Chandler is on Paci-FIRE!

I’ve spent a lot of time writing about what an amazing son I have. I always try to avoid the appearance of bragging and instead I try to give off the impression that I am simply documenting my child’s progress.

“He’s 3 months old and he’s turning over. Is that different or something?”

“Oh he just happens to be crawling at just 5 months. Is that not normal?”

“My son is 6 months old and he’s writing his memoirs. Neat, huh?”

But we all see right through my crap and know what I’m doing. I’m bragging. I carry my son into social situations just looking for a chance to show him off. Remember when you were a kid and you got a new remote control car and you would walk up to a group of your friends hanging out in the neighborhood and you would set down your car and let it rip all around their feet? That’s kind of what I do with Chandler.

I walk up to groups of moms holding their little lumps they call babies and I set Chandler down at their feet. To be really impressive I start him on his back so the first trick he does is turn over. Then he’ll start crawling. Those moms just got pwned!

BUT…those moms always have the ultimate comeback. They’ll act like they are happy for me and my talented child, and then they’ll look up at me and say, “Is he sleeping through the night?” At that point my wife will start crying and run away as I attempt to gather up my Tazmanian Devil child and catch up with my weeping wife.

UNTIL…now! Chandler has once again upped his game and has all but mastered the pacifier. It was only a few weeks ago that if Chandler’s pacifier fell out of his mouth it was as if a security alarm got tripped. He would go into hysterics until the pacifier was put back in his mouth. It was because of this that Ashley and I chose to only use a pacifier when he was supposed to be sleeping. We didn’t want him to become dependent on a pacifier.

Then it was as if he had an epiphany one day. He watched as we put his pacifier back in his mouth and noticed we were using our hands. And then he realized he had been using his hands for several months to pick stuff up. Then it hit him. “What if I use MY hands to pick up the pacifier, and then…stay with me on this one, instead of throwing it on the ground I will put it in my mouth!”

That was only the beginning. At first he was putting the pacifier in his mouth…or near his mouth but he wasn’t always putting it in the right direction. Sometimes he would put it in backwards which didn’t really provide the same pacification that he had grown to love. But with a lot of practice he has now gotten to the point where he can successfully put the pacifier in facing the right direction every time. He still struggles with it being upside down sometimes, but I have a feeling that soon he’ll get that down too.

So with this new development, Chandler has now empowered himself to put his own pacifier back in his mouth in the middle of the night. And just to make sure that he can find a pacifier in the middle of the night, we have loaded up his crib full of extra pacifiers. His crib is like a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit, but instead of balls, it’s full of pacifiers.

The result? Last night Chandler only cried out one time. I waited a few moments and suddenly the crying stopped. He slept through the whole night (with 2 late night meals provided by mom) and didn’t wake up until 7:10am.

Now I can’t wait to walk up to a group of moms, set him free to show off his amazing skills, and then wait for one of them to ask if he sleeps through the night.

“Yeah, he sleeps through the night. Is that a big deal or something?”