Snifflefritz Adventures

My girl Princess Snifflefritz (aged 21 months ) is funny sometimes. She eats better than her big sister, Princess Magpie (aged 3 years), but Princess Magpie is very territorial when it comes to her plate. So, Princess Snifflefritz has developed this sniper routine that cracks me up. When Princess Snifflefritz has cleared her plate and Princess Magpie has moved on to other things leaving her plate unattended, Princess Snifflefritz moves in on the attack. She darts as quickly as her little legs can carry her over to the plate, grabs food in both hands and takes off running before Princess Magpie can notice and get upset with her. I laugh at how she moves so quickly she is unsteady on her feet. Princess Magpie has no interest in the food, she would just pitch a fit if she noticed Princess Snifflefritz touching her plate.



Now on another note, my girls are NOT big on change. They don't like it AT ALL. So when it comes time for them to move on to the next stage of development, they don't do it without LOTS OF resistance. So it was with great trepidation that I decided it was time for Princess Snifflefritz to give up bottles and move on to sippy cups. I went out and bought her pink, soft-topped sippies and purple, hard-topped sippies for Princess Magpie (they need their things to be differentiated.) During the day, I handed her a sippy instead of a bottle. She fussed but I cuddled her and she got over it and drank from it. But there was another step I was worried about. My girls like to take a drink of water with them to bed.

Just a note about my girls, when you change things for them, you have to do it cold turkey. Slow transitions over a few days leads to days of unending crying and they don't transition, they just keep crying. I have to go cold turkey. I have to put up with one day of hellacious tantrums, I have to just get through it and hope that the next day will be better.

So back to the sippy, I put her to bed with a sippy and closed the door. She SCREAMED! I left her for 10 minutes and then I went in to comfort her but when I left the room, she cried even harder! It was HELL, I was so upset that I was sick. But I knew that if I gave in, I would have to go through this again the next day and I just couldn't do this again. This continued all night long until about 2:30 in the morning when she finally fell asleep.

There was one silver-lining to this awful, grey cloud of doom, She slept through the rest of the night until about 9 the next morning. The next day, I gave her her breakfast of peanut butter toast, strawberries, and banana's AND . . . her new sippy. You know what? She said, thank you and ate her breakfast and drank from her sippy. At naptime, I handed her sippy and hoped for the best and . . . . she said thank you! That was it, no more crying over the bottles! The best part is, she slept through the night again last night!

So it seems two problems were solved in one night of hell.