Holiday Milestones!

This Holiday season has certainly been quite an eventful one in terms of really exciting milestones that Nico has reached!

First of all, we have finally successfully weaned him from the bottle. I know we may be really late compared to other kids, being at 37 months - but well, we finally got there. I told everyone in the household (including Nico) that after Christmas, we would finally bid the bottle goodbye. And so we did. On the morning of the 26th, we asked his help to pack away the bottles and stashed them away to a place he would never find them. He asked for the bottle later in the day, but upon realizing they were nowhere to be found, gave up and never asked for it again. Of course, the  milk intake has significantly decreased since then -- for about 1.5 liters a day (yes, crazy I know) to about 250-300ml a day. I've been told that kids who wean from the bottle tend to lose a bit of weight while adjusting. Am hoping that passes quickly since it takes us months to pack some pounds on this little boy!

Second big thing for the holiday season - he FINALLY slept through the night! I never thought I would experience the day that this babe of mine would sleep 8 hours without rousing! With his milk throughout the night (about a combined 600 ml), I am unluckily woken up between 1-5 times a night with a request for milk. Of course, the amount of milk taken in directly affects how many times I need to wake to change his nappy to avoid overflow onto the bed! So anyway, last night - the 5th night without the bottle, he slept a good 8.5 hours without a peep. I actually had to check on him at about 8 am to see if he was still alive! Hiphiphooray! Crossing my fingers this is not a fluke and I get more of these slumber filled nights coming my way.

Additionally, his sentence construction and verbalization of thoughts and wants have really developed over the last few weeks! While he is generally good at expressing himself and speaks very clearly (and as my household staff would say, SLANG) - my husband and I have been pleased at the progress he is making in speaking. Sentences peppered with "of course", "I'm wondering about" and "how did you do this so fast" are such a treat to hear!

Lastly, he finally has more discipline and a longer attention span to sit long enough to finish his pencil skills and counting worksheets (about 15 sheets at a time), and complete his 50 pc puzzles without breaks. We no longer have to cajole him back to the desk to finish a sheet at a time, or line up all his toy animals to "cheer" for him with every page that he finishes. Oh, the things we had to resort to before to get him to sit down and accomplish a task!

All in all it has been a great few weeks filled with the achievement of milestones. As we begin the year, we (parents) need to get serious about our preschool shopping and consider the options out there.

So here's to an exciting year of learning ahead of us! Cheers!