After an extremely challenging morning with a misbehaving K, dh and I found the perfect excuse to leave the house legitimately (with K’s permission) to get his birthday cake. K was aware that his misbehaviour had consequences and was feeling quite miserable, but he knew that he had to stay at home with our helper.

We quietly put up the decorations in the hall when we got back, while K took his afternoon nap.

When K got up, he grinned from ear to ear to see the house decorated for his birthday party and could not wait to celebrate his birthday in the evening.

The highlight of the evening was the cake that we ‘pimped up’, Ben-10 style. I skipped the idea of getting a nicely decorated Ben-10 fondant cake and went with a strawberry shortcake from Canele instead. To make the cake look a little more authentic Ben-10 style, I relegated the strawberries and replaced them with green chocolate chips and Ben-10 figurines. It was a hit with the birthday boy, and the adults who attended his party sure were glad that they were not fed a heavy butter-cream cake enveloped with fancy fondant-covered decorations.

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K is finally able to sleep through the night!

After being consistently denied milk twice nightly for one week and constantly being shouted at to “Go back to sleep!” each time he sits up on his bed in the wee hours of the morning. He has finally decided that there is really no point waking up in the middle of the night to be treated ‘cruelly’ by his unfeeling mother. Through the past 2 weeks, I have learnt that the best way to train a child to sleep through the night is to not give him any sort of attention at all. In other words, I have ignored all cries and complains and will comfort him only if he has been woken up from a nightmare.

The longest stretch of shut-eye that he has held so far this week is a full 11 hours! A real feat for someone barely 2 weeks ago would only sleep for 4-5 hours stretches at one time and wake up 2 to 3x at night. Our bedtime routine right after reading bedtime stories, singing some songs and saying a prayer, will be to arrange a ‘sleeping party’. His favorite soft toys will take turns to say goodnight to him, get a customary kiss and hug from him and would share the pillow with him. A hug and a kiss good night from me next and I will be out of his room! He has learnt to self-soothe, so he will then take another 15 – 30 minutes to sing himself to sleep.

Yeah! Sleep training efforts have finally paid off. The process has been painful for the last 3 weeks but the rewards are truly worthwhile

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The process of weaning K off the bottle has turned out better than I expected. I tried rubbing ginger on the milk bottles’ teats the first night, but he surprised me by finishing 2 bottles of milk, complete with the ginger taste on teats, and went contentedly back to sleep. The next night, I made him go cold turkey without his night feeds and did not bother to continue with ginger on the teats. He complained for the 1st two nights, but finally gave up the fight and went back to sleep.

He is now drinking about 240ml of milk three times a day directly from a cup, and only drinks about a third of the quantity of milk that he used to. However the heartening thing is that he is less fussy when it comes to his main meals.

I should have realised from the start and wean him off the milk bottle much earlier. At least it would have reduce many of the battles that we had during his meal times. When I serve him his favorites like fishball, noodles (ramen especially), Chawanmushi, Xiao Long Bao, Pasta or Pizza, and he will be a co-operative tot at meal times.

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