The first time that I’ve ever written about a product that I hadn’t actually used before was when I wrote of my shopping spree for Sigg bottles for my girls. You know, the whole “out with the bad and in with the green” craze that occurred in my kitchen a couple of weeks ago? I was doing some reading about the potential dangers in the plastics of a good portion of the plastic food-related items on the market for our kids, cleaning out drawers filled to the brim with plastic cups, utensils, plates. You name it. It went into the plastic recycling bin.

And then, I spent a sizable amount of money on four Sigg bottles. Two for each of the girls. I’d done all of my research and chose the smaller size as a sippy cup alternative for Coco and the middle size for Pea as an alternative to a bottle of water in her lunch sac at camp this summer. And the bottles arrived. And yes, they are gorgeous. And certainly, they are super-awesome for the environment. And while I appreciate beautiful things and definitely want to be gentler on Mother Earth, I also know that my youngest? She needs a fork-lift to raise that bottle to her lips. And Pea? While I like to think she’s a fairly mature preschooler, she’s still a kid. And kids drop stuff. And when a kid drops a Sigg cup with the flip-top cap? The cap snaps off, particularly when the cap is in the “open” position, which it would naturally be in if a child were using the cup for it’s intended purpose. Seriously, I’ve yet to meet a kid, a small kid, who puts a cap back on anything. If you have one of those, consider yourself quite fortunate. Because I do not. And so… I watched in slow motion as her Sigg cup tumbled out of my husband’s huge SUV and onto the pavement. And snap! Off with the cap!

I was devastated. How ridiculous is that? It’s a bottle. A bottle! But it was a pricy one. And I mourned the flip-top cap of that bottle the entire ride home. And then? Upon our arrival, my mother came into the kitchen and asked for a bottle to fill with water. She and her fiance were going on a hike. And I thought aha! She can use one of Pea’s Sigg bottles! Perfect! It’s not a total waste. And I filled it up with water, handed it to her and she left.

After a few minutes, I looked out a window in the front of the house, and what did I see? My mother, decanting the water from the toddler Sigg bottle into a plastic bottle. Uh… This cup is apparently too heavy even for a grown-up?

Well, after much digging around this morning, during Coco’s nap-time, you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to learn that Gerber is actually at the forefront, leading the pack of mass-produced baby product companies, in cleaning up the materials that they use to produce their myriad baby products. Gerber! Gerber equates to so reasonably priced in my household that I can literally buy three 2-packs of their cups for the price of 1 of those darned Sigg bottles that are resting quietly in a drawer in my kitchen, one of them sadly decapitated. I think they will be there for quite some time, mocking me in all of their self-righteous Swiss-engineered continuous-piece-of-aluminum smugness…

I’m sticking with these cups by Gerber, which you can find at your neighborhood grocery store, just as I did this morning. And these by Nuby, which you can find at your local Target. And if you have a younger baby in need of a cup with a handle? Check this one out, also by Nuby. I’ve learned my lesson from the Great Sigg Kid’s Bottle Fiasco of 2008. Look before you leap…