Now that I have two no-longer-Babies on my hands, we’re introducing all kinds of new skills. For one, we’re in the midst of transitioning from formula and bottles to milk and sippy cups. I wrote about it today on HDYDI, so please feel free to leave any suggestions. We’re down to half-milk, half-formula in their bottles, and I hope to be totally done with formula by the end of the weekend. Hooray! No more buying the giant cans of Enfamil, six-at-a-time! The trick seems to be getting them to recognize their sippy cups (which they otherwise have no trouble with) as a legitimate source of hunger-thirst satisfaction.
The other thing I did was grab some new utensils. It’s a big shift, to go from “no, please don’t grab that spoon and smear pureed sweet potato all over your head” to “here, try this!” But we got the Gerber Fun Grips fork & spoon at Target the other day. And last night, I decided to give it a shot. I speared a piece of meatball, and handed it to Rebecca. Would you know she maneuvered it perfectly into her mouth in under 10 seconds? I guess I didn’t give them enough credit! They got it right away, and Rebecca even attempted to feed herself some yogurt on the spoon (messy, but generally successful). I managed to snap some pictures at breakfast this morning.
we are headed to this transition soon, which scares me to death. thanks for the positive post
You might try giving her an ounce of formula/milk in the sippy cup at the beginning of the meals and then switch to the bottle after they experiment with that. We’re starting to “train” our baby (just about 10 mos) by using a smidge of water in the sippy cup. It is mostly just an opportunity to sprinkle water so far but she normally gets a couple good sips each time.
Nice! Looks like they totally have the hang of the forks.
Great job with the utensils!!
Re: the transition to cups…we found it difficult with Alaina so we just cut her off from bottles cold turkey. Eventually she wanted the milk badly enough she drank from the cups. There was a few days when she got almost no milk (like, two days) and I was worried about my decision but, ultimately, it worked for us. We’re getting ready to try that with the boys as well.
Keep me posted on what’s working for you – I may be looking for a new approach!
Wow, that’s pretty awesome about the utensils! Jack plays with them. He can sometimes feed himself yogurt, but it looks more like he’s trying on a new face mask by the time he’s done! Can Daniel and Rebecca come give him lessons on utensil use??
Regarding sippy cups and milk, we just went to milk and cups cold turkey. Well, we’d been using cups for water since six months, but around the time Jack was 9 or 10 mos old, we started putting formula in them. When he turned a year, we just gave him milk in sippy cups at meals, no more bottles. At first he protested, but after a couple of milkless meals, he got the drift and started drinking from the cups. It also helped when I gave him his favorite cups (the Playtex Sipsters and straw cups).