Lainey's New Soothing Habit

Lots of little ones like to suck their thumb and twirl their hair or tug their ear.  Lainey has sucked her two fingers since she was born.  She definitely prefers them to her thumb... even though her new teeth put little indentions into her chubby knuckles.

The other day Brielle came home from playing outside with the neighbor kids.  She asked me, "Mom, is holding up one finger bad?"  I knew where this was going.  I explained "the bird" and that is is crude and means something very bad.  I asked if her friends did that and she said, no, but they were saying it's bad to do too.  A year or so ago, Brielle proudly proclaimed Todd the "B" word at the dinner table thinking it was a compliment.  After I flipped out and way overreacted, I decided to come up with a plan for the future. I told her that from then on, she should come to me if she heard a new word she didn't know the meaning of so she could ask me if it was bad and if she was allowed to say it.  I was glad she took me up on it this time.

I decided to turn it into a positive conversation and teach her that, while there are things we can say with our hands that are bad words, there are things we can use our hands for to say really nice things.  And she can teach them to her friends.  I taught her how to say "I love you," and she got super excited and exclaimed, "Mom!  Lainey knows how to say I love you in sign language too!  She says that all the time!"  It was more than a silly connection, she really thought her baby sister was a genius for a moment there!

Now Lainey's hand work is evolving.  Her new thing is to "say I love you" with the one hand while using her other hand to twirl her fingers in circles over her bald head as though she were twirling her hair.  It CRACKS us up!  How does she know to do that!?  There's nothing there but a few peach fuzzies.  Nothing to grab anyway.  She just twirls the air as if she knew what should be there...

Lainey's getting funner every day.  She's been crawling for a few weeks, but this is the first week where she'll go from room to room and really explore the house or follow us around.  You see the liberation on babies' faces when they become mobile and can see what goes on beyond the walls of where we set them down at.  Of course, this also means I'm having to vacuum a LOT more!  Woo hoo!  I'll add our home video of her crawling to this post soon.