So Saturday I made the drastic decision to take away the nap time AND night time sippy cups. Why you ask? Well because we have 3 big toddler training goals to accomplish over the summer.
1. No more baby sippy cups! Eyan has been quite particular to the silicon spout sippy cups, which lets be honest is just one step up from a bottle. I have patronized this because mama needed some sleep, but now it is time to give up the baby cup and move up to the hard plastic big boy cups…but not before bed!
2. Potty Training! Now honestly I am confident that Eyan is in fact ready to train. He has had numerous successes in the potty without a whole lot of prompting, but my concern is that he doesn’t exactly tell us when he needs to go and even without a cup at night he is still waking up wet. I even had him go potty in the potty before bed last night and he woke up wet this morning. As I write this Eyan is getting into the bath and told me “I potty in potty mama” then he went! So maybe my only worry is nighttime training.
3. Big boy bedroom is the last goal. Eyan still has a changing table and his crib in his room. Unlike many people we use the changing table constantly but he is quickly outgrowing it and soon we will put a toy box in its place. In addition, Eyan has never crawled out of his crib, so I have seen no real reason to turn it into a toddler bed yet. As potty training gets closer, it is going to be very important that he can get out of bed and potty at night if he needs to.
My overall goal is to have all of this accomplished before the end of June! YIKES! We are almost 3 days into the no sippy cup excursion. Here is a breakdown of the last 2 days.
Day 1-Nap time: Eyan didn’t want to take a nap but I knew he was tired so I laid him in bed and gave him his cup…then he threw it out of the crib at me, so I picked it up and said “ok I guess you can take a nap without milk.” About 10 minutes later after a little crying and fussing he fell right asleep!
Day 1-Night time: I figured since he did it earlier that we should just bite the bullet and take it away at night too. Eyan was definitely not expecting this so he asked for it and cried. I told him he was a big boy and didn’t need a milk cup. He cried for about 40 minutes off and on and I went in and checked on him periodically just to calm him down and tell him how proud I was that he could go to sleep like a big boy. At around the 40 minute mark, Jason could not stand the crying (we never really did the cry it out method) so he took Eyan into our room and they watched a couple episodes of Mickey Mouse. Then we put Eyan back in bed and within another 40 minutes after more crying, he finally fell asleep! He slept soundly through the night and was up at 6:30 am asking for that milk! He took his milk in a BIG BOY cup just fine!
Day 2-Nap time: He gladly laid down for a nap and only cried for about 5 minutes for a cup then he slept for almost 2 hours!
Day 2-Night time: Eyan really wanted his cup last night. I explained to him that mommy and daddy are not mad at him it is just that he is a big boy now and he can’t have cups at night. He chose to read a book and then lay in bed with that book. He was pretty quiet in his room for about 15 minutes then he cried for about 5 minutes then he was quiet again, then he fussed for a few then he fell asleep. Then he must have rolled over and hit his head on the bed because he cried and I had to rock him to sleep. Around midnight he woke up and asked for his milk. He thrashed around for a bit angrily at me for not giving into the milk demands and then he settled in and went right to sleep and slept until 7:00.
Nap time is in about 2 hours…hopefully it goes well!
