Zayd's New Bedtime Ritual

Zaydie used to almost always start drifting off to sleep while drinking his bottle before bed. Our pediatrician has been telling us for 11 months now that Zayd should NOT be using a bottle. I was bound and determined to get him off the bottle by his (our?) two year appointment. More than a month ago I started strategically eliminating an ounce of milk a week and replacing it with water. The idea is you get down to just a bottle of water very slowly. I have made it to half water, half milk. Now, I sort of feel like just getting a different pediatrician. Ha! Why am I trying to get him off whole milk? I can't really figure that out. Why do I care if he likes to snuggle and drink from a bottle before bed? He NEVER has a bottle just hanging out and most of you would NEVER know that he drinks from a bottle unless I just told you. So, I stopped minimizing about two weeks ago. Now, I just have to decide if I like my $6 organic milk going twice as far by using half water, or if I should just give the lentil his whole milk, WHOLE!

Besides that, he no longer drifts off while drinking, which is probably in line with what the pediatrician wants. Nowadays, he drinks and then we talk about our day and what we want for tomorrow. Every night I ask him what was his favorite thing about today and EVERYDAY for two weeks he has said, "Mooooo." Cows. We had two trips to the rodeo this year and enjoyed the cows very much. But our last visit was early LAST MONTH. I've stopped explaining that we didn't see cows today because he obviously is having a daily rendezvous with some sort of bovine and who I am to say otherwise.

The other adorable thing he has taken to is a nightly ritual of deciding who gets to come to bed with him. Here are some of our recent decisions:

• Zayd's blue monkey joins him every night
• Zahra's blue monkey joins every night
• The elephant his "cousin" Zane gave him is a new repeat visitor
• His wooden bus had a one night appearance
• Two golf balls (we nixed these on subsequent nights because the sound when they roll out of bed at 2 in the morning is enough to wake ANYONE)
• His star wars rubber ball
• Two plush black polka dot blocks from NeNe Julie
• The large plastic guy that rides his remote control dirtbike (which has never had a battery since Zayd is too young to work the controls)

So, bedtime is getting better and definitely more fun. He has also been staying up later and having SUPER long naps - like 2 hours and 45 minutes. But like a rooster he is up between 430 and 530 EVERYDAY.  This is one thing about these years that I will not miss. I can guarantee you that once Zayd learns to sleep past six, we will never worry about Zahra being up and at em before the sun. ;)

P.S. Zayd's love of the rodeo means he wears his cowboy boots OFTEN nowadays. He can put them on himself so once they are on, I don't see the point in arguing.