Dec.
29, 1999 - Wednesday
While I've written that Harry seems to be discovering his arms, it's admittedly
a slow process for infants. He's discovered that he doesn't like to be swaddled
or bound so much, but he really doesn't know yet that those arms he sees are
connected to his body nor that he has control over what they do.
When Harry's hungry he'll often mouth whatever is nearby. Most infants apparently
begin sucking their thumbs completely by accident when their own squirming places
their hands over their mouths. As when anything is placed there when they are
hungry, they try to suckle. Harry has not started thumb sucking yet.
He has, however, experienced another common misfortune of flailing, uncontrolled
hands: he has scratched his own face. If you look carefully at the left cheek
in the image to the right, you'll see a red mark made by his little fingernails.
Rather amazingly, the streak along with a couple more minor ones were quite
prominent in the morning after it happened, but much harder to see when I took
this picture in the afternoon, and virtually gone by evening. It's a tribute
to those rapidly growing little cells.
We do have a pair of infant fingernail clippers, but, boy, those are nerve-racking
on his tiny little fingers. Rumor has it that it's quite easy to clip too far
so we've barely given it an effort. Instead, we've favored emery boards to keep
his nails relatively in check. We've also gone back to folding the sleeves of
his undershirts over his little hands.
