Sucking

Alexander is learning how to suck his thumb. Or his fingers. He hasn't decided which he prefers yet, but he's delighting in the discovery that he can suck on each digit independently instead of just shoving the whole fist in his mouth.

This will be a wonderful thing once he figures out how to do it. Unfortunately, learning new things is hard. Normally I can nurse Alexander until he's mostly asleep, and is "sleep nursing" - sucking for comfort, but not really getting anything out of it. If I put him down then, he'll usually start sucking on his tongue until he settles into real sleep. But last night, apparently the tongue was inferior to the fist, and Alexander would start trying to suck on his fingers instead. Trying being the operative word - it's a hard thing do to when you're 2 months old, and his efforts would end up waking him up. So I ended up having to let him use the mommy pacifier until he was dead cold asleep last night. Similarly, when we were nursing when he was waking up in the morning, he kept unlatching and instead of latching back on to the boob, trying to suck his fingers instead. Very fun, very tasty, but not much nutritional value.

Hopefully he'll get the details of finger and thumb sucking down soon!