Product Review: sippy cups

Our sippy cups have come to us from gifts, hand-me-downs, and a few picked up in the store. I remember when Caleb was ready for a sippy cup, and I stood in the aisle at Wal-Mart wondering how in the world I was supposed to pick. Silicone mouthpieces that looked similar to a bottle nipple, hard plastic, soft plastic, spill-proof inserts of different kinds, handles, no handles, insulated, not insulated. Good grief!

My first choice was this Gerber soft spout cup. Caleb's first experience with it was to chew on the rubber mouth part with his (then toothless) gums.

squeak squeak, squeak squeak....

Oh, it was irritating! I quickly put that cup back in the cupboard until he got more used to the idea, and opted for a different cup with a hard spout.

Now that we've gotten over a year of sippy cups under our belt, I've noticed a trend. The Gerber cups all have an oval valve that sticks into a big hole inside the spout. Not always, but often, this valve falls out. Caleb drops the cup, throws the cup, sloshes it, whatever, and eventually that valve works its way out, and then the spill-proof cup is no longer spill-proof. Usually I don't find that out until I find the puddle of milk somewhere.

However, the Playtex cups have a different kind of valve. It looks a little more complicated, but washes just as easily in the dishwasher, and rarely ever comes out. Plus, the Playtex lids have a little holder for the valve for when you put it in the dishwasher, so the valve and the lid stay together while they wash.

So, Playtex has been our cup of choice, specifically the insulated ones, because Caleb can't seem to keep track of his cup, and we need all the time we can get to find his milk before it goes bad!

And that's our sippy cup saga! It really came down to the valves for us, more than anything else. Oh, and we avoided straws because straws keep a little bit of liquid in them after every sip, and it gets flicked everywhere. I think pediatricians say straws are better, but you'll have to do your own investigation on that. I gave them up for the sake of keeping my sanity.