Goodbye De-duh...

Last year when Jaelyn turned five, I posted about her giving up her blanket. Well this time I am confident she has given it up for good! As you can see from the photo below, she joined our family already having an attachment to a handkerchief that she referred to as "De-duh." Now maybe someone who speaks Chinese can tell us what she was saying, as we had no idea what it meant, but it was what she would say when she would point to it (it was usually hanging up to air dry). I even posted about it the second day she was with our family in China.


When we got home from China, she gave up her "De-duh" and traded it for a blanket our neighbor made. After last years attempt at giving it up, since she would just suck on anything else she could find, topped by the fact that her sister was still sucking her fingers at night, we decided to give her the blanket back. Well now that she has turned six, we decided to take another approach. "Big teeth are coming, and the dentist says you need to stop sucking or your teeth will come in crooked!" So maybe we were a little dramatic about it, but it worked! She started a couple nights with sleeping with her blanket, but promising not to suck on it. Sure enough, when I would come in to check on her after she was asleep, no blanket in her mouth. She was so proud of herself in the morning when I told her. We then moved to bringing the blanket to the couch where she could snuggle with it in the morning. After a couple nights of being successful with this, she decided it needed one last washing before we tucked it away in a closet, alongside her De-duh. One more sign that our little girl is growing up! We have about two months now to figure out how to get Kaia to quit sucking her fingers! We didn't have to go down this road with the boys. Any suggestions out there?