Simple Pleasures

Back in December 2008, we had an ultrasound to check on the baby while he was still small enough to take a good picture. It was that doctor's visit when we found out the gender of the baby. The person doing the ultrasound said that this was the visit when she sometimes could get a good picture of the baby sucking its thumb. Our baby was not exactly sucking his thumb. She took this picture, saying that his hand was close enough to his mouth to look cute.

Now that Dylan is here, we have found that he doesn't suck his thumb. He sucks the back of his right hand. If he happens to catch the thumb part of his hand, he sucks on the knuckle of his fist, not the actual thumb. It completely explains the ultrasound picture, where the fingers and thumb are in front of his mouth, but pointed away from him. Just like the ultrasound picture, Dylan looks like he is almost sucking his thumb. But he's not.
The first injury we found on Dylan after he came home was a strange open-circle shaped bruise on his right forearm. Dan noticed it, and asked me what it was. I had no idea, but felt a little guilty that he had gotten his first bruise on my watch and I didn't know what had caused it. I spent all day worrying about it and wondering what it was. Then Dylan clumsily reached his head out to grab for his fist, and he missed. He started sucking on the first thing that touched his mouth, which was his forearm. I took his arm away and had to laugh, because I noticed that the bruise matched the shape of his teeth marks exactly.

Now that Dylan's mouth muscles are stronger, he created injuries far greater than a cute little open circle that goes away in a day. A few weeks ago, he latched on to my bicep as I was carrying him, and I thought it was cute, plus it kept him from fussing at the time. Within moments, I blurted out an exclamation of pain and quickly removed him from my arm. What was left on my arm was a large purple blotch that remained there for over a week! I've kept his mouth away from my arm and shoulder since then, but that doesn't keep him from finding his own forearm. Last week I noticed about an inch long bruise on Dylan's right forearm.

Shortly after that, I observed him doing this:

While I feel badly for his little arm, there really is nothing I can do to completely prevent his self-inflicted injury. Therefore the best I can do is take pictures and post them to this blog as evidence.

Recently, Dylan has become more and more coordinated and prefers his right fist over a pacifier. However, we still use the pacifier periodically to help keep him happy and calm. We just received a gift called a Pacimal, which is essentially a pacifier stuck to the head of a stuffed animal. Dylan is just starting to learn to control things with his hands, and he is having a good time hugging the stuffed Rhino and chomping on the pacifier on its head. It makes for some cute pictures.