EW!

Blockette is a nail bitter. I'm not sure where or why she picked this up, especially since she is biting her fingernails AND her toenails. Gack! It makes me sick to think about it. Bleck. At least it isn't warm enough out for her to be wearing sandals so her feet are relatively clean. But still...ish ka bibble.

For some reason she hates it when I cut her fingernails. She says it hurts when I do it. I'm not cutting them any differently than I have since birth, so who knows what is up with that.

We talked about how her hands and feet have germs all over them. And it's the germs that make her feet stinky. And when she puts them in her mouth the germs get in her body and make her sick. And she doesn't want to get sick does she? Mrblocko even told her that her fingernails in her tummy could cut up her insides and make her insides all ouchy and bleed. Then we told her about a friend who bites her fingernails and how it got infected. The fingernail got such a bad boo boo on it that the fingernail fell off and it was very VERY ouchy.

Well, all that worked for about a minute. The next day I heard the tell tale sound of a little girl snip snip sniping at her fingernails with her teeth. AAAAH!

So I told her if she likes to put yucky things in her mouth then we were only going to feed her things that she thought were yucky. If she kept biting her fingers she was getting a bowl of black beans, olives, and mushrooms with hot sauce for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Her initial response was, "Then I just won't eat." Mrblocko countered with, "Then you will be a very hungry girl." Her eyes got big and she said, "I don't want to eat those yucky things. I promise. I don't want to bite my fingernails anymore."

I guess time will tell if this tactic is going to work. So far I haven't seen (or heard) her bite her nails since we had the yucky food discussion a few days ago. Keep your fingers crossed that this works!