Fairies

I made a mistake last night. While tucking Tommy into bed and expressing my frustration over the fact that he still uses a paci to go to sleep (and sometimes during the day when I'm not paying attention), I mentioned the "Paci Fairy". That peaked his curiosity. Here's a snippet of our conversation that followed:

Tommy: (hesitantly) "What's the Paci Fairy?"
Me: "She comes in the middle of the night and collects all your pacis and gives you a really cool toy instead."
Tommy: (a bit scared now)"When will she come?"
Me: "When you're ready"
Tommy: "What color shirt does she wear?"
Me: "Um, maybe pink?
Tommy: "How does she get all the pacis?"
Me: "We collect them all and put them in a cup and leave them for her and she comes to get them. You look scared, do you not want her to come into your room?"
Tommy: (shakes head no and I can see tears beginning to form in his eyes)
Me: "Well, she doesn't have to come in your room, you can put the cup of pacis in the living room or kitchen or even outside if you want to. Heck, you can put them in the front yard of the house down the street."
Tommy: "Which cloud does she live on?"

By now I could see that we might never get this child to bed, so I ended the paci fairy conversation and prayed that he wouldn't have nightmares.

This morning he woke me up around 6:30 (remember I'm up all night feeding a newborn, so I admit I'm not the most thrilled about getting up before 7 every morning) and fired a ton of questions at me not only about the paci fairy, but about the tooth fairy as well. Then when he was finishing his breakfast, he asked about the drink fairy. I've created a monster.