Butterfly, Ouchy Thumb, and PUH-peh

Oh my!

Recently there have been some sleep issues with Jacob. He obviously needs a different sleep schedule, and we've changed several things, but nothing has really helped yet. It may just be that he's realized that he's missing out when he's sleeping. And he hasn't realized that missing out on cleaning the kitchen is actually an okay thing. I'd be happy to trade places - if only he could clean the kitchen while I sleep!

Jacob goes to sleep holding a stuffed butterfly and sucking his thumb. But somehow Butterfly would end up on the floor. We'd hear a "thunk" of Butterfly hitting the wood floor, and a few seconds later there would be hysterical crying. We would go up to get Butterfly, tell Jacob that he needed to keep Butterfly safe in the crib, leave, and repeat. We started to suspect that we were being strung along.

Then one night as I was leaving his room I saw him frantically hitting at Butterfly, trying to get him through the crib slats back onto the floor. I went back in to discuss this with him. The look of guilt and horror on his face was priceless! He thought he was being so sneaky!

After a few stints of Butterfly staying on the floor for about 5 minutes, Jacob got the message. He is now very careful to keep Butterfly in the crib with him.

Our other problem is that Jacob sucks his thumb so hard that he's sucking the nail right off. It's pealing up from the bottom. I tried putting a bandaid on the thumb. He really liked the bandaid, but he kept messing with it (because it was so neat) so it fell off. Repeatedly.

Next we tried putting a sock on his arm in an attempt to break the thumb sucking habit. While we didn't really care that a 1.5 year old was sucking his thumb at bedtime, we didn't want him to be hurting himself. I felt bad about putting the sock on and carefully explained to him how the sock would help his "ouchy thumb" feel better.

We were shocked that Jacob was pleased with the sock. He held his socked arm up proudly for us to see and would point at it saying, "PUH-pol". We were glad he liked the sock and confused that he called it "purple" because the sock was green. Despite Jacob's pleasure, he had the sock off his arm just a few seconds after laying down for the night.

The next morning he requested having the sock on his arm again. "PUH-peh." big smile. "PUH-peh." Turns out that Jacob thought the sock was a game. Specifically, that the sock was a puppet. We didn't know that he knew about puppets or that he could say puppet. Jacob is full of surprises!

Our half-hearted attempt to stop the thumb sucking has stopped. Now we just trim the nail on the ouchy thumb every couple of days. We're relieved that Butterfly is staying in the crib. And apparently we need to get some puppets.