Once Lily turned one, the transition was on from bottles to sippy cups and from formula to whole milk. It took a couple of weeks, but she’s successfully transitioned.
The biggest thing to remember is to go slow. We fist started introducing sippy cups instead of bottles before we started transitioning milk.
We’d give Lily one for a snack every now and then so that she’d get use to sippy cups. She also got water or juice in them so, by the time we wanted to transition to milk, the cup wasn’t too big of an issue.
The biggest thing with sippy cups is that every cup is different. Some cups Lily likes, some she’s not so fond of. We have 6 different kinds of sippy cups and pretty much know now which ones she can drink out of easier than others. If we pick the wrong cup, Lily may not drink it at all, or not drink as much as we think she should. She is getting better about taking any cup though.
When transitioning milk, we started off by mixing formula in with the milk. Now the formula has to be liquid. Don’t try to mix powder into milk as that won’t work well.
We started with by mixing in 1/2 a cup for a few days, then 1/2 a bottle and so on. Increasing the amount of milk every few days and decreasing the amount of formula.
At first Lily didn’t like the milk, but it grew on her and after a couple of weeks, she had no issues with just milk. Now she just drinks it, no questions asked.
The transition from bottle to sippy cup and from formula to milk wasn’t that hard. It’s all about taking it slow and realizing that the first few encounters with milk probably won’t be the best, but eventually they learn to like it.