Other side, please

Kip is just about 2 1/2 years old now and it's showing in how he communicates with me. He's been learning words left and right for a while now, but he's stringing them into sentences lately. Sorry if this is TMI, but hey, this is a record for me as much as anything.

Much of my communication with Kip revolves around breastfeeding (which I'm still doing with him). When he was about six months old I realized I could tell him to switch sides and he would, obligingly, let go and wait for me to give him the other breast. "Side" was one of his first words, "nurse minute" was one of his first phrases, and now he tells me in increasingly complex sentences that he's ready to for me to give him the other side to drink. This morning it was "Mommy, other side, please nurse minute." The grammar isn't quite there, but it's closer and closer.

It's a beautiful thing to see how my child is growing, especially with so many other things in the world to be depressed about. This is likely the last time I'll be so much around a child of this age, certainly the last time I'll breastfeed a child. I don't feel mystical about breastfeeding. Sometimes it's downright annoying when he's trying to get into my shirt, or whining at me for "nurse minute." And yet it's in the way we've learned to communicate together that I can, in many ways, see most clearly how he's developing.