Bagel Hits BOTM

Bagel has discovered the world of Beverages Other Than Milk (BOTM).

It is always a poignant moment when the nursing mother discovers that her child wants to explore other beverage options. For many months she's taken pride in nourishing this tiny person solely from her own body. She makes many sacrifices, rearranges her schedule, and misses lots of meetings so that the baby's needs can be taken care of. She develops a special relationship with her little Nursin' Person. And all of a sudden her little Nursin' Person is telling her he wants to see other people.

I try really hard not to take it personally. After all, he has to wean sometime before his senior prom. And it's not like he will be totally weaned. He still starts and ends every day with a long, comforting drink of fresh warm milk. And it's not like this is his first experience with the bottle. But starting to give your baby a regular non-milk feeding has a sort of end-of-an-era feel to it, like life has somehow moved on too quickly.

Aside from that, we now face the daunting task of finding BOTM that our little gourmet Bagel will deign to drink. We've already tried juice; he doesn't like it. He will drink the dark corn syrup-water that was prescribed for him by the doctor. The dark corn syrup tastes a lot like molasses, so I've thought about trying molasses-water because molasses has calcium and other stuff in it. We haven't yet tried Kool-Aid or Tang, but I hesitate to give him more sugar-waters to drink. (Also, after you've dyed yarn with Kool-Aid, you think twice before serving Kool-Aid to your family.) We've speculated that he might actually drink dealcoholized wine, if it's a good year and it's served at the correct temperature. I'm at a loss to think of other BOTM that he might try. Besides juice, milk, sugar-waters and dealcoholized wine, what else is there?