No more bottles, baby food, or pacifiers! And timeout really DOES work!

So after Emma's 15 month appointment, our pediatrician pointed out that I'm only making Emma an even pickier eater by substituting what she doesn't eat with baby food. He assured me she wouldn't starve if she didn't eat what we were having for dinner. He also suggested cutting out all inbetween meal snacking for her. That sounded a bit strict...but it works! She's been eating some vegetables, started eating apples (for a day or two at least), and I got her drinking milk from her sippy cup!

So that leads to no more bottles! She only had one bottle of warm milk at night, but now with her drinking at least one cup of milk a day, no need for the bottle. It was a slight adjustment for her at first, but it's so nice to give her a bath, read her a book, and it's bedtime. An added bonus is that her diaper isn't soaked in the morning...fewer sheet changings!

Lately Emma has been increasingly whiny and short tempered. It was driving Justin and I nuts! I felt so out of control and the last thing I wanted was a bratty little girl! Yelling at her didn't work at all, so I decided to give this timeout thing a try. While making dinner one evening, Emma was hanging on me and whining/screaming nonstop. So I said, "Do you want to go to timeout?" Obviously she didn't know what that was. So she continued and I picked her up and sat her down in timeout (a corner we have in the kitchen with nothing to get in to). She didn't like that and she got out immediately. I figured that was a little intro to what it was. Then a day later, she threw a huge tantrum in front of our porch because she didn't want to go in the house: threw herself on the floor, kicking and screaming. So I picked her up and put her in timeout. I had to keep putting her back there 6 or 7 times and she definitely was mad and started banging the wall, but after that she just stood there crying but didn't budge from the spot. After about a minute of staying there and when she stopped crying, I went over there and hugged her and told her that's where bad girls go and she had to be a good girl. Needless to say, she hasn't been back since! All I have to say when she starts being bad..."Do you want to go to timeout?" and she shakes her head no and stops. She's even pointed to it and shook her head no and said something to me about it...although I have no idea what. All I have to say is that timeout is great and I finally feel like I'm not about to explode and have some sort of plan for her behavior.

Now this works great at home, but elsewhere I think we'll just have to be as preventative as possible with her behavior. Running around outside on the grass having fun...great! Swingset or swings...absolutely not! She can't handle it when it's time to get off...we've learned after the last two visits to the park. No more swings for Emma.

After reading about getting rid of pacifiers...I decided to give it a try. Emma has been doing so well with everything else, why not? Fortunately she only uses her pacifier when she's sleeping. Any other time of the day...she doesn't even know it's gone. So yesterday I put her down for a nap without one. Immediately she was looking everywhere for it. She cried upstairs in her crib for about 20 mintues before I went up. I asked her, "What's wrong?" Then I asked to see her reaction, "Do you want your pacifier?" No response. So I took the pacifier out of my pocket and asked, "Do you want this?" She didn't reach for it or gesture or anything. So I just layed her back down, although she was mad and left her. She went to sleep no problem. I did it again last night, 10 minutes of crying. And today for her nap...no crying at all. I thought it would be much worse, but I guess not. No more pacifiers!

A little side note on Emma's increased crankiness...it subsided since last week, then Justin noticed that she was getting another tooth. No, not her second top tooth. She's getting an eye tooth, next to her left top tooth. And she has her two bottom teeth and one to the right of those. She looks funny! Her teeth are coming in all over the place! So I'm thinking the crankiness was from that.

Tomorrow I'm off to get a potty for Emma. I'm just going to introduce her to it and see what she does. She's so interested in everything that maybe she'll get the idea.