Puddles, puddles EVERYWHERE!!!

February 23, 2010 · Posted in Home Matters, Life, Parenting · Comment

When we introduced her to drinking from a cup, we must have gone through all sorts of sippies, including the no-spill ones. While she seemed to like to teethe on the spouts, she never actually liked to drink from them.

But when we introduced her to drinking from a straw, she took to it immediately. The problem was that I found a lot of the “no spill” straw cups tended to gunk up and were very hard to clean. Even when cleaning them immediately and scrubbing them using a Q-tip didn’t get them clean enough for me to trust. Finally, I decided to use a combination of disposable straws with reusable straws (specifically these Take and Toss cups from The First Years) which has worked out well for us except for one tiny thing… they’re not spill proof.

The non-spill proof thing hasn’t been a problem until recently. The past few weeks have been pretty rainy here in the Bay Area but honestly, the puddles outside have nothing on the puddles that The Little Empress likes to create inside. I tend to give her a 2 to 3 oz of milk at a time — such a tiny amount compared to what other kids her age tend to drink! I’d happily give her more milk to drink if she’d take it but she simply won’t. She takes a few sips and as soon as she’s no longer thirsty, she’ll turn the cup upside down and begin to sprinkle it on the floor!!

At first, she only did this every now and then but lately it has been a huge problem. It seems every time we give her something to drink, most of it finds its way to the floor. What is in the cup seems to make little difference; she’ll do this with milk, juice, water. On a few particularly gross incidents, I have caught her dumping the liquid onto our hardwood floors and then attempting to lap it up like a dog! (EUW!!!)

I’m really at a loss for how to stop this. I’ve given her time outs, taken the cup away, etc. Nothing seems to work and she does need to drink. All I can do these days is to keep a stash of paper towels or cloth towels handy to mop up the mess and then take out the Swiffer to try to get rid of the stickiness. sigh I am just hoping that this is a phase she’ll hurry up and grow out of. (At this point, I am just so happy we picked out hard surface floors for our house for this very reason! I can only hope the hardwood can survive TLE’s onslaught of abuse!)