My little boy was a thumb-sucker until his fifth birthday.

From three months, when he discovered the tasty little digit, until 5 years, that thumb was his best friend. He needed it with a side dish, however. At first, anything with strings would do. I have a picture of him about 9 months old, holding onto the strands of a clean mop and sucking his thumb.

Later, a friend gave his sister a purple feather boa, and he decided that made the best accompaniment with his thumb.  I have pictures of that too.  He will not like them when he is a teenager.

The boa shed terribly, though, so it had to go away. For ages afterward, he would somehow find tiny little shreds of feathers, carefully place one where he could twirl it with his forefinger, and suck his thumb.

After there were no more purple feather bits to be had, he finally discovered his one true love—Nini.  Nini is a blanket that had been handmade and given to us by a friend.  He named it himself—why Nini, we will never know. 

Nini is lovely soft shades of pink, blue and yellow.  It is just the right size to cover up with, or hug.

Most importanly, it has tassels. 

Oh, those tassels.

Son would look over the tassels, decide which looked the most succulent, and then hold it, rubbing it in little circles on his nose while he sucked his thumb.

If I lay down with him, he would offer me a tassel.  I’d pretend to hold it and suck my thumb.  If I looked like I was enjoying it too much, he would remove it from my hand and take it for himself, giving me a different one.

Nini was too important ever to lose.  It was unique and there was no replacement.  Nini was so important that one time, after spending an hour and a half in rush-hour traffic just getting on route I-495 for a weekend trip, when we realized we had forgotten Nini, we went back.  That’s love.

He’s not the only one who loved Nini. I have to admit that I was pretty fond of the blanket, and the thumb too.  It made bedtime SO easy.  Nothing like with his sister, who I had spent countless hours trying to put to sleep, only to have her wake up and cry as I snuck away.  But with him, all we needed was Nini, thumb and preferably musical aquarium toy, and he went right to sleep.

He only sucked his thumb to go to sleep, and I hated to take that away from him, but when he was close to 5, I figured we really should work on it.  Maybe this is slightly evil, but as his birthday approached, I explained that it wasn’t really good for his permanent teeth that would be coming soon, and it’s just fine for babies and little boys to suck their thumbs, but he was getting close to being big enough to stop. I suggested that for his birthday, we would go and he could pick out any new blanket he wanted as part of his birthday present.  I would make sure that where we looked, there would be none with tassels.  And I suggested that we put Nini away for awhile.

He agreed. And we did. And it worked.

We had a nice day out, he chose a Speed Racer blanket, and I put Nini in the closet.  He never asked for it, never cried, and—without his tassels—never went back to sucking his thumb. 

A few months later, I got it out of the closet and it still keeps him company at night, but the magic of the tassels is broken.