Bye Bye Bottles

At Christmas time, Ella was still taking a bottle for her nap and bedtime. She is 2 1/2 and I thought it was probably time to say goodbye to the bottles. A friend of mine from preschool gave me the idea to leave them out for Santa in exchange for presents. We spent the two weeks leading up to Christmas talking about what we were going to do, and told her that Santa was going to take her "babas" and leave her toys; and Santa would then bring the bottles to baby Chase (the 6 month old baby of a friend of mine). So, when Christmas eve came, she helped us put all the bottles in a bag and left them next to the cookie for Santa. The next day all her bottles were gone and she had a ton of toys. The first couple of days were a bit rough. She would cry at bedtime for a bottle and say "I a baby, I need a baba". But we would just remind her how Santa took them to give to baby Chase. She seemed to be okay with it. Even now, occasionally she will say things like "baby Chase has my babas".

I have heard of similar tactics used for getting rid of binkys, such as leaving them for the binky fairy, or exchanging them for a new toy/bike. Thankfully we didn't have the binky to deal with, but the bottles were just as bad. The Santa thing worked well for us...I just hope it doesn't make her have a lifelong hatred of Santa!