In England they call them dummies. In the States they call them pacifiers. My sister’s kids call them choo-chos. My brother’s kids call them dibby-dops. In our house, we call them dippy-dots or dippy-dops or dibby-dobs and nobody’s really quite sure of the exact term. But since August can’t even speak, it’s really neither here nor there.

When August was just a small boy (as opposed to now — he’s such a *big* boy), we experimented with various dibby-dop brands. There was the bizarre-looking Soothie pacifier in hospital green which made Augie look like a fish but fell out of the mouth way too easily (although I now appreciate the merit in that). There was the rather severe-looking brown rubber Natursutten pacifier which August detested from the get-go. There was the adorable MAM-brand pacifier which sported cute pictures of zebras but with which August simply couldn’t bond. And THEN… there was the mother of all pacifiers, the Nuk. It came in a variety of soothing coolers, the plastic was smooth and nicely-molded, the shape was just right and it came with a handy ring for yanking. As far as August was concerned, it was love at first suck.

In fact, before you can say dibby-dop, the mild attraction to his dibby-dop had turned into — how to phrase it — an all-out addiction. He needed it in the daytime. And he needed at night. And then he needed it every hour at night. And then he needed it to be popped into his mouth by his mum. Inevitably, he’d hook his finger around the ring and yank it out and call for mummy. 12.30, 1 a.m., 2 — August became my hourly alarm clock.

In case you can’t see the punchline coming a mile off, we put a ban on dibby-dops. “No more!” we said. And August snarled at us during the first two hours, whimpered at us for the second two hours and began stuffing his fingers into his mouth not long after that.

And that, my friends, is the story of how August learned to suck his thumb. I say: God bless thumb-sucking.