i know, i know. the aap recommends weaning from a bottle at 12 months. but it seems that only half of all parents manage to do that and half of the rest of them wait until age 2 or later. so, at least we're not lonely slackers. actually, we did start the process early and odin has been down to a bottle before his afternoon nap and bedtime for quite some time. but those last two bottles seemed to be such strong "time for sleep" signals that we feared he'd have a rough time giving them up and maintaining his sleep schedule.

the other night kris was putting odin to bed and decided that since we were down to only having usable parts for one working bottle that she'd throw it away and tell odin it was broken and went in the trash. as luck would have it no white lies were needed since after that very feeding she discovered he really had broken the nipple! the following afternoon when it came close to nap time, she showed him the bottle and the broken nipple and told him that she was very sorry, but he had broken the bottle and we didn't have anymore.

"uh, oh. bro'kin."

"yes, it's broken. so we have to put it in the trash."

"bro'kin! put...in...trash!"

and with that he excitedly put the bottle in the trash with his very own hands and, for the most part, has been quite unconcerned with the sudden absence of the bottle and happily sips a much smaller amount of milk from a sippy cup while listening to a bedtime story. or five.

i thought it was quite a clever approach, but apparently it might not be that uncommon a tactic:

""What really worked for me was making my 17-month-old son throw his bottle out in the garbage himself. At bedtime when he asked for it I said to him, 'Branden, you threw it away, remember? It's all gone!' He understood that it was gone because he'd seen it happen, and knowing that he did it himself seemed to comfort him." — Anonymous"