Of Being Different

You would think by our third child it would be hard to surprise us or to find new parenting experiences, but only three weeks in and our Joey is out to prove he is his own person.

As previously mentioned, this is our first child with my ears (this makes me happy).  Our other two seem to be most definitely their father's child, but, while he very definitely resembles his sister's baby pictures, the ears are new.

After only one week, our little man pooed on my hand during a diaper change.  It was quite the mess.  And it was all over my hand.  I promise you, I have been peed on, vomited on and cried on.  But pooed on - that was new.

Now we have ourselves our first thumb-sucker.  Micaiah was, and still is, a finger sucker - she places her pointer and middle fingers in her mouth upside down when she's tired or upset (it's such a unique position, I'm still not sure how it's comfortable) - she rarely needed a pacifier because her fingers happily did the job.  Emmett, however, was a paci baby - he rarely went to sleep without one until we decided we were done with it at around six months.  We slowly weaned him off and he never looked back.  He hasn't felt the need to comfort-suck since.  And now, here we are, with our third child who has clearly discovered his thumb.

He has actually been a thumb-sucker from the very beginning, but I thought it was purely coincidental.  It has become obvious, however, that in the absence of a paci, the thumb is his clear choice.  Then again, we had to know it was coming someday from a mom who literally emerged from the womb sucking her thumb.

I'm looking forward to seeing what other firsts Joey gives us as parents.


Seeking 1,000 Gifts:
31. A gift bent: An infant's neck as it builds the strength to support itself.
32. A gift broken: A few blessed moments of silence from the world during a mid-day electricity outage.
33. A gift beautiful: Our daughter, asking, "You wanna play with me?"
34. The determination of a cat who insists on curling up on the patio even when shaken by the wind.
35. The whoosh of gusts passing over our shelter from the chaos.
36. Tree blossoms emerging into beautiful green leaves.

Taking Time for Play: Yellow: Joey spent the day swaddled in yellow while Emmett found the most innocent joy in simply being near him.