We've recently gone off the bottle; we tried swapping out the kid's lunchtime bottle of milk for a lunchtime sippy cup of milk at about 12 months. Didn't go so well. The kid--who's been drinking water from cups for ages, wouldn't touch the milk at all; we gave up after a week of flatout rejection, only to find that we couldn't go back: the kid now refused her bottle, too. For another week, we panicked, making sure we weren't starving/dehydrating her with only two bottles/day.
But we kept at it, throwing a variety of sippy cups at the kid, no pressure, and then a couple of months ago we introduced milk at lunch. This time, it worked, and she started drinking milk out of a couple of her cups. Then we switched the morning bottle to a cup, and a couple of weeks later, we switched the bedtime bottle. She's never looked back.
The kid has been happiest with the simplest, cheapest cups around, Take & Toss cups with sippy cup lids from The First Years. They're small--4 or 5 oz.--and easy for her to hold and own, but that meant we had to refill them to get 8-9 oz into her. So my wife came home with these 10 oz. cups, which have straw lids, but which also fit the sippy lids. They're great, and we use them all day every day. (One big cup was slightly off, though; the lid came off too easily, so I took it out of circulation to avoid surprises.)
I guess you could call these things disposable, but you'd be a dope to throw them away; they last for a long time, clean easily, go anywhere...I prefer to think of them as losable, not disposable. You're not gonna stress over it if one goes missing at the park.
The First Years Take & Toss 10 oz. Straw Sippers are $3.99 for 4 at Amazon (and everywhere else, too)
you might want to know about these to prevent future spills...
our daughter also loves the toddler forks and spoons... totally losable. =)
Our daughter was very resistant to sippy cups. One day, at a playgroup, they had these exact (well, okay, not exact as in the ones in the picturek, but exact as in the same brand) sippy cups and she loved drinking out of them.
We went out and got some that weekend.
I loved these cups too, until she learned that they're very easy to spill from. Just turn cup upside down and shake.
So, it was back to the valve cups and the Luv-n-Care "Flip-it" leak proof straw bottles. The insulated cups are great for trips to the park or long drives.
Unfortunately, the straw assembly is tough to clean (maybe easier to sanitize with a dishwasher?). Anyway, we found replacement straws (a 3-part assembly) at BabyBungalow.com
Ditto on our kid liking the sippy version, the only problem we have encountered is that the vent hole is too tiny to allow the kid to get much out of the cup. It was like going back to an infant #1 nipple. So we took a push pin and punched a few extra holes in each lid and things work fine and they don't seem to leak.
And of course, since they're cheap and we don't care if we lose them or not, we haven't lost any in 3 1/2 years. They've lasted long enough for us to use them with our younger kids now.
Ha! Can't lose 'em and now we can't even use them until she loses the "shake out the milk" habit. I had just stocked up on them too. Found a stash at Kmart with the tabs on the lids.
That'll teach me to shop at Kmart, no?
It took my daughter a few months after she was weaned from the breast to drink any kind of milk. We kind of panicked also in the beginning but realized that she ate so much yogurt at that time that we didn't have to worry about her calcium intake.
Now, more than a year later, milk is one of her most favorite things to drink (right after a glass of water).
Well, we had her drinking from these things and, before the shake 'n spill thrill forced us to switch cups, cow's milk consumption was goin' good.
Daycare uses some cup that she doesn't like much, so, all-in-all, lot less cow's milk being consumed these days. Although they apparently douse her in grape juice, judging by her clothes at the end of the day.
Yogurt is currently a self-feeding project that ends with the ceremonial "dumping of half the tub".
So, um, how much calcium does she need?
If I don't give my daughter calcium, she'll be all cool and bendy, like Gumby, right?
Those 'disposible' ones were the only kind my son would take at first as well. Once he was totally off the bottle, and good with those cups, we added the playtex no-spill ones to the rotation. He took to them just fine after that, and were able to toss the disposible ones (I don't care what they say, they leak and spill!).
My kid just rips the top off these cups and bathes in his beverage.
[when the kid had a friend over for a playdate once, she'd bite the nozzle so hard, the whole lid'd come off and bathe her, too. results, apparently, may vary. -ed.]