The saga of the Tooth, the Pacifier & the Puzzle

Lets just cut to the chase: on Saturday night Aiden tripped, fell, and hit his face. In fact, he hit his face hard enough to partially dislodge one of his two front teeth. He didn't knock it all the way out mind you, but he did rearrange it pretty good.

A visit to the dentist the following day determined that he'd be able to live with it as-is, but that we'd need to be careful with what he eats and MOST importantly- he wouldn't be able to use his pacifier for a while. A decision was made by the parental council that perhaps this was as good an opportunity as we were going to get to wean Aiden off of his pacifier for good. And that is how we got to this point:

In case it is not immediately clear, this is a picture of Aiden's pacifier sitting in a box on his desk, waiting for the pacifier fairy to come and take it away. Obviously.

Our initial attempts to convince Aiden that he didn't need his pac (pronounced 'pass' of course) were met with a lukewarm reception at best. It didn't take long for us to move to plan B. Plan B, as you may have already surmised, involved a story about the "Pac Fairy". The Pac Fairy (as the well-known children's story goes) comes in the night to take a child's pacifier and leave behind a beautifully wrapped new toy.

Luckily the Pac Fairy had already done some of her Christmas shopping, so it was no problem for her to quickly find and wrap a brand new numbers puzzle. The Pac Fairy likes educational toys.

The Pac Fairy's visit was met with much rejoicing the next morning. There was even a hand written note that we read with as much enthusiasm as we could muster in the seven o'clock hour.

It was an exciting time for everyone. Aiden was excited for his new toy. Parents were excited by the success of their genius plan. And Bailey was excited that actually got his fuzzy mug into a picture (look closely below.) It was a good morning.

The aftermath, while not bad necessarily, has not been as seamless a transition as we'd hoped for. On one hand, it's great that Aiden is actually playing with his puzzle on the floor right now as I type this. On the other hand, he is doing it at 6:30 in the morning because without the comfort of his pac he is waking up about an hour earlier every morning.

There have been a few other speed bumps along the way as well. Most significantly is the raging guilt that we feel every time that Aiden looks at us with watery eyes and says something like, "I can't find my pac" or "they (we hope 'they' means the mean Pac Fairy, and not his mean parents) took my pac!"

The path to pac independence is long and fraught with many pitfalls. But I am confident that our persistent efforts will be rewarded. Although the fact that Aiden just came over and saw a picture of his pac on the computer as I was writing this may have set us back a few days. Oh well...