Slight schedule change

I almost forgot to update about this....but it was pretty important to us! It is minor....but very important.

We made a sliiiiiiiiight change to the schedule for the boys probably about a month ago. We did away with morning and nighttime milk in the nursery. Yay! Sounds pretty insignificant, right? Nope. It's not.

I decided that we should not have milk in the boys's room anymore (duh) and that we really needed to keep milk in the kitchen (again, duh). The problem was that we had created monsters by bringing their milk to them first thing in the morning and then giving them more right before bed. Here's how it went....I would go in their room at 7:30 AM, change their diapers, and give them milk. Then we'd play, read books, etc in their nursery. Around 8:30 AM, we'd go downstairs and they would have breakfast and sometime after that would go back upstairs to brush teeth and get dressed (so they wouldn't get dressed until 9:30....which seems kind of late to me!). Then after dinner (they used to drink water with dinner) we would go upstairs, put on pajamas, drink milk and then brush teeth in the nursery. There are a few issues with this. Sometimes, milk would drip onto the carpet. Gross. Also we used to just brush teeth with water but have recently started using baby toothpaste. Now that we have the toothpaste, I don't want them brushing teeth in their room. I want to associate the fact that they go to the bathroom to brush teeth. I came to the conclusion that we needed to do away with the morning and nighttime milk cups. The scary part was that they would CRYYYYYYYYYYYY whenever it was milk time and it wasn't in their hands. Like if I were to change someone's diaper, he would immediately want his milk and would fuss and cry while I was changing the next one's diaper. I thought, "Dear Lord, I can't take it if they're going to cry while I'm getting them all dressed every single day!". Getting them dressed takes more than...ahem...5 minutes or so. It would be like a 15 minute ordeal of having screaming and crying children while I had both hands busy. To be frank, I was SKURRED.

Pictures of milk in the room...

Stokie

William (pre-haircut)

Ryan

I know, I'm long-winded (or long-typed) sometimes, so long story short, I made an executive decision that we would quit the milk in rooms and just deal with all the crying for a few days or a week until they got used to the change. I was planning to just bite the bullet. I chose a week that neither Thomas nor I was traveling so that we would both be there and he could help if I really needed some support or 2 more hands!

I was shocked and in awe when it went smoothly. No tears. No getting upset. They let me change their diaper, put on their clothes and then they just played in their room while I was doing the same to the next two. Then we leisurely went downstairs and had milk with breakfast! Now, I'm not saying it was a walk in the park. As soon as they get to their high chair for breakfast, they immediately start saying "milk, milk, milk" and they want their cups right then. But overall it was very smooth!

The night time bottle went just as well. We gave them milk with their dinner and went upstairs and brushed teeth, put on pjs, read some books and put them to bed. It was like they knew that because they had milk with their dinner, they weren't getting more....or something!

And I think part of the reason they would cry so hard for it before was because the milk cups were in the room and they could see them and would want them. Not having them in there made them forget...or not care.

More current pictures...

Milk with dinner!

William LOVES milk

Stokes loves water & milk :)

So, the milk bridge has been crossed. It's working out so much better!