plausible deniability

We lost our one and only remaining pacifier Thursday night. I had purposefully not restocked thinking that one day it would come to this and I could genuinely look into B.'s face and say, "The paci is gone and mommy can't find it." I'm a terrible liar and never would have been able to carry it off if I truly didn't know where to find the paci. He went to sleep surprisingly easily, so when I found the paci an hour later I decided to maintain the charade. Since then he's only seemed to miss the paci when he wakes up in the morning, which is the easiest time for me to resist. (Lemme tell you, that paci would magically resurface so fast if he was waking up in the middle of the night for it.) But since he's still asking about the paci,  this morning I created a whole backstory about a paci fairy coming to take the paci to a little baby who needed it (thanks for the tip Supernanny). And we went shopping for a consolation gift at Toys R Us. I'm not sure he entirely buys that an airplane and Lightning McQueen are adequate substitutes for a pacifier but we're gonna power through...at least during business hours.