Cup Drama

One of these days, the ongoing drama over which cup Sam wants me to put his milk in is going to send me over the edge. I dread the moments when he asks for milk these days. Invariably, whichever cup I opt to put his milk in is the wrong cup and when he sees which one I've brought him, Sam collapses on the floor shrieking "not that cup!". I can't find any rhyme or reason as to figuring out which cup is the "right" cup at any given time, since his cup preference constantly changes. One hour, it's the green sippy cup with handles. The next hour, he'll start howling at the sight of that same cup, saying "It's dirty, not that one!", even if I show him that I've washed it thoroughly. It gets particularly bad at bedtime when he's already tired. We've had nights where we have gone through 4-5 cup rejections, reaching the point where Chris and I join in on the yelling, stomping around and saying "fine, you don't get milk then!". The cup situation, I am sorry to say, has not resulted in some of our finer parenting moments.

I'm honestly not sure there's a solution. We've tried patience, we've tried offering a choice, we've tried being firm about not getting another cup dirty. Nothing works, particularly if he's tired. The best we can hope for is that he'll come into the kitchen and pick out a cup from the shelf himself, but even that can be fraught with drama, as he'll spend long minutes rejecting every cup in the house before collapsing on the kitchen floor in frustration.

Chris and I definitely have a little fussbudget on our hands. This isn't all to say that Sam is a little terror--he's really the opposite, in that he's generally easy-going, sweet-natured, and well-behaved. The cup drama is really getting old though! I'm sure there's some degree of control involved, but it is certainly exhausting at times.