Too Long, No Post!

It seems like forever since I've posted anything concerning my family. They still exist, and all members are accounted for. Helen is just past ten months, army crawling, and close to real crawling. She refuses a bottle as usual, and if she could talk she would tell you that the sippy cup is straight from h**l.

Little Philip is hilarious these days. He's talking up a storm about random things. He takes everything literally and then pounds any topic you can imagine into the ground by repeatedly asking that infamous three year old question: why? We are 99% potty trained. Praise God. Yes, that was a real praise prayer. And, he is totally in love with his new Geotrax train set Santa brought him. He also really loves his new swing set that NeeNee and Poppy gave him. I would post pictures but, again, we didn't have a camera over Christmas (sniff!). My sister and brother-in-law took pictures but I think I'm going to need to give them a vital organ to get them to send me the pictures. Ellen and Robb, consider this a really big, world wide web hint. Each time Little Philip has success in the #2 department at school, he is allowed to pick out a new piece of Geotrax train. I've been buying used pieces off of eBay from families that have either outgrown their train set or the set has outgrown their small homes. As you can see, we are probably not long from being in the same position. Unless we can get that elevation track set and ramp the tracks off coffee tables, and dressers, and...

We have a women's retreat coming up at our church and I am bound and determined to go. The only problem is Miss Helen who still carries the greatest love and devotion to yours truly for all her necessary liquid nourishment. While I am super proud that I've made it this long still nursing, it is time to start the weaning process. This is not because I don't want to nurse, but rather, because I messed up big time just after I quit work this past June by not continuing to give her a bottle every now and then. So, tonight I was fed up and figured we have two weeks to get Helen to survive without me for the 24 hours I will be gone on the church retreat. When Little Philip refused to take whole milk at twelve months, we found this awesome whole organic strawberry milk at Publix. We started giving him that in a sippy cup and gradually cut it with white whole milk until the strawberry was not needed anymore. We thought we would try that with Helen but Publix doesn't sell that stuff anymore. So what did I do? I melted vanilla strawberry swirl ice cream and put it in a sippy cup. Helen loved it. Melted ice cream soup. She takes after her mama!