A baby bottle is comprised of three distinct pieces. There is the bottle, of course, which is the main body of the thing, generally made of glass or plastic, and its job is to hold the milk (or juice, or similar beverage). Then you have the screwy-ony-twisty-holdy part, or the “ring,” which is used to attach the top and bottom sections of the bottle together and to make sure that the liquid does not leak out. Finally, you have the nipple, which is the rubbery part on top that you suck on to get the drink out of the bottle.
As far as I know, every time we have purchased a bottle it has included all three parts, so there should be no reason to have more (or less) or any one part, however this does seem to be the case. Yesterday, after all of dishes were done, I decided to give Edward a bottle so that he would take a nap. In the bin that holds all of his bottle paraphernalia sat several bottles, many (many!) rings, and zero nipples. I looked in the dishwasher, where the remainder of the clean dishes were located, and it did contain three clean nipples. That was nice at the moment, but then I got confused. How could there be a dozen bottles, almost 20 rings, and 3 nipples?!
I decided to go on a nipple hunt. I looked under the crib. I looked all around the nursery. I looked in the living room and the kitchen. I found six old bottles that Edward had hidden throughout the house. But each bottle was complete. 6 more nipples, 6 more bottles, six more rings. So even though I now had plenty of nipples, I was still overflowing with extra bottles and rings.
Are nipples like socks? Do you put them in the washer and half of them get lost? I don’t understand how I can put an even number of socks into the wash and get back about 2/3 of what I put in, and hardly any matches, and I don’t understand how I can wash several complete bottles and somehow lose half of the nipples. Does anyone else have this problem?
Or maybe it’s just that the other bottle parts are breeding in the dishwasher….