neilfein

I'm ramping up to take my 2yo on rides a bit longer than down the road to the park, and one thing we'll need is a way to give her water. I have a bike seat for her on the rear rack, and while the obvious solution is a saddle-mounted water bottle cage, there are issues with her dropping the bottle, whether there's space for it, and so on.

How have other using bike seats people solved this problem? Do you give them a sippy cup of water and hope they don't drop it, or has anyone rigged up anything more elaborate? (I'd love to get a trailer but that's not happening until next year at the earliest.)

Edit: Here's the seat on the bike, and you can see here why a saddle-mounted bottle cage is problematic.

texaspandj

There are a number of tt/triathlon related drink systems with hoses to send back to your toddler such as speedfil. Or maybe a small cameback.
I use a baby trailer for my toddler. When it's really hot I use a ice pack on her back, plenty of water, and spray water on her. Sounds extreme but such is our environment sometimes.

Tim199

I also put mine in a trailer, so they had easy access to water and couldn't throw the cup out. When they were in the jogging stroller we had straps that went around the sippy cup so when they dropped it the cup wasn't lost. Neither solution was perfect because when they were very young they couldn't pull the cup back up by the strap and in the trailer they could still drop the cup by their feet and they couldn't reach it due to the 5 point harness. I like the camelbak or other hydration hose suggestion if your kid can use/tolerate them.

dabigboy

Are you sold on the bike seat idea? My kids are a little past toddler stage (3 and 4 yrs), we just got into biking this year and picked up a couple of trailers from CL. My original thought was a bike seat like what's in your pic, but I'm sold on the trailers...the kids are totally comfortable, better protected, bike balance is not so severely affected, and if one of us takes a spill, we don't have to worry about the kids getting thrown down with the bike. Plus we often haul more stuff besides just the kids (cooler, extra drinks, fishing gear, groceries, restaurant leftovers on the return trip, etc).

Anyways, as it relates to your question, the trailers have little pockets in the sides and the kids keep their sippie-cups there (sometimes they just take an entire water bottle). It's been super hot here in OK, but the kids stay hydrated this way. And since we're able to haul an extra jug of water, we can refill their sippie-cups now and then as required. If your 2 yr old is at risk for tossing a cup or bottle overboard, you can zip closed the plastic or mesh cover on the trailer (also keeps their hands/feet inside the trailer).

Matt

Darth Lefty 

Just stop for breaks and give him a sippy cup then. If he's like mine, he'll slam it.

subsage

My 2.5 yo son is on a rear mounted seat as well. I've tried various solutions but I found the easiest method is to simply pass my bottle to him. He hasn't dropped it yet.

I've thought about a camelbak attached to the rear of his seat, but I'm afraid that it'd be too much weight sloshing around at the very rear of the bike.

GravelMN

You could stop at regular intervals and give her water from a typical water bottle. If you have two cages on your frame, you can have separate bottles for you and your daughter. If the ride is too long, too intense, or the weather too hot/humid for that to be practical, you need to re-evaluate if taking your child with is appropriate.