Photo essay by a 3-year old boob man, and other Oedipal moments

And he's been weaned a whole year. (No, that is not me unbuttoning. That is me taking evasive measures. And the answer to your other question is foundation undergarments. Our grandmothers knew how to deal with life's wear and tear.)

Funnier than that, is this photo and caption from new mama Maggie Mason. Not strictly factual as she confesses in her flickr set, but no less true.

I nursed all three of my children for a running total of something like six years. When I weaned the youngest this time last year, I thought that I at least ought to get a gold pen.

The first two got booted off the milk train each time I got pregnant. I didn't know where I was going to find the moral authority to cut off the third, but Patrick intervened and sent me away for a weekend with the girls last spring, and ran the breastfeeding equivalent of a methadone clinic. The kid kicked much easier than expected, but it just goes to show that it was no longer about the milk, because he remains as intensely obsessed with my bosoms as the day he was born. He grabs them any chance he gets. When I am getting dressed, he stares at them. He talks to them.

"Hi, nursies!" he'll chirp brightly as I get out of the shower, holding out both hands eagerly as I reach for a towel.

Apart from those early postpartum days of pornstar boobs (offset as they are by the postpartum abs), I am not particularly gifted, chestwise. So I've never really had the experience of guys not looking me in the eyes during a conversation. Except with my guys. The forty-two year old and the three year old are unanimous that my breasts are at the horizon line, if not the center of the known universe, whereas my eldest and middle son are definitely over it. At eight, I notice my firstborn has begun to avert his eyes when he runs into my dressing room and finds me dressing. As a matter of fact, he looks a little grossed-out. The kindergartener doesn't notice one way or the other, and thinks nothing of having a conversation with me while I am bathing or getting dressed.

I guess he doesn't remember the last bath we took together, when he was two years old and I was hugely pregnant with his brother. He was sitting in front of me, and backed up against my reclining form into something that didn't feel like a knee.

He turned around, aghast, finger pointing. "What's THAT?"

"Um. That's Mommy's vagina," I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

His lip curled up and his voice frosted over.

"I think you need to get out of the bath," he said, with thin civility.

So I did.

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Rebecca has a nice piece on Girls Gone Child today. If you are bored silly with Mommy Wars, one-downsmomship, and anybody telling you you're doing it wrong, you'll want to read it.