"There's my milk money ... and there's my milk!"

Abbie is now officially off formula. The only milk or milk-like substance that she drinks now comes from cows. This is an important milestone in her development. Plus, I can save tons of money buying milk instead of formula, which is really important since I priced formula the other day and it’s shot up from $17 the last time I bought any to $20 for the same can.

Switching her to whole milk involved combining equal parts formula and whole milk together in her sippy cups. I likely needed to do this mixing for a little while to help acclimate her to the taste of whole milk, but I ended up having to mix the two for about a month just to use the rest of my formula stockpile. My stockpile included two cans of the Next Step formula intended for older children, which my pediatrician assured me is basically a scam designed to coax parents to continue giving the formula industry obscene amounts of money well into the child’s teen years. I would have returned those cans, but I didn’t save my receipt, and without it I can only exchange formula for formula. Since I don’t need any more formula, that kind of exchange is like changing the channel from a reality show starring Bobby Brown to channel showing a reality show starring Hulk Hogan. I’m not sure what the store’s reasoning is for this, possibly spite.

I certainly won’t miss the days of formula. Weeks ago, we packed up our bottles with their six separate, difficult-to-clean pieces, each one specially designed fit snuggly together while still finding a way to leak. Instead we deal with sippy cups with just three pieces and all of their inherent problems, like the fact that they leak very slowly if not kept upright, and that quarter-once of liquid they leave in the bottom. Now I also get to kiss formula and all of its problems goodbye. No more spilling powder. No more digging through a new can to find that blasted scoop. No more having to keep a supply of filtered water on hand to mix with the formula. No more having to shell out $120+ at a time to buy a case at the best price per ounce. Unless of course we have another baby.

Which isn’t to say milk is problem-free; if it were, it probably wouldn’t count as parenting. Trying to pour those first couple ounces out of gallon container is harder than finding an act worth watching during the Live 8 concert in Johannesburg.* By my math, Abbie will suck down close to two gallons of milk per week, which means having to lug two gallons home from the grocery store and finding room for them in the refrigerator in addition to the gallons of skim milk and orange juice I purchase for adult consumption. I can’t stock up on milk like I could with formula, which means I have to run to the grocery store about every week. It also means I’m probably going to have to run to the store instead of feeding her sometime when I overestimate our remaining milk stock. I’m probably also going to grab the wrong gallon container some morning and pour whole milk on my cereal instead of skim, and that would effectively cancel out any benefit the bran flakes offer. There’s also the tantalizing reality that the less fat the milk has, the cheaper it gets. Considering that two of my joys in life are cutting fat in food and saving money, I’m going to be pushing real hard to move her to skim, or at least 2%. I just have to keep telling myself it’s still cheaper than formula.

* Lindiwe? Orchestre Baobab? Oumou Sengare? At least “Orchestre” is almost a word.