We knew this day would come. Back when we talked about parenting goals, we both decided that we didn't want Kaiden to be hooked on the pacifier. We were successfully able to wean him off of it at around 6 months but little did we know that his baby bottle would become his pacifier. After talking to his pediatrician about it, she told us that it would be fine if he continued to use the bottle until he turned two. In the meantime, we bought every sippy cup known to man and tried to get him hooked on one. None of them worked. We were able to teach him to use a regular cup around 14 months but it wasn't obviously something we couldn't just hand him when we were at a public place. So recently, we've come to grips with the fact that if we don't get Kaiden off the bottle now, we will have to deal with an entirely new mess of bottle-related issues when the new baby arrives. I got a glimpse of this last summer when Kaiden and I were at a parade with a friend who pulled out an identical Dr. Brown's bottle for her newborn. He was all sorts of upset and that picture has stuck in my mind since. Up until recently, we've tried going cold turkey and we've tried gradual approaches but we've always found an excuse to go back to the bottle. Our flights to Wisconsin, Virginia, and Cabo made us stick with the bottle for the sheer fact that it was the one familiar comfort item to him in such unfamiliar places all back to back. These trips all fell around his 2 year old birthday, go figure. He is now 2 years old and 2 months and there are no more excuses. We have a little over four months until Baby Girl comes and I believe that's just enough time to get him off and give him time away from the bottle before he sees another one. We cleaned and boxed up all his old bottles and now they are untouchable. We both discussed the fact that we will never be successful at our goal unless both of us our fully on board (as with anything in parenting.) Both of us have to deal with his sad cries for "ba-ba"...both of us have to stick to our guns and prove that we are more stubborn than he is. Ethan bought him a new Cars sippy cup, as well as two similar sippy cups for us. We will drink out of a sippy for as long as it takes Kaiden to want to drink out of one. When he does take sips, we reward him with a goldfish and lots of praises. And guess what? Last night was the first time he successfully went to bed without a water-filled bottle in hand! (Though, he did wake up in the middle of the night freaking out because he couldn't find his bottle.) It's been all he's known as a comfort item since he was born and I know it will take time to break him off of it. But I also know doing this now will save us future headaches. Operation Get Kaiden Off the Bottle has commenced and both Ethan and I are fully committed to making this happen! Wish us luck. :)Ha, and go figure...Kaiden ran up to the computer, saw this picture and said, "Oh! A Bottle!" Whoops...