The Tory (and Ian) Cup
Our babies need to give up some things when they turn one in a couple weeks. The title of “baby” is one thing; they’ll be toddlers as far as I’m concerned regardless of their continuing status of “crawlers.” The highly pureed foods will stop coming, as they’ll need to chew finely chopped foods instead. They need to surrender their pacifiers, though we all need some convincing of that. They only use their pacifiers at night to help them sleep, and I like having them sleep too much to fight them.
Something I am willing to fight over is their transition to sippy cups. I remember I never had to fight Abbie to make her use sippy cups. Unlike her current pasta-centric world, Abbie was a super eater at 12-months. If I could impale it on a fork, she was willing to ingest it. That open-mindedness extended to sippy cups. If a beverage container held milk, she’d find a way to extract that sweet dairy goodness.
I heard so many stories about children neurotically holding on to their bottles that I insisted on easing Abbie into her sippy cups. I started her off with one of the big-handled variety a day. After I was convinced that she’d mastered that, I introduced two sippy cups a day, then three, and finally the non-handled sippy cup. Sometime shortly after her first birthday, I realized that I was the neurotic one and didn’t care about her milk delivery apparatus. I put the bottles into storage and she never missed them, although she did remember they were hers when they returned for the twins’ usage.
The boys have been the opposite. They enjoy the feel of pliable latex in their mouths, and they’re willing to scream to get it. I started introducing one sippy cup a day to them. They screamed, they whined, and they took 20 minutes, but they finished them. I took the “they’ll get hungry eventually” tactic.
Ellie was not impressed with my approach, and insisted on trying a different type of sippy cup. Abbie’s sippy cups were made by Gerber, and they feature a hard plastic spout and no handles. I decided on the Gerber brand after comparing all of my options, and settling on the first brand that I found four of at a garage sale. The Gerber brand worked well for Abbie, but Ellie thought the boys might need something with a latex spout to ease them into the transition. I don’t like using latex spouts on sippy cups since I’ve seen Abbie chew them up like that brutal Northwestern defense chewed up the Hawkeyes today, but I went with her idea since the boys have eight teeth combined and can barely bite me hard enough to draw blood. Plus the sippy cups she found were really cheap, so even after Abbie gets a hold of one and chews it to pieces, we won’t be out much money.
The latex spouted sippy cups worked well. The boys took them with minimal fuss. I still gave them the hard spouted sippy cups twice a day because I wanted them to learn to drink from those as well for when their bites are strong enough to rip a hunk from my shoulder. Unfortunately the different spouts created confusion, as the boys went from reluctantly drinking from a hard spouted cup, to refusing to drink from a hard spouted cup. One night they literally would not drink from the hard spouted sippy cup when offered. I swore I would make them try for ten minutes, and after listening to them scream for ten minutes straight, I poured the contents into bottles and enjoyed a quiet remainder of the night. The next morning when the latex spouted sippy cup leaked all over Tory like the half-price sippy cup it is, I swore I would never use them again.
We’ve gone cold turkey with the hard spouted sippy cups, and things have gone better recently. They’re taking sippy cups for all four feedings with varying degrees of acceptance. Sometimes I have to keep encouraging them to drink, but they finish them. The biggest problem I’ve had since then is once Tory bit his lip while trying to chew on the spout, drawing enough blood to appear that he just experienced (and lost) his first drag-out fight with his sister. I gave him the rest of his meal in a bottle that time, but we’re moving on to complete sippy cups now. Hopefully we’ll wait a little while before moving onto to drag-out fights with each other.
Something I am willing to fight over is their transition to sippy cups. I remember I never had to fight Abbie to make her use sippy cups. Unlike her current pasta-centric world, Abbie was a super eater at 12-months. If I could impale it on a fork, she was willing to ingest it. That open-mindedness extended to sippy cups. If a beverage container held milk, she’d find a way to extract that sweet dairy goodness.
I heard so many stories about children neurotically holding on to their bottles that I insisted on easing Abbie into her sippy cups. I started her off with one of the big-handled variety a day. After I was convinced that she’d mastered that, I introduced two sippy cups a day, then three, and finally the non-handled sippy cup. Sometime shortly after her first birthday, I realized that I was the neurotic one and didn’t care about her milk delivery apparatus. I put the bottles into storage and she never missed them, although she did remember they were hers when they returned for the twins’ usage.
The boys have been the opposite. They enjoy the feel of pliable latex in their mouths, and they’re willing to scream to get it. I started introducing one sippy cup a day to them. They screamed, they whined, and they took 20 minutes, but they finished them. I took the “they’ll get hungry eventually” tactic.
Ellie was not impressed with my approach, and insisted on trying a different type of sippy cup. Abbie’s sippy cups were made by Gerber, and they feature a hard plastic spout and no handles. I decided on the Gerber brand after comparing all of my options, and settling on the first brand that I found four of at a garage sale. The Gerber brand worked well for Abbie, but Ellie thought the boys might need something with a latex spout to ease them into the transition. I don’t like using latex spouts on sippy cups since I’ve seen Abbie chew them up like that brutal Northwestern defense chewed up the Hawkeyes today, but I went with her idea since the boys have eight teeth combined and can barely bite me hard enough to draw blood. Plus the sippy cups she found were really cheap, so even after Abbie gets a hold of one and chews it to pieces, we won’t be out much money.
The latex spouted sippy cups worked well. The boys took them with minimal fuss. I still gave them the hard spouted sippy cups twice a day because I wanted them to learn to drink from those as well for when their bites are strong enough to rip a hunk from my shoulder. Unfortunately the different spouts created confusion, as the boys went from reluctantly drinking from a hard spouted cup, to refusing to drink from a hard spouted cup. One night they literally would not drink from the hard spouted sippy cup when offered. I swore I would make them try for ten minutes, and after listening to them scream for ten minutes straight, I poured the contents into bottles and enjoyed a quiet remainder of the night. The next morning when the latex spouted sippy cup leaked all over Tory like the half-price sippy cup it is, I swore I would never use them again.
We’ve gone cold turkey with the hard spouted sippy cups, and things have gone better recently. They’re taking sippy cups for all four feedings with varying degrees of acceptance. Sometimes I have to keep encouraging them to drink, but they finish them. The biggest problem I’ve had since then is once Tory bit his lip while trying to chew on the spout, drawing enough blood to appear that he just experienced (and lost) his first drag-out fight with his sister. I gave him the rest of his meal in a bottle that time, but we’re moving on to complete sippy cups now. Hopefully we’ll wait a little while before moving onto to drag-out fights with each other.
posted by Matt at
10:50 PM
1 Comments:
It took us a little while on the transitioning to sippy cup. I went with the latex spouted ones (Nuby -- 99 cents at Wal-Mart) at first because mine, too, refused the hard-spouted ones. Now, they could care less what type of sippy cup they get. Daycare uses a different type than we do, and they drink equally as well out of any of them.
Reading about yours going to more solid foods--I was thinking it seems like FOREVER that mine have just been eating whatever I cook for dinner, but in reality it's only been 5 months or so. Time flies so fast!
Good luck with all the transitioning.
By
Amy, at 6:55 PM
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