Admission

     Well, as much as I hate to admit it, I was apparently wrong, and James's grandpa was right.  No, Obama has not been proclaimed the antichrist.  It was the other major issue the two of us have been, um, discussing, for the past several weeks: thumb sucking.  

     At pretty much every opportunity, my father has been trying to teach James how to suck his thumb.  I kept telling him to stop as he was going to cost me a fortune in orthodontia ten years down the road.  He insisted that I would get more sleep if James learned how to suck his thumb and could comfort himself in that fashion during the night rather than crying for me or Patrick to come hold him.   

     As I sat up holding him last night at about one in the morning, I perused my trusty parenting books and websites scouring articles on pacifiers.  Were they detrimental to breast feeding?  Is it okay for kids to go to sleep with pacifiers in their mouths?  I have to admit that I was surprised to see that most articles advocated thumb sucking over pacifiers.  The babies control the thumbs themselves, these articles told me.  That way, the babies can suck them when they really need comforting, and parents can't use them as a crutch.  They are less likely to interfere with breast feeding because the thumb is in no way similar to something from which the kid might eat.  On top of that, they said that pacifiers could be even more harmful to teeth than thumbs.  The only plus to a pacifier was that, since parents control it, parents can ween kids off that easier than they could thumb sucking.  

     So, Dad was right and I was wrong.  Darn it.  I hate when that happens.

     On a completely unrelated note, I loved this picture and couldn't help but share it.  Don't Patrick and James both look so good?