Weaning off breastmilk

Has it come time to start the weaning process for your little one? Have you reached the one year mark? I was so excited on Monday for our little one to turn 1 years old. Its bittersweet... He's no longer a baby but emerging as a curious toddler on the go. With him entering into the toddler years, it's time for me to step out of the breastfeeding. I'm happy with my accomplishment of one full year! But whats NEXT? Now how do I get him to transition from the breast milk that he loves so much to cows milk? And more importantly how to get rid of that bottle and use a sippy cup instead?

First off we introduced a sippy cup at 10 months old. (not necessarily to drink from it, but to start the introduction process, and eventually graduate him to using it full time) It helps that his sister uses one at every meal as well. He takes more of an interest in his own to copy his sister.) Little by little he learns how to get the liquid out of it into his mouth, and then to swallow it rather than spit it out. Actually the learning process in the whole food arena is comical to me. But by one years old they are fully equip to handling water and then milk in there very own sippy cup. Don't get me wrong I still will use the bottle for his mid afternoon milk, but working towards a big boy status is always a good thing. I started the other day slowly introducing cows milk and mixing it into my own breast milk. I started by using 4oz breast milk and 2oz regular milk the first and second day. I wanted to see if my son's stomach did OK with the addition of the cow's milk. Ill be slowly changing him over to all cows milk over then next couple of weeks.

How to transition to cows milk

After the one year mark, pediatricians ok you to start transitioning from breast milk or formula to cows milk. I can only hope that my son will make this transition easy. Thinking back to when I started to integrate this into my daughters schedule, she drank whole milk like a champ. But then again she never fussed about taking a bottle either. I'm a little worried that my son will be different. He refused the bottle for 8 weeks straight a very stressful time because I was returning to work. So with this upcoming transition I'm anxious about this whole thing! Here's how I slowly transitioned my daughter.
I would start with only adding a 1/4 - 1/2 of an ounce at first and slowly increase it after a couple of days. Then go to 1 - 1 1/2 ounces so on a so forth. I'd much rather do it slowly than cold turkey for the babies. Also you have to think of what temperature you've been giving the milk at. Because if your child is like mine, he likes his milk very warm.... so the coldness of the cow milk might shock the system!
I'm interested to learn if any other mothers have tips or ideas for the transition?