2 posts tagged “fairy”

This weekend, we took a page from the Nanny 911 playbook and engineered a special visit for Violet from the Pacifier Fairy.

For those of you unfamiliar with this figure, the Pacifier Fairy is a (pretty ingenious) way to get your kid to give up their pacifiers [cold turkey] while still letting the kid believe it's THEIR idea to give them up.  Believe me, this totally beats having them resent you for taking away and withholding their precious pacifier from them!

On Saturday, Dee told Violet that we were going to have her give her pacifiers to the Pacifier Fairy, who was going to take them and give them to little babies who needed them.  And for being such a big girl, the Pacifier Fairy was going to bring Violet a special present.  Violet is a pretty skeptical and stubborn child, and we really didn't think she was going to go for this, but she seemed to latch on to the idea that she could help some babies by giving them her pacifiers. 

Dee helped Violet put all of her pacifiers into a manila envelope, and they sealed the envelope and addressed it to the Pacifier Fairy.  Then they walked out to the mailbox and put the envelope in the mailbox for the Pacifier Fairy to come pick up (Dee had to explain to the mailman what they were doing while she was out there).  We snuck out later to get the envelope without Violet knowing, of course, and waited until that evening to tell her that the Pacifier Fairy had come and left her a present.

Violet's present(s) were two stuffed animals from the Disney Store, a Mickey and a Goofy.  She absolutely adores the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cartoon, and her reaction to getting these was sooo cute.  She just stood there with this huge grin on her face, giggling and turning the animals over and over, pointing out their tails, their ears, their teeth, their eyes, etc.

Violet did ask for her "paci" a couple times that day, but every time we reminded her that she gave them to the Pacifier Fairy to give to little babies, she seemed pretty content to let it go.  We did have a rough spot when she woke up in the middle of the night and cried pretty inconsolably, but Dee stayed strong and just sat by her bed and comforted her for about the 15 minutes it took her to cry it out and go back to sleep.  Sunday, she asked for a paci again a couple of times, but again was dissuaded when we reminded her of the Pacifier Fairy.

Ideally, you shouldn't even have had to get to the point where you need to implement the Pacifier Fairy, but if you're like my wife and I, and it sometimes seemed like the pacifier was the only thing helping us to keep our sanity, you might find yourself with an almost-three-year-old who is using it as a crutch way too often.  We're already promising ourselves we'll do better with Rosalie, but for now, thank goodness for the Pacifier Fairy!!!!

I believe fairies exist.  Or brownies, or some other of their kin.  And I think I have proof.

You see, I work in an office building, with your typical cube setup, and with typical office regularity, the bathrooms get cleaned, the recycling gets removed, and the wastebaskets get emptied.  I'm sure of the first of these because I can hear the cleaning lady knock on the men's room door and ask "Anybody in there?" 2-3 times a day.  The big paper recycling bins make a lot of noise when the burly recycling guys roll them down the hall, making it hard to miss when they're hauling them away.  However, as for the wastebaskets being emptied...well, I KNOW it happens, but I have just never SEEN it happen.

This wouldn't be so unnerving if I simply came in to a clean wastebasket every morning - I'd have to assume that the cleaning staff came by every night after everyone left and emptied the trash.  But it doesn't happen that way.  Instead, some days the wastebasket will be empty when I come in to work in the morning.  On other days, it still retains yesterday's refuse when I arrive.  But almost always, sometime during the day (but never while I'm at my desk!) the wastebaskets are emptied and a fresh plastic liner fitted in place of the old one. 

Again, I'd attribute this to a polite facilities crew, except I NEVER SEE ANYONE walking around the building with anything that they could be dumping my wastebasket into.  I don't work a regular schedule where I leave my desk every day from 10:15-10:30 (or the like), and don't see how I wouldn't, at least once, catch a cleaning person lying in wait for me to leave, if they really were trying to avoid interrupting my work.

My only explanation?  The little folk.  Only they could be deft enough to take care of the trash duty right under my nose, or in the few moments I step away from my desk to grab another cup of coffee from the break room.  I'd never see them if they didn't want to be seen.  It really is the only explanation.

My hypothesis seems to be backed up by the fact that when emptied, the wastebasket is never placed back where it was previously sitting.  Sometimes it is left behind my desk, sometimes next to it, and once, it was even left underneath my desk.  I'm not sure, but I really doubt that the cleaning crew has a playful enough nature here at the office to want to do such a thing every day for months on end.

Regardless, my wastebasket fairy always does a top-notch job and never misses picking up any scrap of paper that might have missed the bin.  I'm highly appreciative, but have never been able to show it.  So this weekend, I think I'll leave out a saucer of milk.  You know....just in case.