You know how sometimes you try and try and try to teach your kids something?  A word or a particular skill?  And they just aren’t into it.

And then there are the things that they just start doing.  That you had no idea they were capable of.  That you didn’t in any way try to teach them.

File this one under the latter.  Daniel decided yesterday that he was going to have an apple for dinner (and no pasta or anything else, for that matter). What’s funny is that I never gave him an apple. He went and found one in the bags from last weekend’s apple-picking adventure.  He grabbed it, and I saw him carrying it.  “How funny,” I thought.  “Maybe he thinks it’s a ball.”  Um yeah, and then he started eating it.  I didn’t peel it.  I didn’t cut it up.  He just straight-up ate half the damn apple.  That’s what I get for underestimating his mad skillz!

I don’t know if you could tell by my generally pleasant blog-demeanor, but I am actually a horrible mother.  The meanest, actually, in the whole wide world. Not only do I refuse to let them do things like crawl straight off the bed or eat dog food, but I’ve now sunk to a new low.  I have begun intentionally starving Rebecca.  That’s right, I decided my tiny little girl was getting entirely too much food, so I’ve started withholding it.

OK, maybe not so much withholding as creating obstacles to it.

Or, you know, less obstacle than simply not the preferred vessel.

See, here’s the thing.  Rebecca is quite capable of drinking out of a sippy cup. Will, in fact, sit for five minutes at a stretch and drain it of water or apple juice.  She also seems to enjoy milk.  If it’s in a bottle, she will suck it down.  Apparently there is no transitive property of toddler beverages, however, because if you combine the desired milk with the otherwise acceptable sippy cup, this does not equal Rebecca drinking milk from a sippy cup.  In fact, she takes the cup, has one swallow, realizes it’s milk, and turns up her nose and pushes the cup away.  Oh my lord, she is one stubborn girl.

We started doing the whole milk/cup transition several weeks ago.  The switch from formula to milk went just fine.  Over the course of a few days I mixed the old formula with the new milk until the balance shifted to milk, and voila.  No problem.  Then, one morning, instead of handing them a bottle of milk, I handed them cups.  Daniel just kind of shrugged and drank his milk.  Rebecca gave it the big “no thank you.”  We also kept the bedtime bottle, which may have been my downfall.  Rebecca is very good at exploiting weaknesses, and probably realized she could just hold out until the end of the day.  Which she did.

It was frustrating during the day when she wanted milk but flat-out refused it. I tried new cups. I tried straws. She would not be fooled. And then, we went on vacation, so I just kind of threw up my hands and went back to bottles of milk.  But we’re back home now, and just plain done with those bottles.  Not to mention the milk-instead-of-formula is making them extra funky to clean.  And the other day, Rebecca decided to actually take a few knowing swigs of milk from a cup.  “That’s it!,” I declared.  And yesterday I vowed that we were on to 100% sippy cups.  She has had almost no milk in the last 24 hours.

So, this morning, I believe she declared me “meanest mommy on earth.”  First, I tried to give her that blasphemous sippy cup full of organic whole milk.  Grr.  Then, just to add insult to injury, we were out of bananas for breakfast, so I put canteloupe on her tray.  THE HORROR!  But, eventually, the evil mommy will break her spirit, and she will drink her goddamn milk out of her goddamn sippy cup. And maybe even give her canteloupe again tomorrow. Mean, mean, mean.

I guess you don’t have to wonder where she got the stubborn thing from, huh?