I knew this was going to happen… But I figured, why not. Jordan, Cameron and I were out having fun at a nearby indoor play area when the two kids talked me into going to an ice cream place. I must have been feeling extra kind because not only did I order the kids ice cream, I let Jordan get an ice cream cone. Oh wow. It was messy.

There’s nothing like waking up the first morning from being out of town to find Miss Jordan climbing up on the bed to give you a HUGE hug and saying, “I misted you Mommy! I misted you SO much!”

Yeah. That’s stinking cute. Jordan’s language is skyrocketing and many of her words that are in the past tense get and extra -ed or -ted added to them. I love it.

I came home from almost a week out of town to go to a friend’s wedding and speak at a national broadcast journalist conference. I’ve really been out of town a lot. So what did we do?

Went out of town again.

We’re staying in a hotel while I speak at a regional conference for journalists. I asked if I could bring the whole family because I really couldn’t deal with another weekend away from the family. And since we’re going to be out of town, we’re going to have a chance to meet up with a couple of families with sweet baby girls with limb differences. I can’t tell you how excited I am to meet them! Jordan and Cameron seem much more excited about going to the zoo – I’m much more excited about having a chance to meet more families face-to-face. It’s therapeutic. It’s fun. It’s incredible to be able to show time and time again that a limb difference doesn’t slow any of our kids down.

Oh – speaking of not slowing down. That picture is of Jordan this past Thursday when I took her and her brother over to our favorite ice cream place. One of her friends from school was there and Jordan got super goofy. This is her posing with the dog statue outside of the ice cream place. She loves the dog. She loves the ice cream and you can see she’s all over both in the picture. She kills me.

Jordan’s physical therapist worked with her today… And we’ve both come to the conclusion that we just can’t get much therapy done when I’m around. I’m the comfort zone. I’m not supposed to force her to do things she doesn’t want to do. So she’s going to look into getting permission from my case manager to work with Jordan at school. She’d like to up the time with her and really get focused on walking. She really thinks Jordan is weeks away from the skill.

After today, I really think it’s possible.

She was pulling up onto just about anything: the fridge, the stove, the door, any type of chair, my leg, statues at the local garden where we spent hours playing today.

Jordan’s therapist also put new inserts into her shoes… Hopefully that is helping as well. The inserts have really helped her right foot. Without a shoe on, she holds that foot flat on the ground. It’s fantastic.

The hardest part in watching Jordan finally gain better skills in cruising along furniture and pulling up to stand at things is watching when she fails. Without that second hand, her leverage is tenuous at best… And that little arm can be very slippery. I watched her crash to the floor a lot today. And I can’t gasp in horror or cry out, or else she will lose it and give up trying. But I just want to pick her up each time and do it for her. But she has to learn. It’s really hard. But it thrills me to watch her have this problem. She really wants to stand up more. When I put her down, she holds her body into a standing position for a little time, or she chooses to stand at my legs. All of these little developments are a really big deal.

I took Jordan to the nearby fountain and garden this afternoon with her brother — she stood along all kinds of things — even tried to climb into the planter that is around the fountain. She almost did it, then sat down and clapped for herself. Plain cute.

The one thing I regret was not taking a camera along for the fun. I gave her a grocery-store boxed ice cream cone and it turned into a very big mess. I have yet to clean up the sticky stroller.