Indulge me for a moment while I try to wrap my head around the fact that I’m now parent to a real-life, talking-in-sentences, official KID. Sometimes I’m shocked by how quickly things can change. Just when I get used to the way things are — BOOM! — it changes.

Monday night, Orion slept in his big, grown-up toddler bed for the first time, 100 percent of his own volition. While I rocked with him before going to sleep, he sang me his ABCs, counted to 10, and practiced holding his index and middle fingers up in a V, saying “Two years old!” over and over again. We had been talking about how he would be starting school the next day—“school” being a two-hour, one-day-a-week toddler/parent class at our nearby Waldorf school. He obviously understood what I was telling him and was excited by the prospect of his new-fangled student status and the novel adventures that came along with it. He drifted off to sleep peacefully and adorably in his new-to-us craigslisted big-boy bed, and slept there soundly all night.

In the morning, after a banana/walnut/flax pancake breakfast (his current all-time fave food), we headed off to school. He was easily one of the youngest there but you wouldn’t know it from his behavior. In typical Orion fashion, he was gentle, well behaved and keenly interested in everything going on. In other words, he rocked pre- preschool, and can’t wait to go back next week.

And another major milestone — one I thought would never happen — he is finally weaned. It feels official enough at this point that I can talk about it without jinxing us, so I’ll tell you: it’s now been a couple of weeks since Orion last nursed. And after 25 months of breastfeeding, my nipples and I are breathing a massive sigh of relief.

I never imagined we would nurse for so long. I knew I wanted to breastfeed for at least a year and continue as long as it worked for both of us. Most of my friends’ babies self-weaned at some point, and I figured Orion would be no different. Little did I know that Orion would turn out to be an unabashed boob man with absolutely no interest in giving it up on his own.

I enjoyed breastfeeding for a good, long while. I loved the intimacy it brought between us. I took comfort knowing I was making his body healthy and strong. It all felt very natural and right. Then I got pregnant again; my belly started expanding and my lap started shrinking. Orion kept growing taller and taller, heavier and heavier. Soon it became apparent that nursing wasn’t going to work for us (aka me) for much longer. Besides, there will be a new baby soon who’ll need to nurse constantly, and there was no way I was going to let a 33 pound toddler in on that action. And those teeth — SO SHARP! Yowza.

So I began the weaning process a few months ago. I started denying him his morning nursing session. That one was easy — I could distract him with breakfast and cups of organic cow’s milk. The pre-nap and pre-bedtime nursing sessions were a different story. I knew they would be much harder to give up because that was how he settled down for sleep.

We literally talked about it for months before the official “ta-ta” to the tatas. We talked about how he was a big boy now (“Two years old!”) and how only babies nursed. Some nights he would beg to nurse, saying “Waah, waah!” doing his best baby impersonation, which was both simultaneously adorable and sad.

Little by little, he got it. Because that’s how kids are. Just when you think you know them inside and out, they go and change on you. A light in him I didn’t realize he had came on. He’s different now — more grown-up, more aware, more independent. Some nights he wants to sit in the glider on his own and rock himself to sleep. He still asks to nurse occasionally, but he almost says it with a little laugh, like it’s a joke everyone already knows the punchline to.

I thought I would be sadder about closing this chapter in our lives, but I’m not. I know that a new story is just beginning.

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