Most of the books and pediatricians suggest taking away the bottle at 12 months. This was something I was dreading. Mostly because Silas loves his bottle. He has a certain bottle cry and treats his bottle like a Nuk. He is reliant on it to fall asleep. Kind of reliant on it. Well, for naps for sure. It just works and it's so easy. Give him a bottle in the car and he's content. If he's fussy snuggling with a bottle works like a charm.
I was going to let him have his love affair with Mr. Bottle until 15months and then we would revisit the issue. Well, I recently decided that he does not NEED it any other time than before bed. Yesterday we spend the morning playing with Brook and Emory and he fell asleep in the car on our way home --that was our way out of a bottle before nap. He got a bit fussy in the later afternoon so I just filled his sippy cup with water and plopped him on my lap and it seemed to work. He took a bottle before bed but that was it, only ONE bottle all day long and it was a lot easier than I thought it would be.
Today the same thing. Playing with friends in the morning, falls asleep on the way home and we're going to hold of on the bottle until bedtime. My gosh, he's such a big boy now!
My parents let me be a baby for a long time. Let's just say that I remember using a bottle. Granted I have a pretty phenomenal memory when it comes to random things like using a bottle, but for real. I remember singing..."Tang in a bottle. hot. hot." I must've been close to three years old before they took it away and I turned out fairly normal. I won't be dragging out the bedtime bottle that long, but I absolutely love watching him have his bottle and rub the corner of his blanket in his closed eyes. He just looks so sweet.
And with all of this big boy stuff he has dropped his morning nap. I know, he's like a real kid now. I have basically stopped putting him down in the morning because even if he was tired at 9 or 10am he would sleep but then his afternoon nap was shot. And let me tell you a thing or two about afternoon naps: THEY ARE KEY! For me and him.
Katie suggested only letting him sleep 40min in the morning if he is really tired which I think is great. It will hopefully take the edge off but also make it so he takes an afternoon snooze.
Next week we're going to tackle the two wheeler and potty training!! Kidding!
1 comment:
Angel, We went through that whole bottle thing too with Adam. He wouldn't drink from his sippy cup for the longest time....he finally just started a couple months ago...once in a while we still give him a bottle, but I know exactly what you mean by not wanting to take it away from him!
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