Jenny On the Spot

For weeks Olivia had been asking to wear nail polish. Being the very feminine and high maintenance woman I am, I didn\’t have any:) I finally remembered to buy some at the grocery store. She insisted we put it on as soon as we got home - yes ma\’am!!!

My normally fidgety and hoppity daughter sat very still as I applied the redish-pink polish to all ten finger and all ten toes. She sat still and all stretched out to allow the polish to dry, very careful not to ruin any of her new painted beauty:) Paul and I had no idea how this one beauty treatment, this one childhood indulgence would change her life… would change ours…

Out of concern and care for her new look, Olivia stopped sucking her thumb! We mentioned sucking her thumb might make the polish come off faster, and she took it to heart. It has been about a month now. She has not sucked - or \”parked\” (keeping her index finger in her nose) since! Of course, she took it a little further and worried that socks and closed toe shoes would damag her toe polish, but it was not much of a battle for long.

I was worried in three years we\’d have a six-year-old night time closet thumb sucker - at the least! Her thumb was almost always in her mouth, with index finger parked. I was able to wean Joel off the pacifier by the time he was two, buttaking away a digit! Had I known her magic formula I would have rushed to buy nail polish months ago! Now… about potty training… I guess there is always a hurdle:)