Victory!

Eliana has seriously been sucking her fingers since she was born. I have a picture of her in her first week of life with her right-hand pointer finger in her mouth, really! Her first two fingers of her right hand have been her source of comfort for almost five years and we have tried to encourage her to stop sucking them but as is usual with her, until she decided she wanted to there was no changing her ways.

Our promised reward from the beginning allowing her to paint her nails with real nail polish. I thought this would be a big deal but it's taken a long time for her to want it badly enough. All of a sudden last weekend she told us she wanted to stop and to get the yucky nail polish so she could work on it. Great! So, last Sunday we painted her nails with the nasty polish and those first couple of days were hard and there was no shortage of weeping and gnashing of teeth, but we encouraged her to not give up and she did it. She made it a week without sucking them and got her big reward on Sunday. She seems to be doing well and I see the habit breaking more every day. Amazing!

I will admit I was a little emotional that first night we put on the polish. Of course I wanted her to stop, but it was just another step closer to being that big, grown-up girl she is becoming and one more piece of baby going away. We moms are so emotional!

Way to go Eliana! You are such a big girl!