I’m famous for not sleeping (I’m up too late at night right now)… But lately I’ve totally fallen off the strict bedtime bandwagon. Jordan used to need to go to sleep by 7pm… Now we’re lucky if she’s down by 9. She has a tendency to delay bed time 30 or 45 minutes. She has to “go to the bathroom” two or three extra times. What stinks about it is when Jordan goes to sleep late, I get to Cameron even later. So he ends up going to between 9:00 and 9:30 – when his bedtime should be 8pm.

Terrible.

Why does this happen? I keep taking the kids out. We go to the gym… We go to events… We go to the park… I just can’t stop myself when it’s bright out, it’s nice out… I am being greedy about their time. My mom says I shouldn’t feel bad unless the kids get sick. So… I guess I’ll keep my fingers crossed and their hands washed!

Summer is here!! Our pool opened (it’s the first time we’ve been members of a pool) and it was great. The water was cold, but the place is really fun. Jordan got to go down a big water slide, play in the water and work on a couple of swimming moves. She isn’t swimming on her own yet, but I did push her towards a friend of mine in the water and we let her go under for a moment to see what would happen. She wasn’t very happy with me.

Anyway – I’m excited to have access to a great watering hole and it was fun to see a few friends who already know that kids. Jordan was not afraid to make new friends while we were there. At one point, she went down to the beach volleyball area and just decided to play with a few girls who were building sand castles. The girls didn’t seem to mind and Jordan seemed very at home. It’s so cool that she’s so comfortable to meet and make new friends. I hope she can feel this confident forever! But since I know reality, I’ll enjoy it while she’s so so so darn okay with her world. I’d love to be as confident as she is!!

This evening Jordan and the rest of the family went to a barbecue where there were bunches of little kids to play with. By the end, Jordan was running around and ordering around every child of every age. She kills me.

I had some extra time this evening… so I picked up Jordan and walked her through campus for a little while. She asked to sit on my shoulders… and she proceeded to wrap her hand around my forehead as tightly as possible. I asked her why and she told me she was protecting my brain from the sun.

My brain? How silly.

We were having enough fun that we decided to pick up Cam from school, pack up an impromptu picnic and walk over to the gardens that are near our house. Walking was even fun – the kids balanced on the curbside along the way… we were silly and happy (even though the allergy season has kicked up a notch). Our food wasn’t that exciting, but the joy of just sitting outside and eating was obvious by the kids. Heck, they were even willing to let me try to pose the two of them together for a sibling picture. We played catch – even Jordan joined in. And to top the night off, we got some ice cream. It was awesome. Simple and happy.

I’ve never won a blog award before… Other than getting onto Alltop Moms… And I thought that was pretty cool (Until I changed my URL and haven’t been able to get the right people to update my feed – Boo). Anyway… Ruth from Wheelie Catholic nominated this blog for a Lemonade Stand Award!

Ruth tells me the award is given to “bloggers whose postings demonstrate a great attitude and gratitude.” The fun part of the award is there is no voting or popularity contest. Bloggers can just pass the award on to the next person.

SO I would like to nominate these blogs for a Lemonade Stand Award:

In Search of Walden (congrats on your new little baby BTW!!)
The Adventures of the iLimb
The Taylor Family
Chaos and Mayhem

I know this sounds cheesy… But Jordan wrapped up her little dance class for the school year and I’m feeling a little nostalgic about it all. It was a small class that met on Thursday mornings since last September. She’s had a chance to learn the basics of dance, improve her balance and overall jumping and bouncing abilities and really get to know some new friends. The girls are close from spending all of that time together dancing and giggling and just being girls.

I had a chance to really get to know a few moms and have a good time talking with them… And now our girls are grown up enough to move out of their little beginner class and dance with the Creative Movement class. That’s where 3-5 year olds dance together before they graduated into Kinder Dance. Craziness.

Anyway. I’m proud of the photo I got of the girls. They are all beautiful and they all felt like posing after their last class. Miss Jordan looks smug and proud to be who she is. Most of my friends say this picture proves she’s trouble… and they’re probably right. Either way, the girls move up with the other kids this summer for a short five week class before they return in the Fall. I think it’s probably worth keeping up with the dance experience as long as Jordan loves it the way she does.

This evening we’re meeting with Jordan’s case manager with the county program that helped provide funding for Jordan’s prosthetic arm and equestrian therapy. We’re looking into possible funding for a summer camp that invites families with kids who have limb differences to have fun for a few days. This year Camp No Limits is holding a camp in the St. Louis area and I’d hate to miss that opportunity. We’ll see if we can go. It’s a pretty steep expense if you take the whole family… so Jordan and I may be the only ones who can afford to go. We may also be able to sign Jordan up for another equestrian training class. Her first one ended this past week as well. She LOVED every bit of it. I’ll let you know how the visit with our manager goes. I’m so grateful to have access to support for our girl so we can give her some of these awesome opportunities.

By the way, that’s a picture of Jordan feeding Thunder, the horse she rides during equestrian therapy. She won the prize for “Best Trotting” in her final class. So now she has a big purple horse ribbon to show off with pride.

After what was supposed to be a non-stop rainy weekend… We had weather that granted us all kinds of time to enjoy the great outdoors. So we got the kids out on their bikes. Jordan got on her tricycle and Cameron on his new bike. Our house isn’t far from a really big parking lot that is pretty empty on the weekend… But we live in a hilly neighborhood and you have to deal with those hills to get to the flat parking lot. Cam wasn’t very interested in riding his bike on the hills… Jordan was willing to sit on her bike, but push that bike with her feet – very limited pedaling.

But when she got to the parking lot – she pedaled and pedaled and pedaled. it was amazing to sill this little girl with a little bike work so hard to get that little bike moving. Her bike doesn’t have a lot of torque – so she has to work hard to keep it moving. I MUST get video of her. It was so fun to watch. Thanks to equestrian therapy, she doesn’t even put up a fuss when it comes to wearing a helmet. I am so proud.

On our way home, she pedaled some of the hills… She’s not so sure about going fast. But she’s getting braver by the day. I can’t wait until we can really do bike riding as a family. She’s probably a year away… and if we can get our prosthetist to really work up a way to use a bike hand, she’ll be really stable at the same time. I can’t wait for that!

I’m so honored to be Jordan and Cameron’s mom. They teach me so much… and I feel really lucky to have this website (and the boy’s website) to share my thoughts and experiences. Recently I’ve had a chance to talk to a few people who met me through this blog… And I can’t explain how wonderful it feels to know that my words and show other moms and dads that a limb difference is not the end of the world. It’s scary at first, but our kids know no other life. They are happy, strong and able… And our culture needs to know that too.

The biggest question I get these days: How did I get over the worries I had about people who stare? To put it simply… I stopped looking for people who stare. I stopped worrying what other people think about my family. I spend more time focusing on my family when we’re out in public. Here are a couple of posts when I talked about staring in 2007: One about subtle staring and one about how our life has changed and how I tend to stare when I see others with limb differences.

By the way – that picture if of Jordan talking about her love of strawberries with me before a little awards ceremony I was attending. Jordan loves being the center of attention… and it was one of those situations where we were in a room full of people Jordan and I never met. And we didn’t care. Jordan loved talking to everyone and eating all of the food at the event. Regular stuff. That’s the greatest thing about our life. Sure there are things that make it different… but overall it’s just like everyone else.