so he officially turned three.

we brought a cake to his school the day before as a mini pre-birthday… thingy, since there would be a ready group of kids his age who were likely to contribute to the liveliness of a birthday party and pounce at the sight of cake. (my other motive being, of course, to contribute to a positive schooling experience for him. riggghhht.)

ohh, the birthday cake.

because we didn’t want to spend so much on this cake, and because we didn’t have time to get one any earlier, all four of us trudged our way across tampines the evening before, in full raya gear, braving the drizzling rain and the holiday crowd, in search of a ready-baked one that would suitably impress little children.

we must have gone to at least… SEVEN bakery shops, to no avail. we had almost exhausted the list of bakeries we knew of in tampines when finally, at the eighth shop, just before the shops started to shut down for the day, we found something, well, close enough to our criteria. sufficiently cheap, slightly childish, and somewhat cheesy (doraemon, nemo and tweety – a mismatched combo of characters, if any.). :D

we were like, “omg, bertuah ni anak, what ridiculous lengths we go to for him. eight bakeries! tsk.”

for a few weeks prior to his birthday, i’d been prepping him to discard his bottle for good.

yes, i’m ashamed to say that, despite our success in toilet training and other aspects of ‘big boy’ behaviour, weaning him off the bottle was the last to go. dentists will tell you to get rid of the bottle when a child turns one, but seriously, how many of us actually have the heart to do it, right?

he’d never lingered on the bottle or hung on to it – he actually guzzles down his milk in 60 seconds flat – so i wasn’t too worried about his teeth. i suppose my reluctance to wean him off was because it took a pretty long time (a year, actually) for him to accept a bottle from me, being the faithful tekboy that he once was.

but it had to be done eventually, so i gave him the cut-off date, and he nodded in understanding each time.

“i throw my bottle, because i big boy, i abang!”, he’d repeat when asked what he had to do on his birthday.

so after his last drink that morning, i brought out the dustbin, set it in front of him, and let him do the deed.

“bye bye, bottle!”

and that was that, you think.

well, just as with many kids and drug addicts, surely there would be initial lapses, my 3-year-old included. thing is, he only threw it in *our* house, but we should’ve done it at his oma’s house too, because when he came back from school later, he demanded it from his oma, lol! she called to consult me, and we both agreed not to give in. cold turkey, baby.

funny thing is, when i got back, he reiterated his “i throw my bottle, because i big boy, i abang!” to me, and didn’t ask for it at all. but in the middle of the night, he suddenly appeared and climbed next to me in bed, something out of character for him.

so i concluded, there’s more to the bottle that meets the eye. the bottle is more than a mere receptacle for drinking – there are comfort and security issues attached to it, even for the most gungho of kids, my 3-year-old included. i had a pep talk with him again today, and i think we’ve come to an understanding.

as with other things – he’ll get over it.

after all he’s a big boy, he’s abang.

i just hope i didn’t ruin his third birthday too much with the memory of his dearly departed Avent.

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