End of an era

Layla no longer sucks on her fingers. It's really the end of an era. She was doing it pretty much constantly, to the point where it would sometimes put her off balance and cause her to topple over. (When you're new to walking and your head is like half your total body weight, your arms are like your ballast! You really need both working in tandem to stay upright.) I started to fear she would be sitting in history class in middle school, hiding her face behind overgrown bangs to hide the persistent habit. Well not really--but I did wonder if the orthodontist inevitably in her future would chastise us for allowing the finger-sucking to persist. I wondered how old was too old to be doing it. And then I decided to worry about more important things. And then, one evening while I was changing her dirty clothes, she tried to make a dash for freedom with her pants down around her ankles. She fell on the gravel and scratched up the cuticle of one of her sucking fingers. She cried and immediately tried to resort to her usual self-soothing method. But sucking on that cut finger was obviously painful--she took it right out and cried harder. We did lots of cuddling for a while, but she didn't put her fingers in her mouth for the rest of the evening... and she hasn't sucked on them since! It has been about ten days now.

Coincidentally, for the past ten days, Layla has been a real spitfire. Lots of drama, lots of wailing, a fair amount of flinging herself to the floor and kicking her legs around. (So cliche, Layla!) It also takes her much longer to fall asleep now. While we used to hear her drifting off to the sounds of contented sucking, now a chorus of squawks, giggles, and shouts is broadcast from the monitor each night--for at least half an hour! I am embarrassed to admit that it took me at least a week to realize that the two things are most likely connected. She's learning to cope without the soothing strategy she had before.

I'll admit that last night, I tried to get her to suck on her fingers again. I put mine in my mouth, hoping she would imitate me. Instead, she wanted to see for herself what I was reaching for in there. When I redirected her fingers to her own maw, she popped them right back out and gave me a funny look. She thought this was a funny new game. So I guess that's it--the end of an era. Hello toddler!