One thing I've heard about raising children is that you need to provide them with structure in their lives. It keep them grounded and helps them to feel safe. It hasn't been until recently that it has been something that I needed to worry about. Here's the story of our child-care woes.

We had never intended to get Caleb a pacifier.

We had seen too many parents use them as a way to shut the child up and we just weren't prepared to go there. And then we discovered bruises on his arms. At first we thought he'd gotten his arm stuck in the baby bjorn. But then it kept happening. Caleb was self-soothing by sucking on his forearms and giving himself hickies. There was also some evidence that the pacifier helped prevent SIDS.

Not wanting him all bruised up, we got ourselves a couple of orthodnically approved pacifiers. It worked well and as he moved out of infancy we transitioned the binky (as we were calling it) to an only when he's sleeping thing. We even emphasized that part of his getting up routine was for him to put the binky back in his crib himself and wave goodbye. The original plan had been that we were going to toss it out when he turned one but given that he was only using it for sleeping, there wasn't that shame to spur us on so we decided to let him keep it.

In the past couple of months, particularly as he's been speaking better, the binky became part of his bedtime routine. We would first give it to him during story time to help him calm down and soon we would say "Ready for a story?" and he would run into his room yelling "Bee-Tee! Bee-Tee!". All well and good. But then we caught him moving one of his play chairs over against the crib in an effort to climb into the crib and get it. The time was right for it to be gone.

Friday night, the Binky went missing. We don't know where it went but it got "lost". The backups were nowhere to be found. We spent some time looking for it, mostly under the dresser and the crib but in the end we had to give up the search. He has since asked about it a couple of times but only in passing. Last night he didn't ask at all. The substitute of a sippy-cup of water seems to have been accepted as an even trade. That may come back to haunt us in the form of overfull morning diapers but so far things are working out.