It's a hair thang

Hair Pulling. It's a problem. Now, if you are imagining little girls fighting and pulling each other's hair, you would be wrong. Caíthlyn pulls out her own hair.
Our beautiful Goldie Locks has pretty much always had the habit of twisting her hair around her fingers as soon as she had her dodi in her mouth.
I seriously doubt that she even realized she did this. She used to to twist and twirl it, then pull it tight and kind of pluck at the strand. What we never realized was that when she did this, she actually broke her hair. What was once a beautifull, full head of hair is now a rather raggety mop of different lengths of hair. There would be tuffs of hair laying about wherever she had been relaxing. On the sofa, in her carseat....... I could make a wig of all the hair we have found in her bed! It was quite upsetting watching her hair deminish like that. Finally, something had to be done, this could not continue.
Dr. Google provided us with some rather not fun information about a condition that is called trichotillomania. People have been diagnosed with that as early as two years of age. Darren and I both thought it sounded a bit severe and decided that we would first see if there was anything we could do before "diagnosing" her with trichotillomania.
As the dodi and the hair pulling seemed to be in direct link with each other, Daddy, Nannie and myself decided that the dodi needed to be fazed out.
Let me just say again how lucky we are to have Nannie. She loves her grandchildren to distraction and is SO on the ball that she will "catch" or predict almost anything involving them.
Whereas Darren and I are her parents and are obviously the ones that ultimately call the shots where Caíthlyn is concerned, we would be absolutely lost without Nannie. If something needs to be done for the grandkids, she will make darn sure that it gets done.
And with the hairpulling, something needed to be done.
As Nannie minds Little Miss three days a week, her help with this issue was invaluable. The dodi had to go. At least during the day. The first week it was kind of tough, she would ask for her dodi as soon as she got tired. Or Bored. She would see her cousin E. with her dodi and ask for her own. But we persisted, none of us caved, and it worked! The hairpulling is almost non-existant now! She still does it sometimes when she falls asleep as she gets her dodi in her bed. We tell her "Dodi's are for bedtime Honey." and she's fine with that.
I have never made any secret of my hatred for the dodi. When she was a baby, I was gratefull for the peace and comfort it provided. As she got older though, and started walking, I started to HATE the thing. The thought of her going to school and still walking around with this thing in her mouth annoyed the heck out of me. So when Darren sent me this following e-mail this morning, I was SO delighted:

"She stood up in the bed for me to lift her out and took her doddy out her mouth and kind of looked at it as if to say, ok, well what do I do with this now...no use for it now..and she looked at me and I said throw it on your pillow for later and she did without even batting an eyelid...it was great.."

When I had been getting her up on the days that I was off, she would let me take her dodi and put it away. No fuss. But now she is giving it up voluntarily? Leaving it, without prompting? Happy Freaking Days!!

Because, really:

This:



Is so much better than this:



Right? (Still pretty darn cute in the second one too though!)

Now, our hope is that the hair gets to recover. Auntie N. (Well, S. for the rest of us, but Little Miss calls her Auntie N.) is a hair stylist and will give Caíthlyn her first haircut when she is about three years old. Hopefully that will give it the chance to get well again.

Fingers crossed!