18 month olds and milk...

 Okay, stupid question... but how much milk should an 18 month old be drinking? I have her on three 8oz sippy cups of milk a day...Is this too much? Obviously, we're going through a TON of milk, but if she's supossed to have it, then I don't care. Just didn't know how much she should be drinking right now? She gets one in the morning, one after lunch in the afternoon, and another before teethbrushing and bedtime. She also gets another bottle of juice or something between her morning and afternoon milk bottle, and sometimes another between her afternoon and night bottle.

So something like:
6am: Milk
8am: Breakfast
10-11am: Another bottle
11am: Naptime until 1pm
2pm: Milk
4-5pm: Sometimes another botte of something
5:30-6pm: Supper
6:30pm: Milk
7pm: Bedtime

I really want to start giving her more water too...she'll drink it out of my water bottles...actually she fights with me unless I give her my water bottle and then she thinks she can drink it by herself and it ends up all over her cloths and my floor... but when it comes to a sippy she doesn't care for it. So I'm going to start offering her water all day to see if she'll catch onto it. I like to keep her hydrated and she's usually really wanted the bottles by the time she usually gets them. The 4-5pm extra bottle is always her choice, if she asks for it I give it to her. 

I also want to teach her out to drink out of a regular CUP....lol. She has a problem with keeping her drinks right side up though. So if I give her something with a hole opening (like a juicie thingy) she always gets distracted and will let it lean over or she'll tip it upside down playing with it or something. I've been working with telling her "keep it up" or to set it down on a table when she's done... but when it comes to cups and stuff, she spills it too fast into her mouth and then it just goes running out all over her. She pretty much dumps it on her head. I'm thinking of putting her in the sink or bathtub with a cup and trying a few times every day to see if she catches it...

 Correction...19 months old. Gosh where does the time fly?

 I am not sure how much they"should" be drinking!

Olivia is 18 months and she mostly only has one 9oz bottle of warm milk before bedtime!  Occasionally like today she will ask for one in the morning so I give it to her but she rarely drinks all of it.

This is how her day is:

7:30 - 8am breakfast

10 - snack

12 lunch

1230 - 230 sleep

3 snack

530 Dinner

7 milk

730 bed

HTH x

She can probably go  down to 2 cups of milk a day.  If she wont drink water out of a sippy cup you can try putting 1/3 juice (100% fruit juice) to 2/3s water.  That way it will have a little flavor without giving her too much extra sugar.

Personally, I don't let me kids use regular cups until about age three.  Then they must be at the table with it.  I take sippy cups away completely at 4.  My DD1 can use a regular cup well.  She'll be four in Febuary.  I still keep her at the table and give her a sippy cup if she is going somewhere.

I think that she's probably too young to move to a cup.  Unless you just want to practice at the table with small amounts of water. 

 I don't plan on taking her sippys away completely, but I think it'd be good for her to learn just how to do it, and how to drink slower because of it, as well as trying to keep her sippy cups from spilling...I use the spill proof notch things in them right now and I don't mind using them, but still good for her to know, ya know? She loves taking drinks of anything we have out of cups, and I don't mind that she does- she always wants to SO bad, but she doesn't quite understand how and she trys drinking it too fast and tipping the cup up all the way immediately. I wouldn't trust her walking around the house holding a cup. Tooo much carpet in this house (which I hate...I'd like to replace it with tile everywhere but bedrooms...and maybe living room) but yeah. I just want her to know how to do it. Not neccessarily use it as her main way of drinking.

 I taught my boys to drink out of a regular cup by sitting them at the table and giving them a cup with only a little bit of water in it (like 1 drink worth)  After they drank that, I put another drink in there.  Eventually I started putting more in the cup at a time... but I did it very slowly.