It turns out that if you want to see me violently gouge my ears out with a spork, all you have to do is suck on your bottom lip. Just one tiny little blip of the gawd-awful sound that is produced when one tucks their lower lip over their teeth and starts suckling is enough to launch me directly into a straight jacket-worthy fury.

OF COURSE Alexis had to go and decide that sucking on her lip is the most wonderful thing she can possibly do. It's better than watching High School Musical. It's better than eating a can of Lima beans. It's even better than watching a Penguins hockey game from Mario's box at the Igloo. It's the bestest, funnest, most wonderful thing EVER. YAY!

I've lost all patience with it. Not only is it annoying, but once the weather gets cold, it's going to lead to an epic case of chapped lips. I do NOT have the patience to deal with a person complaining about something that they 100% brought onto themselves.

I've tried EVERYTHING to get her to knock it off. I've begged, pleaded, yelled, scolded, punished, whined, cried, screamed, whispered, laughed, joked, and bawled. SHE KEEPS DOING IT. Over and over and over.

I get why she's doing it. She's one of those kids whose mouth has to be doing something at all times. When she was a newborn, she had to be eating or sucking on a pacifier. Later, she had to be blowing raspberries or cooing. Then she went for talking. Nonstop. After that, for a brief moment, she thought it would be fun to suck on her thumb/fingers. That lasted about 5.4 seconds after I saw her drag her hand along a rail at the zoo and then stick about 21325315098 germs directly into her mouth.

It's funny how you can get a kid to stop a behavior just by going completely nuts on them. Too bad once they've seen your eyes pop out of their sockets, they become immune to it as a means of persuasion.

Dammit.

In my quest to make the madness end, I decided to start giving the kid "lipstick" all the time. It's really nothing more than Chapstick, but I delivered it with a message. "If you suck on your lip, the lipstick will come off and it'll end up in your belly and you'll get sick."

It sounded like a good idea. Really.

Even Alexis said it was a good idea. After I let her slather her entire face with the shiny stuff on Saturday, she cheerily said, (and I QUOTE), "You're a genius, momma." See that? My kid knows her stuff. I AM a genius.

(I might be including that part solely because there will come a day when Alexis will glare at me and declare me the dumbest person on Earth, screaming something like, "You don't understand anything. You're so dumb," and I'll be able to accurately remember that she was smarter when she was three years and nine months old because truly, I AM a genius. There is not taking it back once it has been said.)

Right after she declared the truest fact ever, she started sucking on her lip. Genius or not, I cannot for the life of me figure out a way to convince the kid to Stop. freakin. sucking. on. her. lip.

I think the next logical step is to just pierce her lip. Surely some pain and blood and gore will get her to knock it off.

(This is me not talking about the fact that the kid might just be wearing jeans in that pic because talking about it would be like talking about your grandparents having sex. YOU JUST DON'T TALK ABOUT THESE IMAGINARY THINGS.)