Talking About the Toddler?

I'm starting to think that "Talking About the Toddler" is a more accurate name for what's going on with Emmett than "blabbing about the baby." He has been doing fewer and fewer baby things and more toddler things lately. Many consider the start of toddlerhood to be the start of unassisted walking, and this makes sense when we think about the meaning of the verb "to toddle." That's when Adam started calling Emmett a toddler. I think of this period as his "walking and stalking" phase. He tends to follow me around from room to room, not unlike his canine sister. It's cute, but it's also good that I don't feel the need for major amounts of personal space.

For me, the onset of toddlerhood has more to do with the end of bottles.

A few Fridays ago, I picked Emmett up from daycare and they told me that he had drunk all of his milk out of a straw cup instead of a bottle. His teacher congratulated him with, "No more bottles! You're a big boy now!" I was still pumping milk into bottles, though, so it didn't really feel like the end of bottles for me.

Then, on September 15, he had a really rough night with lots of crying where he Didn't Want to Nurse. I took him to see the pediatrician because Not Nursing was very out of character for him; I suspected he might have another ear infection or something like that (though he'd nursed through his other ear infections). She diagnosed him with coxscackie virus in the mouth, suggesting that his mouth pain was causing him to not want to nurse. I gave him several opportunities over the next week to start nursing again, but it was as if a switch was flipped and suddenly, that was something he wasn't going to do anymore. I was quite surprised (and was even beginning to think that I'd still be nursing him into his 20s at the rate we were going!), and it took my body quite a while to adjust to the change.