Miles has been sucking his thumb pretty much since the day he was born.
Pretty soon his Uh-Oh* became part of the equation and he would only suck is thumb if he was holding his special blankie.
We considered this a good thing because we were able to limit his thumb sucking by keeping his uh-oh in his crib for naps and bedtime only. Eventually, though, he caught on to the system and we started finding him with a corner of his blanket pulled through the slats of his crib so he could suck his thumb throughout the day.
Then life took a few sharp and crazy turns and Miles' Uh-oh became pretty much the only stable thing in his life. We were just glad there was something that could give him comfort during this challenging time and never questioned how much he used it.
Now, here we are, a few years later, and we might as well start calling him Linus.
With his 3rd birthday right around the corner I probably should be more concerned with stopping this bad habit, but truthfully I'm not. They're only little once.
* It has been brought to my attention that I have never explained how the name Uh-Oh came to be. One of the first things Miles learned to say was Uh-oh. He would say it whenever he dropped something. He had always been an amazing sleeper and all we had to do was lay him in his crib with his special blanket and he would put himself to sleep...without exception. When he reached the dreaded milestone of pulling himself up in the crib he would often times drop his blanket out of the crib. He couldn't fall asleep without it so he would stand and yell out Uh-Oh, Uh-Oh until one of us came and got his blanket for him. It didn't take him (or us) long to figure out that when he yelled Uh-Oh from his crib we got his blanket and so during the day he would stand outside of his crib saying uh-oh, uh-oh and pointing in his crib for his blanket. Eventually the whole family developed the habit of calling it his Uh-oh and the name has stuck.
Speaking of thumb suckers.....
Ellie was a die hard binky baby, but just a week or two before she got sick she had developed a habit of sticking her thumb in her trach. All. The. Time. We already had a hard enough time keeping her HMEs (a humidification and filter attachment on the end of her trach) on without her pulling them off, but now the second she pulled it off she would purposefully stick her thumb right in the opening. Good thing she had a decent air leak around her trach and tolerated being capped for short amounts of time so she wouldn't suffocate herself by doing this. We immediately knew when she was "sucking her thumb", as we started referring to it, because all of the sudden her voice would become audible. It was a silly (and slightly worrisome) habit, but it was one of the ways her personality was really starting to shine through.
So I guess we technically had two thumb suckers.
