Food: It Tastes Good!

Ethan is finally starting to eat more, meaning that he's gone from just having snacks every so often to having an actual meal at least once a day. Granted, the amount of food he ends up putting down his gullet isn't exactly the full amount recommended, but at least he's eating. I think it was partially the fact that lately he's been teething like he's in some sort of competition; he seriously has about four or five teeth coming in at once right now. Ouch!

Another factor was, of course, the bottle situation. Yes, that's right, he still is on the bottle. Not that there's anything wrong with that, right? It's strange how everyone is so gung-ho to get kids away from the bottle the minute they hit the one year mark. Why the rush? We're not stressing about it too much, really, but I'm trying to slowly move him into the straw-type sippy cups as a sort of half-way point between bottle and cup. He already drinks his juice and water out of the taller 12 oz. cups; now we just have to get him to take his milk from one.


And guess what? This week, he finally drank milk from his straw cup! Three things were different: First, I used the smaller Nuby straw cup (8 oz.) that my mom found at Wal-Mart-- but which you can buy pretty much anywhere.


It has grips on each side and may be easier for him to handle. Second, I held him on my lap just like I would if I were bottle-feeding him. Third, I heated it briefly before giving it to him, the same way we do with his bottles. For the first time ever, he drank down the whole thing; looks like we're on our way, folks! Oh, and the only bad thing about these cups is that they do leak when they fall over onto their sides. It's a little irritating to walk over and stand the cup upright and find a pool of juice has leaked out, making your floor (or carpet) a wet, sticky mess.