The Thumb

Of all the pictures of Ems, her thumb is in her mouth more often then not. I'm amazed we didn't have an ultrasound of her sucking her thumb. We loved the fact our princess was a thumb sucker when she was a newborn....we never had to go running to the crib in the middle of the night because the pacifier fell out (as we did with Caleb). But now that she is a toddler we're realizing a thumb is a harder addiction to stop then a pacifier. With Caleb we took the pacifier away one night and that was the end of it. With Ems we would have to tape her mouth shut to get her to stop. (as a side note we did try to tape her thumb one day but she kept taking it off within seconds)

Tonight she came down after being in bed for 20 minutes complaining of a hurting left thumb. After an inspection it was obvious the skin had just become raw and split from so much sucking. I explained to Em how she was sucking her thumb too much and the effects it was having on the skin. I offered her a bandaid (as shown above) and asked if she thought it a good idea to stop sucking her thumb. She replied, "Yah- okay. I stop sucking my thumb and start sucking THIS one" and she triumphantly held up her very healthy, very rarily used right thumb.