I realized in bed last night that yesterday was Elizabeth’s three-and-a-half year birthday! Time for a little update just on her. She still gallops everywhere, dances in ballet class or in the living room, loves to be read to, and loves to help cook. She’s so helpful about folding washcloths, washing windows with a sock, pulling Susie’s shoes off and putting them in the closet, even trying to sweep the dirt off the patio. For all her cheerful, bouncy ways, she doesn’t have as much energy as Tommy or Susie. She’ll ride her trike or run for a short time, then tell me she’s tired and needs to rest. I’m trying to work on her stamina a bit. She is our earliest riser, though, and never happier than first thing in the morning. She’ll sleep for two to three hours if I put her down for a nap, but she can skip it as needed. I’m trying to decide at what point to just bite the bullet and let her drop it–she is definitely more cheerful in the evenings when she’s napped, but she falls asleep a lot earlier when she hasn’t. She tells me every day that she wants to do “what you and Tommy are doing” for school, so I’ve started going through the ABC Bible Verses book with her and will probably start our alphabet puzzle one of these days for letter recognition. Like Tommy, she’s been read to so much since birth that she will sit still and listen to a book without many pictures (like Little House), though she loves Richard Scarry and Gyo Fujikawa for bedtime reading. She’s really gotten into coloring in the past month or two (though her pictures are still monochromatic scribbles most of the time). Our biggest issue is that she still sucks her thumb and twirls her hair any moment she has down time. We’ve tried Thum polish, bribes, threats, constant reminders…nothing has worked. Her dentist definitely wants us to work on it, but we are out of ideas! Unfortunately, her little sidekick does everything her big sister does, so we have two hardened thumb suckers nowadays. She is such a happy member of our family!
I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but have you tried substituting a pacifier for the thumb during those down times/sleeping? I have a friend that did this with her three year old (may have been just under three) and it worked for her. It may definately be worth trying for Lizzie, Suzzie might be a bit old. Not that you want a three year old using a pacifier, but once you break the thumb habit you can take the pacifier away. I don’t have any thumb suckers, so I don’t really know, but have two siblings who sucked their thumbs way too long-in the end I think it usually has to be the kids decision because you can’t exactly take it away (my brother got a big wart on his thumb around 5-6 years old which broke him of the habit). Glad to hear that otherwise she is doing well and I hope the pregnancy is not causing you too much pain.