The battle is finally over! A winner has emerged and the bottle is gone! Hooray Hurrah!! Yes, what our wonderful children do not know is that parents are in it for the long haul. Our commitment and dedication to getting our little one off the bottle paid off. It seemed as if it would never happen. He loved his bottle, and truthfully, I loved to watch him drink from the bottle. He had this methodical, mechanical suckling that was so adorable and soothing to him, but as we all know he does not need to be on the bottle any longer. I have to attribute it to waiting. Everyone pushes for 12 months and makes a new mom feel pressure to reach these target dates. As I mentioned before, I talked to veteran moms that said just wait until they are ready or that their children were not off bottle until like 18 months. So I can say at 16 months, my son kicked the bottle. I think what helped was that we decided to not push it until he really got familiar and comfortable with his sippie. We probably started water out of a sippie at 12 months. Now, don't get me wrong, we did initially try to rush the bottle and that totally back fired. When 15 months came around we reintroduced the sippie with milk in mornings only. He would have it as soon as he woke up when he was thirsty and desperate. That seemed to be natural for him and hey, don't judge we had to take advantage. After a few weeks of that we brought the sippie for his bed time bottle (bottle right before bed) and while fussing he devoured every last drop. The second night was a cake walk and out went the bottle. Next is cold milk...we are almost there!!!
