Friday, February 11, 2011

A farewell to bottles

Chloë has gone without bottles for a week now. We started out eliminating the morning bottle, then the naptime one. She objected to those, though not very much, but then she settled into it; and so last Friday we gave her a sippy cup instead of a bottle at bedtime. "Bowah!" she said, to inform us we'd gotten it wrong.

"It is milk," we said, and she drank it. And she's drunk it every night since.

I hadn't expected this final step to be so easy. But she's been happy to drink her milk--she says "mok" now, when it used to be "bowah" for bottle and before that, "babul"--and then proceed with the rest of the bedtime ritual. Maybe it helps that we now read during the milk-drinking, so she's not wholly consumed by the drinking process itself. Maybe she's just a big enough girl that this wasn't a big deal. Either way, I'm pleased, and impressed.

I'm not feeling all teary about her no longer being a baby, either. I mean, I get maudlin about that sometimes, but not because of the bottles or lack thereof. It's because she's so tall now, and helping to put her clothes on, and obeying (or disobeying) my instructions, and asking for yogurt or cheese or strawberries, and loving her boots and the moon, and reminding me to put on my socks.

(And still calling Daddy a monkey.)

So Chloë is off of bottles. Her dentist should be happy. We bought more sippies today, along with some bigger sleepers and socks and a set of three squirty ducks for the bath. I stopped at the clearance rack and looked at all the very small clothes until Eric cleared his throat and asked me to remind him what we had actually come to Babies R Us for. Maybe it helps that I'll soon have another baby, though I hope she won't be on bottles much for a while.

No comments: