Once upon a time, we left Lenox Hill hospital with our baby and a whole ton of supplies that the nurses gave us. Included in the massive suitcase and bags that they packed us were five newborn pacifiers. We also had 4 pacifiers that were gifted to us via our baby registry, so in total, we had 9 pacifiers. At some point, one of them got lost while Kaia was out with her nanny at the park, so then we had eight left. And since that one pacifier went missing, Chris became the pacifier police overnight and started maniacally counting the pacifiers on the kitchen counter every evening after our nanny would go home to ensure that all were accounted for.

“Where is the 8th one?” he’d demand at around 6 or 7pm each evening. “You need to tell the nanny to count them at the end of each day!”

I thought this was ridiculous. Eight pacifiers really wasn’t that much to account for, and there was no reason that I needed to insist to our nanny that she had to keep tabs on every single one of them. And given that our baby is now nearly 9 months old and we managed to only lose one… to me, that just seemed like a miracle. We were either really anal about ensuring the pacifiers were all there, or our baby was just far easier to keep track of than other babies. In parenting forums, you always hear about things like pacifiers, bibs, and burp cloths going missing constantly.

So, I suppose this adds to Chris’s list of job titles: father, milk manager, baby bottle feeder, and pacifier police.