Birthdays are awesome. I love them. That’s why I tend to make a big production out of them. Jordan’s been lucky to spend three out of six of her birthdays at Disney World. Each time she’s had a chance to dress up like a princess and celebrate. But until yesterday, she’d never had a traditional birthday party at our house. She had never held a birthday fundraiser before. We’ve never brought our online and in-person world together on one day before. The result? An awesome day… And we raised:
 $2,355! Jordan had a blast at her party. We are both amazed and touched by the outpouring of  support you gave to Camp No Limits. Our fundraiser was an attempt to raise enough money for two more kids to attend camp next summer and you helped us raise enough for SIX. That’s huge. I know a six-year-old who is very excited and exhausted from an awesome day.

Our Winter the Dolphin party was super fun. The kids started the party watching the Dolphin Tale movie. They ate a ton of popcorn and pretzels (and ocean jello) and I even let them drink fruit punch in little cups with a straw. (Allowing kids to drink in my living room is rare!) They didn’t stay in the room through the entire movie. I offered the kids other non-movie watching activities in case they felt the need for distractions.

They watched most of it. But the thrill of playing in Jordan’s room to wear princess dressed, making dolphin necklaces and coloring dolphin pages were too much fun.

The cake was also a huge success. Our favorite cake decorator made one with a really cool depiction of Winter:
I have a thing where I hide the cake from the birthday kid so they don’t see it until we sing happy birthday. I had posted a picture of the cake on Facebook ahead of time and one of the kids at the party saw the picture before Jordan. It was kind of funny to hear one girl announce she knew about the cake before Jordan did.
After gift opening and a bit more playing in Jordan’s room, the party was complete. Jordan had a blast and her eight friends were fabulous.

Even more fabulous? You! Thank you for supporting Camp No Limits and helping Jordan feel incredibly proud of the accomplishment of raising so much money for our favorite non-profit. Camp is so special to us and the amazing number of people who pitched in to let us know it’s special to them too is just incredible.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Jordan is crazy excited and I’m picking up the house like a banshee for Jordan’s first big birthday party with friends. We’re just three days away from her big day and since we’re having it at our house, I’m focused on things being clean so little girls can run around the house without finding strange piles of dog hair or magazines/catalogues/mail. Jordan has been incredibly focused on helping me with the clean up efforts because she wants to decorate!

So far, here’s the plan for the big Dolphin Tale birthday party. Jordan has a small group of girls from our neighborhood, her school and her old preschool attending. I know she’d love even more people, but I had to cap it at 8 friends. I also told Cameron he could invite a friend or two if he’d like.  We’re going to watch the Dolphin Tale movie and if anyone gets bored, I’ll have a table full of Winter the Dolphin-themed coloring pages on a table. During the movie, we’re also going to make dolphin necklaces.

Afterwards we’ll eat Winter the Dolphin birthday cake and let the kids run around and play. I’m also planning to make these little ocean Jello cups.

I don’t know how long the kids will really pay attention to the movie… I know Jordan will want to watch the whole thing, but it’s almost two hours long. We’ll see what happens!

In Jordan’s excitement, she made some Play-doh dolphins to decorate the drawing table and won’t stop begging me to put up streamers around the house. I bought dolphin plates and cups and ocean-related treat bags. I found all of them on the Oriental Trading website. I’ve been keeping track of dolphin-related party ideas on Pinterest… I think I’m going to use the drawing and coloring pages.

If you have any good ideas, send them my way. Also, we’re three days away from the end to Jordan’s big birthday fundraiser! Thanks again to everyone who has been a part of this awesome experience. The Born Just Right world comes together for wonderful reasons.

Jordan’s birthday is 46 days away! I know that sounds silly for us to start counting down so early… But Jordan and I were talking about her birthday and the many things we could do for it. She’s never had a real party at our house since we’re often out of town for the holidays when her birthday sneaks up on us on December 29th. Jordan tells me she wants to have a Winter the Dolphin birthday party. I figure we’ll watch the Dolphin Tale movie with her friends (it comes out on DVD on December 20th), color pictures of dolphins and maybe come up with some kind of craft project that involves dolphin necklaces or something like that. Jordan told me she wants to invite people from all across the country, but since that’s not really possible, we talked about raising money for our favorite non-profit: Camp No Limits.

