My kid and notes from Year 1.7
September 14, 2016
My Little Dobby
This child cannot be convinced of the one sock & one shoe per foot rule. Ze is constantly asking me to add another shoe on top of the one ze is already wearing. The best we can do is layer socks, though, and ze has stolen several pairs of socks from me so as to better mix and match zir footwear.
Transitions and weanings
It’s occurred to me that, despite my worries about never managing it or fighting over each step, our several weanings, off the bottle, off pre-sleep milk, and fuss-free naps ended up going much smoother than I’d been led to expect.
At daycare pickup one day, I overheard a parent telling the teacher: yeah he’s still on bottles. His doctor would kill us if she knew but it’s just easier! The kid was two years old, at least, and was running around with a bottle clenched in his teeth. I think I let that, and JuggerBaby’s general stubbornness, get in my head.
Looking back, though, it really didn’t suck. One day I realized that no part of me wanted to be dealing with bottles, bottle brushes, or any of that nonsense on our travel in 2016. In the Spring I decided we were doing it. Ze had been using a sippy cup for water already, so I started offering both milk and water in sippy cups during the days with meals. After a few days, since ze didn’t seem to care much, I offered the milk in a sippy cup for pre-nap fill-up. The first time I did that, I got Such A Look. Ze firmly pushed it away. It took three tries for zir to convince me that this was not happening. Fine. I switched to the bottle and ze sucked down the milk contentedly.
But the next time, I offered the sippy again. Ze considered it, and decided that yes, ok, this was acceptable. And so for about four days, ze only got milk in a bottle before bedtime. Otherwise, it was all sippies.
By the end of the week, because ze was eating so well and drinking plenty of milk at dinner, I changed it up again and gave zir a water sippy cup at bedtime. This changeover was accepted with equanimity, as long as there was something to occupy zir hands and mouth while we read bedtime stories, zir full belly didn’t care if it was milk.
This was strategic: zir teeth were coming in and I didn’t want zir to be so in the habit of having milk right before bed that those teeth rotted out of zir head before permanents come in. (#ParentingHorrorStories)
Naturally, it was time to introduce a few new habits since ze was going so well! We used to let zir nurse or get milk drunk before naps, now I’d give zir a sippy, change zir diaper and started rocking zir on my shoulder for a couple minutes with a song. Same song, every time.
Sooner than even I anticipated, ze absorbed what I was hoping to ingrain, and that was if I’m holding you and singing, it’s time to nap. Within a couple weeks I was able to stop giving nap sippies and ze responded very positively to the Pavlovian signal of being picked up, patted on the back and sung to. This is a kid who normally pops up like a jackrabbit the second you lay zir head on your shoulder – no way was ze going to miss any action! Now, unless ze is overtired, if you scoop zir up at the right time and start singing, plop! Zir head goes down on your shoulder. It’s a pretty reliable signal – if ze isn’t ready to sleep at all, ze stays head up and alert. Mostly we’ve finally gotten the timing right.
Sometimes we get it very wrong and even just suggesting that we’re going to pick zir up sets off a wail and collapse to the floor like you cut zir strings. That’s when you’re unforgiveably overdue and zir heart is broken. Broken, I tell you!!
We’re getting better at avoiding that, too.
Most days, the transfer from shoulder to crib is smooth. Tuck zir in, ze hugs a plushie or kitten-pounces a blanket and folds over on zir side. There’s not a lot of the popping back up to stare at you accusingly like in days of yore. I thought we’d NEVER get a baby that would sleep like a reasonable human, but nowadays ze just mumbles to zirself for a while and then passes out.
I don’t know what’ll happen when it’s time to free the creature from zir cage, though. Ze is already outgrowing zir crib and I dread giving zir the freedom of crawling out of bed to play. It’s almost inevitable. Because of how we sleep trained zir, the school of drop off and run, there’s no staying by zir side til ze sleeps, that would be an undeniable invitation to play. How much worse will be once we remove the crib door?
We’ll see. That’s a fight for another day. I’m just going to be grateful that these transitions went as well as they did. It was anyone’s guess how ze would take losing bottle privileges or pre-nap milk top-ups, and so the next step is a mystery too. Unless I can dig up some kind of trial run to ease zir into the idea of sleeping voluntarily when not caged in a crib, or perhaps devise a netted dome situation. Or a stationary human baby hamster ball.
Things we are loving
Since our transition off bottles, and the arrival of teeth, we’ve been fighting a losing battle against JuggerBaby’s biting and shaking of sippy cups. The standard Munchkin sippy cups with straws and biteproof / leakproof cups were no proof against the chompers. Everything leaked or dripped after ze had zir way with it. Since ze also knows how to drink from a cup, I hunted down our latest aquisitions, the Munchkin Miracle 360 Trainer Cups, and they work wonderfully.
Ze figured out this new set within seconds and sucked down three cups of water in zir fascination with the new cups.
The only bad thing is that they’re not easy for me to open, my hands can’t get a grip on the slippery outside, but they’re ten times easier to clean, and except for one user failure (mine) to properly re-affix the silicone lid to the trainer handles, we’ve had zero leaks despite all zir best efforts. And believe me, ze tries. Ze shakes them upside down, slams it against the tray, walls, zir head. I love them. I highly recommend them.
🙂 Gosh…brings back memories!
We popped Caligula off the bottle by making a big, party-like DEAL of packing every bottle in the house into a suitcase (naturally, he helped) and putting it away at the top of a closet.
Amazingly, it worked! Like you, I had no faith whatsoever that weaning the kid off the bottle was going to be trouble-free.
Another weird thing: One day he was just…presto-changeo!…toilet trained! It was his second birthday: that was his birthday present to his parents, I guess. Of course, we’d shown him how with one of those little plastic kiddie johns. But on THAT DAY he suddenly started, on his own, going into the bathroom and using the Big Kids’ terlet. That was something else I was dreading.
We grownups probably make a bigger deal out of these rites of passage than we should.
I’ll never take it for granted but I love it when it all goes smoothly!
I love following the updates on Twitter, and these full updates are equally adorable. What personality!
Aw thanks!
There is great victory in steering the habits of a baby/toddler in the right direction. My 3rd was the most stubborn baby on the planet. You talk about a two-year-old with a bottle, but she was 3. AND she refused to eat anything else (no pablum – nothing) until she was 18-months old. She showed the same stubbornness in swimming lessons when she would NOT put her head under the water (failed Aqua Quest Level 1 three times). Some kids just march (or don’t march) to their own beat big time. I had plenty of worry along the way, but my stubborn baby is now 17 and lovely : )
I remember you telling me about your 3rd refusing to eat! And she turned out so well 🙂