Page 26 - Perfect Parents, Perfect Children, and Other Fairy Tales

Bagging the Binkie

I wondered why Lizzy kept going into the closet
occasionally during the day, but I didn’t think too

much of it. She was about 18 months old at the time
and seemed so grown up. We had a new baby in the
house, and that made Lizzy seem rather old to us.

In fact, we felt like it was time to get rid of her
pacifier, as we didn’t really want to have to deal

with two sets of them. So a couple of months after
her sister was born, we told Lizzy that it was time
to just let the baby be the only one with a binky.

After all, she was a big girl, and she didn’t need
one any more. We were wrong.

Lizzy struggled with it for a while, but then she
seemed to be adjusting to the change. However, I

kept noticing that she went into the storage closet
for a couple of minutes quite often. I thought that
maybe she needed to be alone for a minute since

there was a new baby in the house.

Finally, my mommy-radar kicked in, and I decided

to see what was in there. When I opened the door,
there sat a little stuffed bear. But this stuffed bear

was a little different than most plush animals. This

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