buh-bye babyhood

Adelyn has(had?) a habit. Sucking her thumb, when she’s tired or sick or just bored. It’s been something that we have talked about. Telling her that she shouldn’t suck her thumb, but I didn’t really push it. For two reasons, the first being that I knew she would stop when she was ready, and the second, the one that probably weighed in the most, it was the last bit of her babyhood.
She’s fallen asleep the past 3 nights without sucking her thumb, but it still manages to find a way to her lips during the day, out of habit I assume. But when she notices, out it goes.

How it happened. Craig busted his thumb with a hammer while building my crates. After Adelyn saw the blood blister a few days later she asked what happened, he lied and said that it’s what happens when you suck your thumb. When she would go to put her thumb to her lips, Craig would stick out his thumb, and she’d instantly put her hand at her side.

The last bit of babyhood. What am I to do.

The funny thing is, Adelyn didn’t start sucking her thumb until a few months after she turned ONE, after she weaned herself from breastfeeding. She was never like a normal baby. She hated to be swaddled, always had to have her legs stretched. Never liked to be cuddled or rocked.  From the second she was born, she could lift her head and look around, never ever did she need her neck or head supported, even when she was just hours old. I think she was only one week, when she was standing, with our support, but still putting all her weight on those teeny legs. She was crawling and walking way before she should have been. Spelling her name and potty trained by 18 months. Her vocabulary is way ahead of what it should be and she knows way too much for a 3 year old.

So to have this little piece of babyhood, to have a thumb-sucker, it didn’t bother me like it did others. Who cares if we have to spend thousands of dollars on dental work, it’s the one thing holding her onto babyhood, the one thing keeping my baby girl a baby.

And it’s gone. Just like that. One day falling asleep with a thumb, the next not.

I remember the day I found out I was pregnant with her. I had a bad day at work, and I was planning on going out to get HAMMERED. It was a Friday. But I was a day late and stopped to get a test, just to be sure. I cried… oh I cried. My night did not go as planned… but in hindsight it was the best night of my life.

Hindsight is always 20/20.

If I could go back to that day, and the days that followed I’d tell myself it wouldn’t be ok… it would be PERFECT. I would tell the 22 year old me that “this  is the best thing that would ever happen to you. In 3 years you will have a mini-me teaching you everything you didn’t know, but needed to, about life. You will finally know what love at first sight feels like, you will know that it IS real. You will know what everyone meant when they would say ‘Your body is a temple, a sacred place’… because Lord knows you will be instilling that into this little one. In three years and all the years to come, you will look back and know that this is God’s gift to you, saving your life. Giving your life meaning. Because believe you me, you need this. Desperately.”

oh Motherhood, you amaze me with all the ups and downs! 

# kristanlynn
xoxo