We're in the money!

I have always been of the opinion that once kids (babies) have mastered the use of a sippy cup, they don't need a bottle anymore. The children I've nannied for, as well as Savannah, have all moved on from bottles to only cups just as they turned a year old. Savannah gave up her bottles easily. Sawyer however may be a different story. This kid is A. ttached. to his bottle.

He has definitely been a sucker since day one. Actually day two. The nurse brought him back from his circumcision with one of those green see-thru Soothie pacifiers and he's been in love ever since. And as much as he liked to suck on the pacifier, we all know his first love is food. So put the food and the sucking together, and my child is in heaven.

We've recently been cutting down the bottles and putting his formula in a cup more often in preparation for the break-up. When he takes a sip and finds it's formula in the cup, rather than his usual water, he looks at me like I'm crazy and simply hands the cup back to me. Seriously. And I don't blame him... he had to have the hypo-allergenic formula with no milk or soy and it tastes especially gross. (I'm afraid how much more he would love the bottle- not to mention how much bigger he would be- if he had regular sweet tasting formula)
All that to say, I don't see him giving his bottle up without quite a bit of complaining. And it'll be even a little more challenging because not only will Porter and Donnie, the other two bubbies Sawyer sees regularly, still have bottles for a few more months (or longer... you never know) they both have the exact same kind of bottles as us, which'll make Sawyer even more mad about all this! I'm going to have to remove my child from the room everytime one of their bottles appears, or he'll be mugging them for their milk.


Anyway, the good news is WE'RE DONE WITH FORMULA!!!
I have been counting down the days, let me tell ya. Sawyer can't do cow's milk or soy milk, so we've been giving him some rice milk here and there the past couple of weeks. We tossed our last empty formula container last night Hallelujah! For those of you who haven't had babies, or who blissfully breastfed until toddlerhood, let me spell this celebration out for you. To say formula is expensive is an understatement. And when a certain child has milk protein allergies and cannot have regular formula or soy formula, he has to be fed a hypo-allergenic formula which is roughly twice the cost of the norm.

Here are our calculations...
A can of Sawyer's formula cost us between 24 and 26 dollars a can, which usually lasted about a week. Broken down, it was exactly 22 cents per ounce once it was mixed in the bottles. Sawyer was recently drinking $3.50- $4.75 worth every day. (And keep in mind this is a child who eats three meals a day... this bottle consumption would be way down from six months ago)
A 32oz carton of rice milk costs $1.88 at Walmart. Today, for example, he drank $ .60 worth.
I believe that adds up to a savings of more than $20 per week.
Amazing.
Hooray for the one year mark!!!