More than a few times during my daughter's first year on Earth, I pondered looking up the inventor of the pacifier and writing him (or her!) a letter of thanks. With a daughter whose insatiable need to suck knew no bounds, I didn't think you could find a bigger fan of the sucky on this planet. But then a video of twin baby girls having a pacifier war popped up on the Internet and went viral.

More than two million people have been charmed by these sisters grappling for one pink binky, and you're about to see why: 

Some parents are disgusting. Really disgusting. They'll pick up a pacifier from just about anywhere and pop it in their baby's mouth. But are you ready to be really grossed out, Moms and Dads? You know that pacifier that has turned your screaming baby into a sweet little dumpling who actually sleeps through the night? It's absolutely crawling with germs, and I do mean CRAWLING!

Before you say no, duh, of course there are germs out there, but you have to eat a pound of dirt before you die, I'm not trying to be an alarmist here. But it's time some parents wake up to how absolutely disgusting they are! And you don't have to take my word for it: a new pacifier study out of the American Society for Clinical Pathology should make you clean up your act.

When my kids were newborns, I hid all the pacifiers we received as gifts in fear that using them would cause nipple confusion. Plus, I really didn't need another thing to clean. Then my mom bought us some fancy ones most like a woman's nipples and whispered to me, "Just in case." We had one of those "just in case" moments and used them for half a second before my son decided he liked to suck on his foot better and my daughter found her thumb. Thank goodness for that because researchers just revealed that baby boys who use pacifiers turn out to be emotionless jerks who seem to have Botox faces without any expression or empathy for others. 

I wonder if that explains some of the guys I've dated.

Girls come out unscathed. And there hasn't been a study on baby boys who suck their own toes yet, so the verdict is out on my son. But no one wants their precious little boy to turn out to be an apathetic dolt. What the heck is this study anyway?

She may be single, but Charlize Theron says she's anything but a single mom to her son Jackson.

The star swears that her pitbull Blue and terrier mutt Blakely actually help her take care of the 6-month-old.

"People keep saying, 'Oh you're a single mom,' and I'm like, 'Actually, I'm not. I got two boys helping me out.' It's incredible," she said during a sit-down on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Seriously? I always thought a pitbull was more likely to use a baby as a chew toy than care for one.

Moms take note: Those cherished sippies, bottles, and binkies could be dangerous, according to  a new study published in the journal Pediatrics.

It seems kids who cruise around the the house with these time-tested soothers in their mouths are ending up in the emergency room.

Researchers at the Nationwide Children's Hospital and Ohio State University combed through ER records and found that 45,398 children were rushed to the hospital with injuries caused by bottles, sippy cups and pacifiers between 1991 and 2010.

When it comes to pacifiers, some kids are never given one and know not what they're missing. Others are offered one, and have no interest. Then there are those (like my children) for whom it's love at first suck. They fall in love, and all is well; only the fight to get them to surrender the binky can often be brutal.

Case in point: The two adorable babies in the following video. They both want that piece of plastic, and they're not going to stop until they get it. There's no screaming or crying -- just sheer will and determination.

I was cleaning and had to go through some bags of old mementos. Okay, fine, they were a lot of Kiddo's stuff, stuff that should be in a preservation box, that should be kept safe -- like the hospital form with her footprints at the bottom from when she was born, her little name tag from then, and the baggie of her hair from her first haircut. Lots of "firsts" were in these bags ... including the hardened skin thing that fell off from her belly button. It took me a minute to realize what it was ... at which point I was totally grossed out.

I kept the friggin' belly-button stub-a-ma-bob. Seriously, why do we keep these things?

Key Baby is recalling almost 30,000 pacifiers due to a potential choking hazard. Which is not at all what you want to hear in relation to your baby's binky. In fact, short of a baby bottle, this is one of the last things I would want to have to worry about when it came to my baby. While no injuries have been reported by this company, they announced yesterday that their Pampers Natural Stages Infant Ortho and Bulb models do not meet federal safety standards.

Yikes! So pop that paci out of your baby's mouth right now, and check for this info: