Susan, our Mom Talk contributor, talks about her baby growing up in this latest installment!  Read on…

Baby D turned 14 months old this week and is now officially a toddler. According to the Random House Dictionary, a toddler is “a person who toddles, esp. a young child learning to walk.” That might be the official definition, but here are a few more that I think should be seriously considered as secondary definitions:

•    A young child that would once happily eat whatever you put in front of her, including leftovers, but now refuses to eat anything except for freshly cooked food that is warmed precisely to her very discerning palate. D is 14 months old and is a foodie.

•    A young child that throws 80% of her food on the floor and chucks her sippy cups with such force that they create divots in the hardwood floors. Yes, this is true and believe it or not, I have purchased specialized tethers to attach the sippy cup to the highchair in an attempt to save our hardwood floors. It never ceases to amaze me that there is a baby product for anything that you can think of. Including the splash mat that I am now looking for, to put underneath the highchair. If I were not such a sucker, I’d just use a shower curtain liner.

•    A young child that has all the toys, stuffed animals and books she can ask for, but only wants to play with shopping bags, mommy’s iPhone and hangers (but only after she’s taken all of mommy’s clothes off of them). If only I could teach her how to hang everything back up. I wish!

•    A young child that is growing up and turning into a little girl before my eyes, who makes me laugh with her personality that emerges every day. A young child that is bursting with so much to say but can’t talk yet, so has to settle for pointing excitedly and hyperventilating at everything. A young child that may not look like an infant anymore, but still has the distinct, fresh baby smell that is the best smell in the world.

Here is D with tofu on her face and in her hair, about a minute before she threw everything on the floor:

Here is D in her new forward-facing car seat, another sure sign that she is no longer a baby. Welcome to toddlerhood!

Have you ever seen a little boy and girl playing together in the sandbox and exclaimed, “Oooh la la! Jenny found a new boyfriend!” or “Aww! Tommy is flirting again!”?

I hear parents do it all the time. Some parents even insist that their children are “in love” with the neighbor boy, a girl in preschool or a friend’s child.

I can’t help but think that this type of behavior will inevitably manifest itself in a toddler’s development. Does it teach our children that any member of the opposite sex that you connect with has to be a romantic partner? Does it boil all male/female relationships down to a simple boyfriend-girlfriend dynamic? And, perhaps more importantly, don’t we have anything better to talk about?

It strikes me as odd and meddlesome for a parent to create a love life for a child, but maybe I’m over thinking it. What do you think? Is it harmless and cute for parents to gush over their kids’ budding relationships? Is it something more perverse? You tell us!