Blessing in disguise

For those of you who do not know Riley well, he is a thumb-sucker. He used to do it only when he was sleepy, but then started doing it all day long. He liked to put his right thumb in his mouth and pull on his left ear with his other hand. In fact, sometimes he would fold the top of the ear down and walk around with it like that and it would get stuck in the folded position. A pretty funny sight no doubt!

A couple of weeks ago, Riley's hand was accidentally slammed in the back door. He had a gash on his thumb so we put on a band-aid to help it heal. That night, Riley had a ROUGH time going to sleep. He kept coming downstairs crying saying, "There's something in my mouth!" At first, I would try to look in his mouth to see what he was talking about, thinking it was a hair or something. Then I figured out it was the band-aid that made it feel different to him. He cried and cried until almost 1 am, and finally, exhausted, fell asleep without his thumb in his mouth.

The door-slamming injury turned out to be a blessing in disguise. For the next few days, we kept the band-aid on his thumb, and even bought some cool Spiderman ones that he liked. His thumb eventually healed, but Riley has not gone back to sucking his thumb, even at night! I am so proud of him! To celebrate his success, I thought I'd post a few pictures of the "baby" Riley sucking his thumb - note the ear-pulling picture in the bath tub!