I own one baby bottle for the very few times I've had to be away from my babies. The Boy drank out of it once. The Girl used it once or twice. The Baby has actually been away from me more than either of her siblings. She may have actually gotten five or six bottles. I'm putting that expensive Medela breast pump to good use, let me tell you!

I hate baby bottles. I hate the thought of anyone feeding my baby other than me. I'm selfish that way. Fortunately, my husband and I worked out a deal with the first baby that I fill them up and he cleans them up on the other end. I get more of the baby spit up, but that's a price that I'm willing to pay.

So as a breastfeeding, sling-using mama, I think I'm modelling for my children what I hope they too will support some day. The Boy asked for his own sling when The Girl was a baby and he still carries stuffed animals around in it once in a while. The Girl converts blankets, spit up rags and other things into baby slings. Between times when she tosses dolls across the room or steps on them, she's there taking care of them, comforting the babies and feeding them. But she's quite the literalist too.

If you tell her she's a good little mama, she quickly denies that these are her children. She's not mama, she says, she's just taking care of them. And she never nurses her babies. She finds a cup or the one lone doll bottle that I haven't thrown out and feeds them. I asked her why she didn't give her babies nur-nur (our family word for nursing). She quickly responded, "But I don't have some nur-nurs. Do you want to feed my dolls some nur-nur?"

I do hope that one day, when she's all grown up, she won't throw her children across the room or step on them and that when she has nur-nurs of her own, she'll use them. Until then, I guess she's right. She isn't actually a mama and she doesn't have any nur-nur in there.