Bye, Bye Bottles!

My unsolicited mothering advice for the day is this: listen to your mother when she tells you that your child (3 1/2) needs to be off the bottle (and sleep in his own bed but that's another story).

Yes, Spencer (age 3 1/2) has been on the bottle since birth. It's now a security thing and honestly, he used it as a prop for lack of eating. I should have put the hammer down more than two years ago but I've been tired and lazy--truth be told--and I wasn't up for the bottle battle. It takes a lot of fortitude to engage in change.  I've been building my courage arsenal for a few months but lying in wait for the perfect moment to pounce. I figured that it was ideal timing to let Santa take the heat. So for the weeks leading up to Christmas, I prepped S by telling him that Santa needed bottles for babies who did not have any. After the mice were done stirring on Christmas Eve, I placed the bottles in a Walmart bag and tucked them out of site on a garage shelf. I'm not sure why I fizzled out before making it the whole way to the garbage can. Perhaps I needed to allow myself an out in case things got really ugly.

Like clockwork, S awoke in the night and demanded his big bottle with the top. He added the "with top" instruction after we became really low on nipples since he bit holes in the majority. I then explained, as enthusiastically as possible at 3:00 a.m., that Santa had come and left him presents but had taken the bottles for the babies. Weeping, wailing, and the like. He despised Santa and was NOT interested in the new shiny red sippy cup left in his stocking. Finally, I coaxed him downstairs to see the presents and the wave of Santa hatred was soon replaced with sheer glee and professed love for a man none of us have ever met. He was happy to return to bed with a sippy and await the morning thrill.

Unfortunately the delight seemed to fade on Christmas night as he once again demanded his security. This time I was instructed to drive to the North Pole to retrieve his bottles. The next night I was told to drive all over the world to find the bottles. And so went the nightly roller coaster. We are still not out of the woods but it's getting ever so slightly more manageable. Watching him deal with the withdraw I think it's more of a control thing than it is the liquid inside. So what does that mean . . . that I've been "had" for the last two years by honoring his demands? Probably. And so it goes, growth is messy.

On the upside, Caroline also had her bottles donated to Santa's cause and hasn't missed a beat. At least I got it down on the last one.