Nucleotides are initially made with ribose as the sugar component, which is a feature of RNA. DNA, however, requires deoxyribose, which is missing the 2'-hydroxyl (-OH group) on the ribose. The reaction to remove this -OH is catalyzed by ribonucleotide reductase. This enzyme converts NDPs (ucleoside-ihosphate) to dNDPs (eoxyucleoside-ihosphate).  The nucleotides must be in the diphosphate form for the reaction to occur.
In order to synthesize thymidine, a component of DNA which only exists in the deoxy form, uridine is converted to deoxyuridine (by ribonucleotide reductase), and then is methylated by thymidylate synthase to create thymidine.