M’laddo was weaned off his dummy at 3 months, something we’re pretty proud of. And by weaned off, I mean we just stopped giving it to him, so it was a pretty quick weaning all told. Unfortunately we underestimated the cunning of a wee lad, and the dummy was eventually replaced by bunny’s ear, which gets an almighty sucking when he’s: tired/upset/lonely/scared/overwhelmed. And it stinks. We actually have a family of them and they’re washed on rotation but now washing doesn’t really cut the mustard- the smell of baby saliva is ingrained- so its a case of pre-treating the offending ear with biotex or nappisan.
This has had a bit of detrimental effect on M’laddo’s language development, as he spends half his time mumbling round a rabbit ear clenched between his teeth but in the last month he’s really come along. He’s always understood a lot but not been that vocal but now his spoken sentences are getting longer and longer: “Sit!” became “Sit here!” which in turn became “Sit here Dadda!” which is currently floating around as “Sit here Dadda, NOW!” Polysyllabic words are still a bit tricky but, tellingly, the best he manages is “lollopop” for “lollipop”.
The best words though are probably the ones he puts the most emotional feeling into, like “wow!”, or “oh no!”. “Wow!” can be triggered by anything from seeing his favourite toy that he’d forgotten about, to getting a biscuit or a lollopop. “Oh no!” can be triggered by just about anything else: “M’laddo, dinosaurs are extinct!”, “Oh no!”.
Actually the best wow recently revolved around arriving in central London far too early for the British Mummy Bloggers Meet and wandering around China Town for a bit. A chinese supermarket was (re)opening and they had a Dragon which M’laddo watched rapt from my shoulders for about 10 minutes with multiple wow’ings occurring.
The sense of wonder little nippers have is ace and something we can’t recapture as adults and is a treasure I’ll keep with me.