Operation Hide the Bottles! Day One.

After trying a few other things and talking to Mady's pediatrician, we decided to just put away her bottles. We've been talking about doing this for a few weeks, but it never seemed like the right time. She's had all her butt problems and was teething and had a cold. I hated to inflict more misery on her. We figured she would be well soon enough and we could do it then.

So today was the day.

I made sure the bottles were out of sight this morning so that wasn't an issue. When the morning bottle time rolled around, I just pulled out her cup instead of a bottle. She didn't get too upset, but neither did she drink much. Maybe an ounce.

We met some friends for lunch which really messed up Mady's nap time. Lately she's been going down around 11 or 11:30, but we needed to be at lunch at noon. So I figured Mady could sleep in the car for a few minutes and then take a longer nap this afternoon. That seemed to go as planned. Mady was a little tired, but not doing too badly.

We got home and I could tell Mady was sleepy, but she was determined to get some play time in before she slept. I gave up fighting her and focused instead on trying to get her to drink milk from her cup. This actually went really well. She drank about 6 ounces (this is a guess)- finishing what I had put in her cup. I started to get a little over-confident even though I knew the hardest one was ahead. Mady finished playing and finally took a nap- for over 3 hours.

We decided to have family over for dinner, so when Mady woke up, there were extra people around. Of course she was also hungry and dinner wasn't quite ready yet. So we were trying to hold her off for a few more minutes. Ate dinner and Mady played for a while with her cousins. My already tired little girl was starting to hit the wall. Aunt J and Cousin 1 left because Cousin 1 was slapping his cousins in the face. (Don't get me started on this behavior. I despise it when Mady does it too!) So Uncle M, Aunt J and Cousin 2 were still hanging out. Mady REALLY hit the wall at this point. She would do something- like climb on her pink chair- and then sit there and cry. So after we finished laughing at her dramatics, everybody left and I got her ready for bed amidst much crying.

Once she was all dressed in her jammies, we attempted to give her a cup of milk again. She sobbed. And sobbed. And sobbed. And then she sobbed some more. She pushed her cup away and didn't want anything to do with it. We debated giving her a bottle since it was the first day and she had done so well, but Luke helped me be strong and just kept offering her the cup. She continued to refuse, so I put her to bed. She cried for a few minutes and was out. I'm really hoping that the lack of that evening bottle/milk doesn't cause her to wake up tonight. Here's hoping tomorrow isn't as rough.

On a side note, Mady learned a new trick today. She figured out that she can climb onto the top of her Leapfrog Learning Table. She doesn't just kneel on it, but she can stand in the middle of it which makes her mommy very nervous. She also figured out that she can move it next to the big chair or coffee table and use it to climb onto either of those. We're not in trouble, are we?

I have pictures of it, but I'll have to post them tomorrow. Today was exhausting.