There are very few pictures of Luke that don’t include an important feature – albeit a critical piece of equipment – his ultimate trademark - his pacifier!
At the ripe old age of 2 ½ and the fact that we wanted to clearly hear the new beautiful words and language coming from those sweet little lips rather than the muffled Darth Vader version of words/sounds… we decided to abruptly end his love affair with pacifiers.
We are probably like all other parents and collected over a dozen different pacifiers, some still in their original packaging, you know, as spares just in case we lost the first twelve. They were hidden and tucked in all sorts of random spots throughout the house, in my purse, in the RV, strategically located in my car, under his bed/pillow, and even in the kids’ toy box! It was quite the covert scavenger hunt, eliminating one at a time so that it wasn’t entirely obvious that they were slowly disappearing or the once effortlessness it took to find one magic binky being discovered by the little man. As you can imagine it took me several days to find all of them and (of course) place them in a special spot just in case he couldn’t handle the cold-turkey approach…or his mama couldn’t handle the potential scream fest that would occur when he realized they were gone.
While he was off playing and had abandoned the last little sucker I swooped in, grabbed and made a mad dash to my secret stash. It probably only took a few minutes before he realized it was gone and when he did he went around to all of the normal spots. It was so pathetic to watch this little guy walking around, “Where my pacifier”… “I can’t fine-it”. He looked around for probably 30 minutes, a sad little expression on his face every time he ended up empty-handed.
As I watched the initial signs of a meltdown, I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind…
“LUKE, THE CATS ATE YOUR PACIFIERS!
What, what did I just say? Was I that chicken that I couldn’t tell my son the truth and say that his Daddy made me take them away from him? I’m the Mama, I’m supposed to be his anchor and instead I stole his one precious possession and there was no way in hell I was going to tell him it was my fault. Nope, it was much easier to blame the cats.
Really, the cats, that’s all you can come up with? However, if you have ever seen my cats, especially my rollie-pollie, fat-as-all-get-out BOO cat, you would understand why it would be plausible to a two-year old that a fatty cat could and would in fact eat ALL the pacifiers.
Luke repeated, “The cats ate my pacifiers”.
“Yes Luke, they were so hungry because Daddy and Mama forgot to feed the cats and so they went around and ate ALL of your pacifiers”
Unfortunately, I should have really considered the ramifications of placing blame before I blurted out that the cats, particularly that BOO was the culprit and responsible for the pacifier consumption. Couldn’t I have said a pacifier fairy came and took the pacifiers away to give away to children that weren’t so fortunate to have binkies? What about a freaking dinosaur… with snarly teeth, yes that would have been much better than the stupid cats because from that point on Luke HATES the cats.
The first night without his beloved binky he crawled into bed next to me and proceeded to give BOO, who was positioned by Chris’ feet, the evil-eye. Then the “poking” began. Luke crawled over to BOO who began hissing and growling sensing the hatred in the air, took his little chubby pointer finger and began jabbing BOO in the belly, as if trying to feel for his magic binkies. Then he went so far as to tell the cat, “BOO, say Ahhhhh”… and after she would meow he bent his head to the side to take a good look in her mouth while it was open. When her mouth closed he glanced towards my direction as if to say, “it’s not there, I can’t see it”.
He proceeded to tell everyone we met that the cats had eaten his pacifiers. He even told his teacher at school, who later told me that she knew something was up because he was on the “angry-side” that entire week!
***
So my apologies to:
- Luke for scarring you for life and initiating your hatred for the feline species. I’ll be sure to remind you of this story so that you understand where the hatred comes from.
- Future girlfriends, wife and children…please do not be surprised that when you ask for a sweet, little, fuzzy, meow-meow that he will roll his eyes in disgust.
- Any cats that cross Luke’s path…I can’t guarantee your safety and would encourage you to get the heck-out-of-dodge!
And, my deepest condolences to Hunter and especially BOO – although, let’s be honest, you both hated the boys before this little event even happened, and therefore I’ve just given validation to why you can now officially hate children.
I want to remember that he only had one level and that was really really loud. He was incapable of using his "inside voice".
I want to remember that he loved fruits and vegetables -- always finishing those on his plate first. 
