And Again, I've Made WALL·E Cry

Maybe I'm just running a bit grumpy today, but to me the above photo represents a failing as a mother.


I don't know where, exactly, I got the idea that Bea has to use a sippy cup, but this has been my thinking for a few months now. It just seemed like now that she's eating solids, kiddo should be taking a sippy. It made sense. I didn't question it. But she rejected the first sippy we bought -- that jaunty pink and green number on the left. And then she rejected the second -- that aggressively gender neutral orange and green situation on the right. So I did what I thought the right thing to do was: I just kept buying sippy cups hoping she'd take one of them.

Nine sippies later and the kid has no interest. Sure, this approach seems woefully stupid to me NOW, but at the time, each new sippy seemed to offer an innovation -- a softer spout, easier suck, better handles -- that the previous sippies did not. With each purchase I thought, "Now this is the sippy cup for Bea. I bet I'll have to pry this fancy little sucker out of her pink little paws just to wash it." I never thought to myself, "Hey, what am I gonna put in this sippy cup that Bea needs so badly anyway?" or "Maybe she'll come around to it when she's ready and if not: eh," or, most ridiculously, "maybe I should Google sippy cups and see if I can find some tips on how to introduce it because maybe I'm just not offering it right." I just thought, "one more sippy cup" nine times over (okay, to be fair to me, two of them came as a pair, and the first purchase was undoubtedly justified so I really only had this thought six times).

Well, it turns out Google does have some "wisdom" on the matter (sidebar: some journalist at some point referred, unfacetiously I assume, to the results of Google searches as wisdom and my genuinely wise, properly academic boss still isn't over it. If you so much as utter "Google" within 20 feet of his office door, you can find out why). I haven't made it so far as actually implementing said "wisdom," but in my cursory perusal of the search results I did learn that sippy cups aren't "required" and some babies and toddlers never take to them.

This whole sippy cup problem bothers me because I mean, very earnestly, to not be one of those moms that approaches problem solving with a consumerist impulse. I don't want to buy shit to substitute for attentive care for my child, but that's basically what I did given that I was too unfocused to actually, you know, just figure out if a sippy cup was even NEEDED before buying nine of them. Sorry to keep going on about poor WALL·E, but now I have to picture my embarrassing sippy cup collection in one of his little trash bins.

Aside from my "environmentalism/consumerism--FAIL," this whole sippy surplus brings to light how busy and absent minded I've been since I've been back at work. It will be a relief to be a stay at home mom again (in less than two weeks!) and be able to be more mindful of the dog, my house, my purchases and Baby Bea rather than running around being constantly this close to just giving up and building a fort out of sippy cups and baby food jars to hole up in until everyone just Leaves. Me. Alone. Yes, I am very much looking forward to being sane again. I imagine two weeks in the future of being filled with yoga, intense mother-child bonding, serious hikes with pup and babe, profoundly intellectual and emotionally fulfilling pow wows with other mamas, and a zen-ish devotion to the present. I know this is a fiction -- that's not really what stay-at-home moming is all about -- but I need that fiction right now.

jjk