Bye, Bye BaBa

We finally did it. We gave up the bottle. Oh, not Ty and I, Emily. Her Dr. has been saying since she turned 1 that she should be drinking from a sippy cup and the bottles needed to go. Well here is the thing. That bottle was like a favorite stuffed animal to Em. She even tried to take it to bed with her a few times just to cuddle with it. And of course the few times I had started to wean her from it full on tantrums erupted and I spent the mornings trying to distract her only to give in after 20 minutes of crying and begging. However, as she is very quickly approaching that 18 month mark (which means I will have to face Dr. Owen again very soon), I thought it might be a good time to try taking away the bottle for good. That and the fact that Helen was doing the same exact thing with Jules gave me courage. So Saturday morning when she walked up to the fridge and said "BaBa." I said "No." She looked at me with those sweet eyes and did her very best sign for please, which of course means that she gets whatever she wants. "No bottle Emmie, it went bye bye, all gone." She scrunched up her face and said a very sad little "bye, bye?" I quickly responded with a graham cracker and that distracted her for awhile. She asked a few more times on Saturday and I just told her it was bye, bye. By Sunday she walked up to the fridge and said, "Baba, no! Bye, bye." We have had a few little set backs. At her GiGi's house she thought she would try with her just to see if maybe Mommy had forgotten to tell GiGi about the baba being bye, bye, but it didn't work. So she laid her head on the fridge and just said "bye, bye." Looking back I am not sure why we didn't do this earlier. It was surprisingly easy and now something I had been dreading is done. But here is the kicker, I miss the baba. It was the last little thing tying my quickly growing toddler to babyhood. One of the few times my busy bee would ever slow down and just snuggle was when she was drinking that bottle. Bye, bye baba, we will miss you!