We are done with sippy cups. DONE! (Actually, we have been done for a couple months but I am only now getting around to writing about it.) Oh, how I hated cleaning those. The nooks and crannies are excruciatingly annoying to clean. The transition was tough. My son transitioned from bottles very easily at about 13 months, but he screamed and cried and screamed and cried for the sippy part of his cup for days.
I started by giving him his milk in the same cup but without the sippy top. He was not happy and refused to drink his milk. When I threatened to take the cup away and drink the milk myself (which I never could have done...I hate milk unless accompanied by a double fudge chocolate brownie), he finally obliged and drank about half. This same routine happened three times a day for seven days. Of course, I started to get worried that he wasn't consuming the obligatory 16-24 ounces of dairy per day that the doctor ordered, and talked myself into believing that I'm being selfish and that it is more important for him to have his milk than it is for me to not have to clean those sippies. But I stuck it out and that is proof positive that determination and consistency with a kid goes a long way. After about a week and a couple days, he plum forgot about his sippies (until he accidentally found them a few weeks later in the back of the cabinet, but by then, I think he only saw them as a nostalgic piece of his past). He still wasn't drinking as much as I wanted him to drink, though, and I didn't want to buy the milk boxes because the packaging is so wasteful. And then a light bulb went off in my head. Straws! No, not the plastic, wasteful ones. Beautiful, shiny stainless steel straws, which I very easily clean with Dr. Brown's handy little brushes. My son loves them and drinks his entire cup of milk with them, and so I love them, too!
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