Long delay!

After a relatively long business trip, I'm home again with the kids. I hate being away for so long, but I did a lot of good stuff for my students and I got to see a ton of cool technology and ideas. (I was at the RTNDA/NAB conference in Las Vegas - such a silly town)

Jordan got to spend time with her grandparents while her dad and I worked and had fun. We stayed at the super trendy Palms hotel, ate amazing food and even got to see Cirque du Soleil's Love show as a way to celebrate our tenth anniversary. Those who know us are probably wondering if what happened in Vegas came home with us like Jordan -- I have high hopes that we'll remain a two kid family.

The kids and the grandparents left us a sweet note on the door when we got in. I think they missed us.

I'm trying to get Jordan back into the swing of life with Mommy. She's taken to screaming for what she wants. Unfortunately for her, I don't do things for screams so she's going to have to find her talking voice to get action from her mommy. It might take some time to work that out.

This morning we walked Cameron to school in the rain. I decided to put Jordan in the hiking backpack so we could use an umbrella together. At some point Jordan dropped her lamby on the sidewalk. So we hopped in the car and drove around to look for that precious pink thing. The entire drive Jordan was yelling: "Lamby! Lamby!" as if we were looking for a missing dog. It was so funny. Anyway, the wet little lump of pink was discovered on the sidewalk near the school. All is well -- and a cleaner, drier version is waiting for her when I take her to school for the day. It's bring a stuffed animal to school today - so she'll get to bring her new love: A little white Webkin she has lovingly named "Puppy." And no - we haven't gone online to plan with her cyber Webkin. We aren't like that yet in this household.

By the way - that's a picture of Jordan playing with a bubble maker I bought recently. She loves it and I had to play outside with the kids before work yesterday.

Experimenting with the girl

So we have a push toy that I bought back in the day when Cam was little. It totally freaked out the boy... He never trusted toys that rolled. His opinion changed about a year ago. So I plopped Jordan on this push toy thing to see what would happen. She thought it was SO cool. And amazingly, she took a couple of steps before falling down. She held onto it pretty tight and tried so hard... And she kept wanting to pull up and try again. The funniest thing is she fell down pretty hard a number of times and that tough cookie didn't mind at all. That is a major development... At least to me. A lot of our milestones have been delayed because Jordan was too concerned about falling down.

It's probably because when she's mad, she's been flinging herself onto the floor in protest. I'm guessing falling onto the floor isn't as big a deal when you choose to do that yourself.

Breaking news

When Randy and I weren't looking, Jordan pulled up into standing all by herself onto a big block toy. This is a picture of the toy. I bought it for Cam when he was little... And he never really took a serious liking to it. But Jordan digs it... And here's a funny thing: Cameron really likes it a lot now that he's 4 and a half. Anyway. Jordan pulled up so she could look inside the square compartment. Big freaking deal. Then Randy thinks Jordan tried to take a step to me. But I think he was seeing things.

Either way. The girl is rapidly figuring things out. I'm thrilled and I'm really happy I've found a toy that she can use to pull up and keep practicing the skill.