dadsmanship

The doing away with the nighttime bottles has gone okay, complicated mainly by six to eight large new teeth making a simultaneous entrance, along with a rotten cold from our little friends down at the play group. For our part, the end of Daylight Savings made things a little groggier than they might have been otherwise. Actually going to sleep without the bottle wasn't a problem for more than a couple of days. It's the 3 a.m. inconsolable screaming that has been hardest.  These have been full-on frantic screaming fits that there's no way he could get out of himself (or that we could possibly sleep through), the kind that take several minutes of lights and talk just to bring him out of and around to the fact that he's alive and we're the parents he knows and everything might eventually be okay. After a couple of days we figured out that these were most likely about, or majorly aggravated by, the several new canines and premolars fighting their way through his ...

Last month, on the advice of our pediatrician, parent friends, babykeeping guides, and several authoritative-sounding things we read on the internet, we decided to make a bid for approval of our kid's future dentist and take away the naptime bottles. Devoted readers may recall that the no-bottle naps didn't go so well at first. He actually got through it pretty easily, though. The first few days, he screamed for as long as an hour before wearing himself out, and then often woke up after only the barest of no-frills utility naps. Extensive chill-out routines and reading and singing (not previously part of the naptime scheme, only the bedtime one) didn't help anything. He would relax, flip the pages, drink his water, and then still freak out when I put him down and left the room. But on about the fourth or fifth day, he only cried for about fifteen minutes, then slept for two hours. The next day, ten minutes, and a great nap. Finally--and it's not lost on my symbol...