hello sippy goodbye bottle!

Cooper has never been attached to anything. He has never been crazy about the paci nor does he have a blankie that he can't live without. The closest thing to any kind of attachment would be his teddy. He gets really excited when he sees it and instantly tries to love on it, but when its not there, he doesn't seem to notice.

One would think with that being said, he couldn't possibly be attached to his bottle.

Boy, were we wrong.

With his 12 month birthday coming way faster than we would like, it seemed the best choice to start figuring out when we would make the switch. The doctor said we should start 2 weeks before but that would be days before our long weekend to NYC and coop's first night without one of us.

I didn't want to do that to my parents or to him. So we decided with his 11 month coming up, to just cold turkey the bottle.

It was awful.

Apparently my precious son picked the bottle to be attached to. The first bottle free day, we did soooo much trying to wear him out and I'm not sure if the affect was positive or negative. He didn't seem to mind skipping the day bottles BUT that night he screamed for at least 2 hours.

I thought night 2 would be better but it was wayyy worse. He screamed for over 2 hours and was beyond angry. He swatted at my hands when I tried to comfort him. I had a melt down. We are talking full-fledged bawling (in the hallway of course). To make matters worse, Rick took him during night and ended up giving into to a bottle filled with water.

I won't get into how fun that was to find out about the next morning...

This by far has been the hardest thing for me to navigate. Everything that I have believed in as a teacher and parent about consistency and firmness has been challenged. I want to give in. I want to just give him what he wants. But I can't. I would be a hypocrite if I did.

But last night (night 3) was a little bit easier and already tonight is even a little better. So, I think it is safe to say we have officially said goodbye to the bottle!

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