when jasper was in the NICU, he would wriggle around and pull tubes out of his body. this practise, although encouraging to his parents, was dangerous and painful for the little man. the nurses curtailed his disturbing hobby by taking a nappy pin and clipping jasper’s bandaged arms to the sheets below.

fast forward a few months, and jasper has developed a similar, similarly disturbing practise. unlike his thumb sucking sisters (pictured left: Sela), jj is a soother man. he is definitely the high maintenance baby these days, and when i put them down for naps, his sisters pop thumbs in (usually carys [2nd pic] moans for a bit and needs a bit of reassurance, while sela just needs you to stand over her crib and admire her) and are carried away to the land of nod. a huge round of applause to the girls for accomplishing this slumbering feat, because the background music is JASPER screaming with fear.

wahhh i am so scared i will never find my soother again, wahhhh the nights are darker and the cot is bigger without my soother….wahhhh this sootherless existence i am facing is devastating….

of course, the soother was in his mouth and the little rotter removed it with his hand. several times.

we have tried giving him cuddly toys to hold on to, but his meaty sweaty/drooly hands keep gravitating to his beloved soother.

although as hen friends will attest, i am a scheduling kind of mummy and have no trouble letting babies cry it out, when i head back into his room, he is waving the soother about while lamenting its loss.

10 minutes is a long time to listen to a baby cry. if one of the girls cry i usually laugh (sela, grandstanding) or sympathise and jiggle (carys). but with jasper, this is his own fault. i can’t help him, he doesn’t like my help. he is causing this own pain! now i know how my parents felt when i kept dating unsuitable boys during my early 20’s.

i have found myself wondering how difficult it would be to pin him down again. except these days, if jasper got it into his bald crinkled head that there was a cream cheese filling in the pin, he would bite through it.

in practise, this only lasts for 10 minutes or so until his hands get so heavy he can’t force his tired self to move them. but that is 10 minutes!!!! 10 minutes where everyone is quiet…except for him.

i finally stopped dating unsuitable boys when i met magnificent charles.

i hope it doesn’t take jasper until his late 20’s to keep his soother in his mouth.