Digits

Have you noticed something different about Sophie in recent pictures I've posted? Here, I'll share one and see if you can see what's changed.

Perhaps you're thinking, "Well, she has a lot of personality." Or maybe, "She wears that drum shirt a lot." Or my favorite, "Why is she always sitting on the floor in stores?" All are true observations, but not what I'm talking about. Here are a few pictures from December for comparison.

Do you see it? That's right, she's sucking on her fingers in the last three, but not in the first one. That's because she and I had a talk at the beginning of the year about this habit. We looked at how dry and slightly swollen her fingers were and how her nails on those fingers never grew. I asked if she would try not to suck on them. Her response? "But I like sucking my fingers."

I didn't think anything would come of our chat. She's three, that's a little young for solid reasoning to have much of an impact. But she surprised me. A few weeks into the year I realized she wasn't sucking them anymore. I asked her if she had decided to stop, and she said yes.

While I'm pleased that she's given up having consistently soggy fingers, there are a few things I miss. She used to be able to sooth herself to sleep if she woke up in the night. Since the new year, Sophie will wake up, then, unable to put herself back to sleep, she will wake up Phoebe and ask her to open the safety gate on their room. The gate is there specifically to prevent Miss Sophie from wandering the house or attempting the stairs in the night. Don't worry though, she always uses the buddy system. The month January was full of late night visits from Sophie and Phoebe, holding hands and walking to my side of the bed, ready to climb in with us to snuggle. I love to cuddle my kids, but I also love sleeping through the night.

She's also been throwing more tantrums. This might simply be the nature of being three. However, her self-soothing tool doesn't work anymore. So now, sans fingers, I'm teaching her what to do when she doesn't get her way, you know, instead of glaring and harrumphing and loudly declaring that I'm not her mom, which was somewhat nerve-wracking during a recent grocery store visit.

In spite of those rough patches, I'm proud of her. And I'm impressed with her self-control. When I commented last week about how she doesn't suck on her fingers anymore, she told me it was because she was "getting bigger and bigger."

Yes you are, sweet girl.