Josie has been getting increasingly dependent on her Bear, which she "uses" to suck her thumb. She's always needed him to get to sleep at night, but lately she's got him in her hands almost all day long. The subsequent thumb-sucking has also increased, but not as much as the reliance on Bear. Even still, I feel like we're moving in the wrong direction here.If we leave the house without Bear, it's 5 minutes at the most before she's whining about how sad she is that she left him behind. The past few weeks, she's even been asking for him at school, which she never used to do. She's always been perfectly happy to leave him in the car at 9 and come back to see him at 1.
Now that she's got such a large vocabulary, I love to ask her how she sucks her thumb. She gives me the same steps every time... clearly it's a process that she has down to a science (these are almost exact quotes):
Step 1: You have to have Bear in your hand, holding him on the neck and face.
Step 2: You put your thumb into your mouth and still hold Bear.
Step 3: You put his nose up by your nose and smell. It smells real good.
Ewww. That makes me want to go steal Bear out of her bed and wash him. In hot water.
