I think every parent I know has some cutesy name for a pacifier: bacci, paci, ninny, fier, binky, nuk, bo-bo, chupete, soother, plug, sucky, chewy, num num...

My favorite is dumbtitty. Now why couldn't I have learned about that before I had kids?

I'd like to pretend I'm different and we never used any of these euphemisms. But as it turns out, if you think you're somehow different, you'll eventually be struck with the sudden realization that you're just as looney as every other parent out there in the history of parenting. Trust me... it may take years, but it will come.

When The Dormouse was pre-verbal she was crying for something one day and we couldn't figure out what it was... finally in a bout of frustration, she reached both hands out toward a place on the chest of drawers where there was a pacifier sitting and yelled, "BOP!" in the most clear, yet pathetic voice you've ever heard. It stuck.

Here's another piece of advice: when your eighteen-month old keeps coming out of the bedroom with a bop in her mouth and you take them away from her because "it's not bop time; bop time is bed time" and then you turn your head for a minute or two and look up and she has yet aNOTHer bop, you might want to look under the crib in stead of just yelling, "WHO is your bop supplier?!?" Because you might find her stash:


I guess this means we need to get rid of the crib before she's old enough to put her weed in there.