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Even after she started eating solid food and drinking from sippy and then normal cups, my daughter had a hard time giving up the nightly bottle. So we didn’t push the issue. Every night, she took a bottle full of milk to bed with her. It soothed and calmed her, and sometimes you will just do ANYTHING that will encourage a toddler to go to sleep. Of course, she’s three and a half years old now, and that’s way too old to be drinking anything out of a baby bottle.

So I made a New Year’s resolution on her behalf, and January 1 we went cold turkey! I stole an idea from Nanny 911, actually. On that show, one of the nannies got two kids to give up bottles by taking all of the baby bottles out of the house in her big nanny carpet bag. She told them she was “taking the bottles to the babies,” since they were “too big for bottles now, and the babies really need them.” Does it make sense? No. Does it matter? No!

My daughter is a big fan of Dora, and she really loves her “Dora Helps the Super Babies” DVD. So I told her that we needed to send the baby bottles “to the super babies.” And when she wasn’t around, I threw all our bottles into a grocery bag and hid them deep in a cupboard.

OMG it worked! The first night was admittedly rough, and there was much whining, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. The next night it got easier – she asked, we reminded her where the bottles went, and that was it. The night after THAT, she told me all on her own where the bottles were, and that she was “too big for a bottle.”

A rare parenting success. Hella easier than toilet training; I should have tried it sooner! Please, let me bask in the glory for a moment.