RE: At what point do you banish the Sippy cup?
I will say that if I had to do it all over again, I would never have used a sippy cup and would have gone straight to the straw. My DD has oral motor delay, and one of the things the early intervention folks had us do was move from sippies to straws.
We use those Playtex straw sippies. They work very well and there is very little mess.
Its probably not an issue for your DD, but with mine, I'm sure that prolonged sippy use would have been detrimental.
HTH,
Beth, mom to older DD (8/01) and younger DD (10/06) and always missing Leah (4/22 - 5/1/05)