The sound of silence

Peanut is now over 18 months old - my sweet lord how the time has flown by - and up until a week ago he was still having a night time feed (he was down to just that one feed a day). Going for 18 months? thank you, i am quite proud of that! But yes, the night feed has been stopped.

We tried to stop giving a night feed about a month ago but after the fourth night of him going to bed and screaming for the best part of an hour we gave up.

When we had Peanut's 18 month check-up with the maternal & child health nurse i asked her advice on how to go about getting him to give up his night feed. She said that rather than supplementing the night feed with formula to change that part of his night time routine.

So instead of sitting in the same chair that we always did and giving him formula in a sippy cup we gave him normal cows milk in a sippy cup and sat on the couch and read a book and sang songs while he drank. This kind of worked, he would go to bed and settle relatively quickly, but was still grizzling a little bit.

Then last Thursday night i was not home to put him to bed. M34tb4LL made a bit more of change to night time routine that went down quite well. M34tb4LL and Peanut sat in front of the computer and while Peanut drank his milk M34tb4LL played him youtube videos of Simon and Garfunkel songs - "Bridge Over Troubled Waters", "The Boxer" and "The Sound of Silence". He then put Peanut to bed and he went to sleep with little trouble!

So for the past few nights we have been sitting Peanut in front of good ole youtube and playing those videos for him and I think it is fairly safe to say that that he is now weened.

There is one slight change to the routine that still needs to made however - when i go to put Peanut in his cot he does not want to give back the sippy cup (whether he has drank all the milk or not). So i have to sneak into his room and take it off him once he is asleep. But in the grand scheme of things i don't see this as being a major thing. He will give that up in time.

I just ask myself the question "how many adults do i know that go to bed holding onto a sippy cup?". None, so i figure he will give that up in his own time.

(: Reggie