At our 6 month well-baby checkup (well, baby? how ya doin’?) the doctor said that we should start giving the boys water to drink, occasionally. And we should really do it in a sippy cup so that they can start practising for the time when they no longer get to have bottles (or boobs).
In an attempt to please everybody, I bought a bunch of different cups with different sippy bits. Some hard plastic. Some rubbery plastic. Some big. Some small. All of them unspillable.
Sebastian is pretty happy with any of these sippy cups. And happy with any liquid (including the less-than-popular-with-kids plain water). He even likes to do the heavy lifting on his own. He’s not that great at it, but he makes a valiant attempt. He is, for all intents and purposes, “training” to drink from a cup like the doctor ordered.
Enter Nicholas.
When it comes to anything new and different he is, at best, suspicious and, at worst, 100% resistant.
I’ve been giving him a variety of sippy cups like Sebastian but to no avail. He won’t hold them. He won’t drink from them when I hold them. He even balks when I give him sweet, sweet juice in them. Okay, ONE TIME he drank the juice but water? FUGGIDABOUDIT. No way.
So today, I’m sitting on the couch with Nicholas on my lap when I reach over for my big glass of Pellegrino on the coffee table. I watch him as he watches me. He tracks the movement of my glass over his head and to my mouth. Now I’m no baby scientist but, in my experience, that’s baby for “I want some”.
So what the heck! I take the glass and bring it to his lips. Remember now, it’s a) got water, b) it’s cold, c) it’s bubbly and d) it’s got lemon which he’s never tasted. These are all things which I’ve safely assumed, until now, will send him into one of his wrinkly-nosed, head shaking, yucky-face episodes.
But no. He drank. He drank a few times. Admittedly, not big gulps and he spilled a lot but he drank. Go figure!
So, to see whether it was all just a fluke, I tried again with a little cup (see above) and some homemade pear juice before his supper. And guess what? He drank again.
It would seem that perhaps it’s not the content of the cup that had his diapers in a knot but the cup and its infantilizing no-spill top.
Of course this means he won’t be drinking unassisted like his brother any time soon.
Still, I’m so proud of the little guy.
