Sippy and straw cups

Little one is almost one, and he is almost done with his bottles. We have tried lots of different types of cups with him, but I don't love any of them. I was in search of a totally non-spill cup and would teach him to lift up to drink, like you would a regular cup. He is pretty much an expert in straws, so I didn't really want that.

Cups we have tried:

MoMma- I hate this cup/bottle. The milk gets trapped in the bottle part because of the weird shape. It transitions from nipple to sippy to straw. None of them work great, best was the sippy part, but it spilled a lot.

Piyo piyo- again, meh. Now that he can use a straw he can't even get his mouth on this one because the duck lid is in the way. It has a piece that makes it a regular cup, but he isn't ready for that. 

Sugarbooger - I like these. They aren't non spill, but the mouth part is hard and keeps water from flowing fast. Stays together well and very cute.

Munchkin- we only have the straw cup and it's pretty good. The straw only hits the far edge of the cup so you can drink all the water without turning the cup a weird way.

Target- target sells all sorts of cute cups around the holidays that have built in straws. They have this x cut straw that you cannot get liquid out of unless you have a Hoover attached to your face. I cut the top of the straw off and it works great.

Tommee tippee- the best of what we own.  We have the soft transitioner sippy, and today I bought a hard sippy and a cup like sippy for water. Heres the soft one.

The soft sippy claims to be non spill, but my son is the spawn of MacGyver, and it spills everywhere when he sticks his finger in the sippy part. The new ones are cute and totally non-spill. I love them!

 

What are your favorite sippys?

3 month growth spurt

The closet clean out was a success.  In the midst of our baby's 3 month growth spurt (what a nightmare), we managed to get 4 huge trash bags full of clothes, shoes, and bedding off to Goodwill.  It was nice to get rid of so much.  We both felt as though we could have donated a lot more, but it was hard to get rid of EVERYTHING!

The clean out inspired me to also clean out the medicine cabinet/medicine basket of all expired meds and vitamins.  We had things we were saving that expired over 5 years ago.  I hope this clean out continues onto other parts of the house soon. 

As I mentioned, we are in the midst of the 3 month growth spurt or possible teething madness.  Griffin has been harder and harder to please.  He has been screaming through the evening walk, screaming while in his car seat, and in general a very fussy baby.  This is a huge change from the easy, calm, happy baby we used to have.  

For instance, typically he eats every 3-4 hours.  Yesterday we were lucky to make it 2 1/2 hours.  He was crying so much.  Here he is eating in the car while Jeremy checks out a new video game shop!

You can see he had been crying for a long time.  Poor boy. On the bright side, he is getting interested in holding his own bottle so we started him on the Piyo Piyo drink set that I mentioned here. 

He is also napping shorter, but seems more tired.  All we will be able to do is stick it out.  Should be over soon!  He also might be teething, but its hard to know.  More on teething tomorrow...

Here is a link on some info on the 3 month growth spurt.

3 month growth spurt

Dr. Brown's Bottles and Using Formula

When we found out we were having a baby there were many things we knew we would need to buy, bottles being one of them.  I did a little bit of research, and the consensus was that Dr. Brown's was one of the best bottles you could buy.

I knew I wouldn't need the bottles for at least 6 months.  I was going to breastfeed, and I was going to be at home so I would have no need for bottles.  Boy was I wrong.  Turns out breastfeeding didn't work out.  That is a whole other story I will tell another day, but long story short, it didn't work the way I planned.  Good thing I had asked for bottles on my baby shower wishlist!

We were gifted two newborn feeding packs which came with 5 bottles, all the parts, and the little pipe cleaners you need to clean the bottles.  We started using formula when baby was 4 or 5 days old.  Here comes mistake number one :  we were mixing formula with room temp. bottled water.  We learned after a couple weeks and a visit to the lactation consultant that you are supposed to boil the water, wait for it to cool a little bit, THEN mix the formula.  What?  Ugh.. what a pain.  

Ok, so bye bye bottled water.  We then started mixing batches of formula in the larger bottles, then pouring it and warming it as needed.  Recently I started pre-pouring the formula and making the bottles I would need for the day (yes, it took me two months to come up with this idea).  This is where the problems started.

Lots of complaints online about Dr. Brown's bottles were that they leak.  This never happened to us until we started pre-making the bottles.  After a few times of this happening we realized that when you pre-make bottles and put a lid on them, then put them in the fridge, it creates a problem when you warm up the bottles.  The heat causes liquid to come up the little straw piece and sit by the opening in the bottle so when you tilt it over, it spills out.  Also most of the formula was leaking out into the heating cup we had.  I would start with 3 oz, and after the bottle sat in hot water, there would only be 1 oz. in the bottle.  Easy solution.  We started taking the caps off and unscrewing and rescrewing the tops back on.  Problem solved and we haven't had a leak since.

Overall, we like Dr. Brown's bottles.  They definitely don't cause the baby to have gas.  They don't leak if you use them correctly.  There is one large downside to these bottles - all the pieces.

First, you have the bottle itself, then the little tan piece that you see here that connects to the straw piece.  Then you have the nipple and the part that you screw the nipple on with.  Then you've got a lid.  So for one bottle you have to clean 6 parts with this tiny little pipe cleaner.  These pieces take over my kitchen.  

I always wondered what it would be like to use other bottles, but for now we have these.  Griffin is getting big enough now that we are moving up to the level 2 nipples, and will soon start with a couple different training cup series and we won't really be worried about washing as many bottles each day.    We are going to try the piyo piyo training cup set.

And also the mOmma trainer, which I just ordered today cause I got half off!  This only also converts to sippy with handles, then straw with one handle.

As we use these, I'll let you know how it goes.  

Here is Griff trying to hold his bottle.