159/365: Habits

Last weekend I painted Bella's fingernails for St. Patrick's Day.  It's been an interesting year for holidays in our family.  As the kids learn more about celebrations and holidays, they want to do more and more.  I've always gotten them Valentine's Day outfits, but this year they needed St. Patrick's Day shirts.  And since Bella is my girly girl, always into make up and appearance, I painted her fingers and her toes green.  As you can see, most of her finger nail polish shows the normal wear that you'd expect from a home manicure for a four year old.  It's chipped, pulling away from her cuticles six days post painting.  That is, always except her index finger.  It's almost completely gone there, scraped off due to excessive moisture and teeth.  Yes, my four year old sucks her finger.

Bella was a binky baby.  She had that thing in her mouth all the time.  We put multiple binkies in her crib so if she lost one in the night, she could immediately find another.  I had back up binkies stashed so we would never be without.  When she was about two and a half, we began to try to break the habit.  I started by poking little holes in the tip of the nipple.  It didn't phase her.  I cut the end off them.  She pulled it out, looked at it, and kept sucking.  Finally, I did what all well-educated, child-centered parents do when trying to break their children of a bad habit, I lied and bribed her.  "The Easter Bunny won't leave you anything in your basket if he sees you still have a binky."  The material girl side of the diva took over and she plunked every binky she could find in the trash. End of story?  Not quite.

Immediately her right index finger went to her mouth and we've been fighting that habit ever since.  She's got little scars built up on the bottom of her finger from her teeth.  In the winter her hands get dried and chapped from being wet.  She actually stopped for a few months, but when Boo went to kindergarten and she was alone at pre-school it started again.  The good news is she only sucks it when she has her woobie in her hands, the bad news is that it's like prying a nut from a squirrel to get woobiy away from her.  My newest plan is to outlaw woobies anywhere in the house except for bedrooms.  That will at least cut down the opportunity.  I don't know where I'll go from there.  With Boo, we taped a glove to his pajamas to stop the thumb sucking and he left it alone.  I can see Bella gnawing at the glove to remove it.