Watch Me Grow - Twenty Two Weeks

Not too much new to report this week since I just posted an update in The Fifth Month, but here is this weeks photo:

One new development over the last couple of days since Kaitlin turned five months old is that she has finally started sucking her thumb. She still doesn't seem to know what to do with it 100% of the time, but I have caught her more and more (started in her crib before/after sleeping, and now she does it when she's awake but tired sometimes) sucking on her thumb. Sometimes she just chews on it, which looks a little strange, but soon after she starts sucking on it. It only took her five whole months to finally get there, but she did it!

I am both excited and not that she finally has figured out how to suck on her thumb. Since we let her cry it out last month her dependency on using the pacifier to get to sleep has pretty much gone away. She doesn't even want to use it to take naps or even suck on it just for a few minutes before she goes to sleep. I all but threw them away because she hardly ever uses them (still good to have one on me when we are out and about though, just incase she has a melt down). This makes me insanely happy. I didn't want to use a pacifier from the get go, but found a huge relief in using them to help sooth Kaitlin when she was too young to sooth herself.

Now that she has found her thumb she can sooth herself a little better when falling asleep. Sometimes she goes right to sleep and sometimes she fusses and rolls around for a good chunk of time before finally drifting off. Sucking her thumb has seemed to help in some of those restless times to help sooth her to sleep. Especially now that she is escaping from the swaddle all the time, she finally has something to do with her hands. What I'm worried about is her thumb becoming a sleep crutch. The last thing I want to do is have a toddler (or older!) sucking on her thumb all the time. But that is light years away and something that we don't need to worry about for quite some time. For now I'll just enjoy the fact that she has finally figured out how to suck her thumb. It's weird, the skills we celebrate when our kids finally master them. That is, if you can to call this a skill ;)