The camp has been an incredible source of fun and learning about life as a limb different kid. Jordan has met fabulous limb different kids who have become her mentors. Jordan has also had a chance to see how to stay strong and healthy. The camp is awesome support for her brother Cameron because he has a place to talk about what it’s like to be a sibling to a limb different sister. He gets angry about it sometimes and it’s so great he has somewhere he can go where he feels safe and supported by other “all bits” siblings. Camp isn’t cheap. It takes a lot to operate the program. We attend the camp in Missouri while there are camps all over the place: Maine (the original location), Maryland, Idaho, California and Florida (where camp is underway later this week). I know there are efforts to expand the camp into other states as well. Here are posts from our first camp in 2009 and second camp in 2010.

Camp costs $350 per kid in 2011 and I’m guessing the price will go up again in 2012. Since we don’t know how much it will cost next year, Jordan and I are going to try to raise money for two kids at the $350 rate. We’re looking for your support to help raise $700 for the Missouri Camp No Limits through the No Limits Loss Foundation. This will help two more kids attend camp in June 2012. We’re raising money on Crowdrise - it’s considered one of the best non-profit fundraising sites in the country. Feel free to check out our fundraising page! (By the way – when you pay, it mentions an optional operation fee – you can click on it and change it to more or less based on what you can afford. Do not feel pressured to pay the extra few dollars if you don’t want to pay the extra cost.) Even better? It’s getting close to the end of the year where you need to make sure you donate enough money to help make up for your taxes. You’ll get a receipt that you can save when you work on your taxes next year. Not convinced yet? The Crowdrise folks have a bunch of really cool promotions you can participate in if you donate to our cause (or any cause on their website).

Visit http://bit.ly/jordan6thbirthday to contribute!

Thanks for your consideration and Jordan is really excited about this online birthday celebration. She and I plan to put together a video later this week or next week to talk more about Camp No Limits and why it’s so awesome.

In the meantime, enjoy this slideshow of pictures I put together at the end of camp this past summer:

How can one child have so much excitement in one day? Jordan started the day off in soccer. I swear, it’s amazing to watch her listen and pay attention to her teacher’s instructions. She’s really picking up the mechanics of soccer along with all of the other four year olds on the field. It’s so stunning to see the difference between the retention and listening differences between boys and girls. Since Jordan’s brother is older, I’ve already been in the parental position of jealousy towards the parents of girls because they can follow directions earlier. So… even though living with a little girl involves girl screams and constant requests to wear makeup, I’m happy to watch one of my children listen to instruction at the first request.
Jordan still had a party to go to… She and her brother got to play at a gymnastics gym for an hour. There was a lot of running and jumping and rolling around.

Jordan got to celebrate her brother’s birthday party along with four other kids from the neighborhood – four boys who spent the night at our house. She had fun… and some how convinced each boy to push her on her swing. (Except for her brother) They all played, danced, ate pizza and had fun.

Of course Jordan did it her own way!

Jordan is doing well beyond the fun and excitement of life. She’s getting in trouble here or there at school just because she’s strong willed. Her biggest problem at school right now according to Jordan is how one of her friends always wants to play Mommy and she’s always the Mommy and Jordan is always the baby. Tough life she’s leading, eh?

Sure Jordan is a little young to party all the time… but she did get a chance to go to two different birthday parties over the weekend. She had a blast… But in one of the parties I watched a little girl staring at Jordan and clearly wanted to reach out and touch her arm without permission. I guess I just happened to look over at her and she had this look like she was in trouble… Her mom must have caught the interaction because she went over to her daughter and started whispering to her. I felt the need to interrupt and introduce her to Jordan (they had never met before). We talked about how Jordan was born with one hand and she can do everything she wants to do. Jordan just nodded her head. We talked about her helper arm and Jordan actually added in the conversation about her bike hand and how it helps her ride a bike. (I was so thrilled she joined in on the conversation)

So there was just one little thing that made me think that maybe I shouldn’t have interrupted the whispering mom and daughter. Every time I said something to explain what’s going on with Jordan the mom would interrupt me by saying, “That’s what I told her.” I wasn’t sure if it was to tell me how I should leave the conversation… so I just kept talking.

I’ve recently noticed Jordan taking a stand in public areas and asking people not to touch her arm. If it’s a child I know I’ll ask him or her to be sure to ask permission before touching Jordan. When a child asks, Jordan usually says no. And she has every right to say no. I can only imagine how annoying that can be for her.

