New Skillz

Things have been a little Harper-centric on the blog lately, with the teeth and the birthday... but Michael, of course, is still here alternately charming the pants off everyone and throwing monster toddler tantrums. He's good at being two.

A few weeks ago we went to a parent teacher conference at his "regular" (i.e. not early intervention) preschool. It sounds like he is happy in class, follows directions, doesn't talk much but is starting to speak up a little bit, and doesn't like to get his hands messy. No surprises there!

And then we found out, through a random detour in the conversation, that his teacher doesn't allow sippy cups in their room. So for two months I'd been sending him a sippy cup and he'd been drinking from the cup without the lid. Matt and I were all, "Pardon me?"

Who knew! But behold, the boy can drink lidless:



Previously we'd only attempted that with little paper cups of water. But lo, he can handle juice and milk and everything!

The sippy cup to regular cup transition is one I'm NOT good at encouraging. I understand that it is important for oral muscle development for children to learn to drink from an open cup, but open cups are so prone to spilling... We had experimented with different types of lidded cups for Michael, knowing that he needed to work those muscles, but hadn't given the lid up all together. Now we save the sippy cups for when he's not at the table or for meals when he's especially tired or cranky and not likely to have the concentration it still takes to drink without a lid.

So, um, chalk one up for preschool.