Bottomless Pit

I was sitting in church a few Sundays ago, and blithely handed Lily her bottle. She swooned, and gulped away. It dawned on me, all of the sudden, that Lily isn't a baby anymore. She's almost a year and a half.

I suddenly felt shy about feeding my "baby" a bottle, and thought to myself, "Gee, I really ought to switch to sipper cups," like it would be as easy as me switching deodorant or toothpaste.

Flash back a few months ago (9 months ago to be exact), to when I decided that my baby should drink from a bottle and I should stop nursing.

Lily looked at me, looked at the bottle, looked at me, looked at the bottle, shouted something that resembled German profanity, and screamed for 3 days, until her tiny, emaciated body demanded she eat something, for heaven's sake.

Now, zoom forward to the present.

She is now twice her former size, has stronger vocal chords, and can throw, hit, scratch, and run away, and usually does in that order.

I guess I figured my strong-willed little woman would just accept that what I was doing was for her own good, and just go along with it.

Yeah.

I don't know how I got so dumb.

And let me tell you, after 3-4 days of her alternately throwing the sipper cups at me/the ground/anything else and following me around the house with her agitated "aaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuugggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh," I began to wonder why I took her bottle away in the first place, and by golly, she LOOKS 9 months old still, so why SHOULDN'T she have a bottle, and for pity's sake, I would like some peace and quiet and if that means I have to hide in the bathroom and cry/scream into a towel then so be it.

Hmmm...that didn't make much sense.

Oh well, it is a very true impression of what is going on in my brain.

BUT...

I didn't give up.

And, hooray, today she drank from a sippy cup.

Well...she drank water from a sippy cup. But that's still something.

She seems to think that milk shouldn't come from anything except a squishy unmentionable, and, sorry, the Tinkerbell sipper cup just isn't good enough.

I think I'm going to have problems when she is a teenager.