Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Tuesday, December 06, 2005 Lost and Found I've written before in this space about something called M. Giant's Law, which is as follows: The fastest way to find something is to replace it. M. Giant's law has continued to apply now that I am a parent. In fact, it's started messing with my kid, which is not cool. We've mostly got the pacifier phased out of his life. At bedtime or naptime or during one of his increasingly rare wobblers, he still needs that little ergonomic chunk of rubber sometimes. It's not often he needs it, but when he needs it, he really needs it. And of course, he's not the kind of kid who's satisfied with just any old plastic-disk-and-rubber-nipple assembly. No, ever since his days in the NICU, no nuk is good enough for him but that translucent green kind. You know, the kind that you can't get in stores? M. Small got a few of them sent home with him when he left the hospital, but even a non-ambulatory preemie can do amazing things in the way of losing a woobie (especially when one of his parents is me). It got to the point where Trash and I were trying to invent excuses to get him checked back in just so we could score a few fistfuls of backup pacifiers. And then, of course, Trash noticed the 1-800 number printed RIGHT ON THE THING and we discovered that you can just call and order them. Oh, how we rejoiced and relieved. Of course, Target started carrying them the very next week. But anyway. His favorite among all of his identical pacifiers is the one that his day-care lady attached with a ribbon to a little alligator clip that you hook to his clothes (I'm proud to say that we've never clipped it to the actual baby, to date). It's also our favorite, because when he used to wake us up at hours that were even more wee than he was, we always appreciated being able to grope blindly at his chest and pop that thing right back in his mouth, as opposed to any number of times when we had to crawl under the crib, feel around the furniture, and eventually give up and dig into the stash, all without turning on the light and frequently without glasses or normal command of fine and/or gross motor skills. The clippy-paci is handy, is what I'm saying. So of course it disappears all the time. Normally it turns up within a matter of hours. Sure it quickly sinks to the bottom of the toy bin or the bottom of the ball pit or wherever it is he put it, but with the baby gates deployed he has access to only so many hiding spots. So when it vanished for a couple of days in a row, we were flummoxed. Then one day, I happened to be home with him alone. Together, we tore apart the living room and his nursery, the only rooms he'd visited freely since the clippy-paci had last been seen. No dice. I did, however, find an inferior clip. It's shaped like a bee instead of the little plastic card reading "Somebody's baby" that he usually wears, and the ribbon doesn't hold on nearly as well. But I figured it would work for now. I opened a new pacifier, threaded the ribbon through one of the holes, velcroed the ends of the loop together, and proudly clipped it to his sweatshirt. He didn't even care. So, by this point, I of course had all his toys out, so I thought I might as well gather up the various pieces of the ones that had more than one element. One of these is a little circus truck with a lion and an elephant. The elephant was missing, so I went to find it in the nursery. Where, of course, Famous Original Clippy-Paci decided to show itself, wrapped around the very bottom of one of the bars on his end crib wall. I never found the elephant, but who gives a shit? The other transition he's making is that from bottle to sippy-cup. He loves his sippy-cup. He especially loves to carry his sippy-cup around upside-down, leaving a damp little Billy-from-Family-Circus trail so he knows where he's been. We don't so much love that. Fortunately, there's something called a "training cup" which is virtually leak-proof, thanks to its revolutionary valve system. So we picked up one of these. Stop me if you see where this is going. No, sorry, you can't, I'm not going to stop. We got M. Small his training cup, which he loved, and which we loved, and which worked great. And which naturally fled this plane of existence within a week. So I hit Target (smugly passing the special pacifiers on display) and picked up a whole new set of training cups. While I was there, I also got a new trash can for his nursery; one with a lid that latches, so he can't be reaching into it like he was with the old one. I get home, open up his new training cups, wash them out, and fill one with a patented M. Small cocktail (one part pure fruit juice, ten parts water). While he's enjoying his refreshing beverage, I decide to swap out the old nursery trash can for the new. The liner bag currently in use is only half full, so I decide to transfer it to the new can to save bags. I lift the bag out, and do I really need to tell you that his old "training cup" is in there among the used wipes, diapers, and Q-tips? I didn't think so. That's why I didn't give you another chance to stop me. The good thing is that now he has three training cups, so he always has one to drink out of while one or two others are in the wash. The bad thing is that now his clippy-paci is gone again, and I have no idea what happened to the other clip I used to replace it. UPDATE: Trash found the replacement, but the original is still MIA. Perhaps a corollary to M. Giant's law is that it only works if I'm the one doing the replacing. Today's best search phrase: "Words that start with M that remind you of mommy." Uh…what's wrong with that one? posted by M. Giant 8:46 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:We are pretty sure that we threw away one of Fuller's slippers because it can't be found anywhere and it disappered around the time that Fuller loved putting small toys in his diaper champ. That is until we moved the Diaper Champ into the bathroom. And it sucked that it was that slipper because it was the only pair that would stay on his feet and he couldn't pull off. And they had cost less than $5. Since then, I haven't been able to find replacements. So I had to shell out the $10 for the slippers he currently wears... and I really hope he doesn't lose one of them.
By Oh man, if David lost is nuk and it was bedtime... HELL TO PAY. We have spent more nights, half-asleep, rooting under the crib for it then I can count.
By If you are still looking, Avent has a line of sippy cups that never spill anything at all. I think they sell them at Target. But you are brave parents. I don't think we dropped out last bottle until the bean was almost 2.
By My dad is a Veterinarian and it is a very common occurance to find pacifiers (or parts of) inside little kitties that like to eat things.... A lot of times the owners will comment on the fact that they always wondered where the pacifiers went!
By 
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