks like him as he is today. Knowing this, is it really sad that I get tired of hearing that? I mean, I'm the one who went through nine months of my body getting all misshapen, I went through the pain of labor, I am the one breastfeeding. Just once, lie to me and say, Oh what a pretty baby. She looks just like you.