Jordan had a great birthday! She got to see The Princess and The Frog with her friends… And it really was a sweet movie. She and I danced and grooved throughout the movie. Jordan clearly likes jazz music. How cool is that? I had a gut feeling that she’d groove on the movie, so I ordered her a Princess Tiana birthday cake. And it was a HUGE hit.

Jordan had a great time getting to do close to anything she wanted – she got to watch an Elmo movie about birthdays, she got to watch Nick Jr., she got to eat movie popcorn for lunch. It was a happy time in between traditionally stubborn, “pretending not to hear” four-year-old stuff.

Jordan got to have a surprise birthday party today!! It’s ten days until her birthday and she’s never had a birthday party with her friends… So I broke the news to her and hour before she got to meet her friends at a local theater company’s princess tea party event. My princess had a chance to get a new dress and have a fun and pampered day. Here’s how I introduced the event to her:

First I want to apologize to all of Jordan’s fans. I haven’t been online as much as usual… Mainly because I made a HUGE change in my lifestyle over the last month. I’m working out 6-7 days a week. I joined a really nice gym and I’m even running my first 5K on Saturday. It’s crazy. But it also means I haven’t spent the amount of time I normally spend in front of my computer. When I do hang out on the computer it’s probably to check in on my job, catch up on emails or talk on Twitter (I have a bit of a Twitter habit).

Anyway – Jordan has been so busy keeping up with her busy mom. AND enjoying every bit of her time at school, the gym play area and time at home with our family or hanging with neighborhood friends. Jordan has a little posse at school already. That’s a picture of her with one of them. K is big time buddies with Jordan. It’s so incredible to watch so many new kids have so much fun together. Her room ranges from 2 and a half to 5… so there are challenges between the little and big kids. But on the whole, they are all so darn sweet to each other.

Jordan also had a chance to attend her first birthday party… It was at a local gymnastics gym for her friend S who attended Jordan’s old school. Oh my goodness it was so cool to watch the kids play together again. There was a small group of girls there who have played since they were tiny babies. It was so fun to see them following each other around. And MAN was Jordan bossy to them. Let’s go here! Let’s go over there! The girls listened to her a little. The whole event was just to exciting to follow Jordan’s directions the whole time.

Anyway – since the party Jordan has talked about S a bunch and it looks like the girls are going to hang out together later this month. Jordan has also been able to play a bit with little twin girls who live a couple of houses up from us – they’re four months younger and the three of them together is priceless. I’m so lucky to have great kids and families in our neighborhood.

Along with play time and fun time… Jordan has FULLY adjusted into the personality of a three year old. She’s bossy. She falls into whiny mode and can’t get out of it. We are all exhausted. But it comes with the territory. OH! She’s so bossy she had convinced her new school that she’s four years old.  The women who work at the gym’s play area also told me they weren’t sure if Jordan was three or four just because she’s so talkative. It’s funny.

This past week I decided to purchase Jordan’s latest “Dude. Where’s My Arm” t-shirt. It’s the third one – I keep buying a new one as she grows. But this year I also bought her first Sammy’s Friends t-shirt. She is SO proud to have a shirt with a little-arm kid. The shirt comes from a group I help moderate with three or four other women called Sammy’s Friends (sammysfriends.org). It’s a simple Yahoo Health Group that I hope we can build into something bigger someday. But in the meantime, we’re selling t-shirts to help with little expenses (like postcards and custom URLs). Eventually we hope to go non-profit. But I think we’re all pretty consumed with this whole child-rearing thing right now. Maybe when the kids get bigger.

For now, I look forward to running my first race. It’s cool to have a goal to work towards. In one month I went from never running to being able to run 3.1 miles and more (a 5K is 3.1 miles). I enjoy the challenge and I’m starting to feel really good as I run. I hope it shows my kids that their mom is healthy and they can be healthy too. I don’t have anything to worry about in the healthy, active kid department… But I want to make sure I can prove to them that my health is as important as their health. It’s a new thing for me and it’s cool to see it working.

Heck, I’m so focused that I ran a 5K on Saturday our on the local bike/walk/running trail and then dragged the whole family out for a hiking/picnic trip at a local state park. We’re living it up I tell ya. And because of that I apologize for not keeping up. I’ll try to do better. The best news of all: Jordan is doing well. She’s taking risks, she is showing how able she is and she’s making new friends left and right. (In between an opinionated demand or rebellious comment or two)