Breaking Bad (Habits)

We're being silly! Hide your head in shame.

Ok, as I confessed, Maddie is two and still drinking from a bottle. I decided, (and this is the actual conversation I had with myself) "I'm a tough Mama. I can do this!"

So here's the plan:

1. Cut out the bottles cold turkey.
2. Offer a choice of sippy cups.

Contingency Plan:
Trick Maddie into drinking milk from a cup.

Progress Report:

Lead-up: I pepper my conversation with questions like "Are you a big kid or a baby?" Luckily Maddie answered "big kid" because I did not have a backup plan here. I casually mention, "you know, big kids drink out of cups, not bottles." and "look, Mommy's drinking from a cup!"

Day 1: Enough jibber-jabber. I cut to the chase. After setting out all our bottles and tops on the dinner table, I put Maddie in her chair and tell her that today's a big day. Since she's a big kid now (Yea!) we get to drink out of big kid cups and we're throwing out all our bottles. Maddie puts each bottle and top in a trash bag all by herself.

Daddy comes home just in time for me to say, "Where do we put the trash?" and Maddie to answer, "Daddy." Yes, Maddie, that's correct, we ladies don't do trash. Daddy takes out the trash, while secretly giving me a look of "Are you serious? Should I keep these someplace?" I give Daddy a knowing smile that says, I am so confident that you can really toss these! Little does Daddy know, I hid an emergency bottle in the pantry. Sucker!

Then we back the richest, most peanutty Peanut Butter cookies on the planet. I offer one to Maddie with a coffee cup of milk that matches mine. She dunks her cookie, but no dice on the milk. She opts for water from a sippy. Hey, hydration. I'm cool with that.

The whole day goes by and Maddie never asks for a bottle. Or milk. But she does drink water. Personal victory.

Day 2: Calcium here we come. Daddy gives Maddie an Elmo straw-sippy cup with breakfast. Two sips were enjoyed (can I get a hoot-hoot!)

We go to Grandma's house with our milk in the straw cup thing. (Maddie has always had milk on car trips. She's had some car sickness problems, and the milk helps stave that off). No drinking going on today though. She's drinking water but none of that other stuff.

Naptime approaches, time for the big guns. I pull out my secret weapon. A Pampers stages "bottle/cuppy thing" (this is it's official name). It's a sippy cup that has a nipple shaped more like a sippy cup mouth, got that? So it's a cup not a bottle and I'm not cheating. Maddie got it: she picked it up, examined it, said "Cuppy!" and promptly drank 5 ounces.

At dinner time, I asked Maddie if she wanted milk or water. She sadly mumbled milk. I asked her which cup she wanted and she didn't answer. So I gave her milk in an opaque sippy cup. Sure enough at the end of dinner she put that cup to her mouth and drank. And drank.


So maybe I did have to dip into my contingency plan. Either way you look at it: Victory is mine! For today...

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