Big Changes

After two years and change, the weaning process has finally - finally - begun. (I don't say that with any impatience. I'm just stunned that she's still BFing him. Although it's just before sleep and during the night, she's still keeping at it.) He's getting cow's milk now before his nap and before bedtime, and the only time he nurses is in the middle of the night. I think even that's cut down to once or twice, and I think she's hoping that her milk will just go away.

The first couple of times when he had cow's milk at night, Mrs. B explained that her breast milk (she uses the euphemistic and onomatopoeic term "nummies") was going away soon. Then, every night for a week, he'd take his sippy cup of milk and repeat, "nummies going 'way!" Which would bring tears to her eyes, every time.

We're also transitioning away from the goddamn red balance ball, after seventy gazillion years. Gaah! He's got the big boy bed, but we've still been bouncing him to sleep by cradling him in our arms and bouncing up and down on the Balance Ball of Despair. I've been waiting anxiously for this moment for a long, long time. Too long. Forever, perhaps.

So about two weeks ago, we started changing the routine. It happened by accident, and then suddenly it was just our routine. Now we lay down next to him on his bed and after fifteen or twenty minutes of thrashing and jabbering, he just drops off to sleep. It seems so dignified. It seems so easy. Like, why didn't we think of this eons ago?

And yet, still somehow I'm sad to see it go. It's all big changes right now, the end of several eras all at once. The kid's growing up, right before our eyes.