I didn't know she could do that!

A couple weeks ago my mom was over and all three of us were playing in Jordan's room while I was clearing out her dresser of too small clothes (which made me very sad, knowing she will never wear those adorable clothes ever again).  My mom happened to notice a pacifier under her crib clear on the other side by the wall.  It's been there for months so I made the comment "It's okay, she doesn't know how to get under there yet."  Boy was I wrong!  A little while later we look over and see some little feet peeking out from under her crib.  I guess she DOES know how to crawl underneath her crib!  Here is the "play-by-play" action!

I didn't have the camera in the room with me the first time so after she came out with it I tossed it back under the crib and ran quick as I could to get the camera.  I barely made it back in time before she was turning around to come back out with her "prize."  I let her play with it just for a few minutes so all that hard work wasn't for nothing (especially since the second time was entirely because of me).  It was really funny because she walked over to her bedroom door, opened it and laid the pacifier on the ground right outside of her room then shut the door...then she'd open the door again pick it up, lay it back down, shut the door again...and repeat!  She actually didn't care when I took it away from her; I think it's because Nana was there.

Naturally healthy

I've been trying to make some healthy decisions lately for my family.  I've really become more in tune to these things since I've had Jordan.  Now we could still definitely eat a lot healthier than we do but these healthy changes I've been making are not all in the food we consume but the products we are using instead.  Now I do have to add that since I've gotten my new Vitamix blender we have been getting in a lot more fruits and dairy lately with our daily (sometimes multiple times a day) smoothie.  I've been quite surprised how these natural alternatives to everyday products we use are actually quite frugal; now some of these might cost about the same as the store bought product but most of them are actually cheaper.  I've been making my own face wash, deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo & conditioner, and yogurt & cream cheese.  If you're curious and would like to read about my experience on each thing than keep reading, otherwise this post might be very boring for you and I will not be offended if you skip over this one.

I've been using the face wash since November 2009 and I can definitely tell a wonderful difference with my face.  I no longer need to wash my face twice a day, before bed each night is perfect.  I break out much less, in fact, I've only gotten a zit twice since I've started this method.  I love the smooth texture of my face, I don't even use foundation anymore because my face is just fine on its own!

I just made the deodorant this weekend but so far I love it!  I knew I've needed to switch for a long time now because of that darn aluminum they put in antiperspirant but I got a really good deal and had stocked up a while ago.  Finally I realized I needed to do it regardless because my pits were feeling dry and itchy after putting on the store bought stuff after my showers.  I can't even tell a difference between homemade and store bought when it comes to sweat and stink but I CAN tell the difference in that my armpits aren't dry and itchy anymore!

The toothpaste, oh the toothpaste, well first of all I have this thing against artificial sweeteners so I'm not using the Stevia suggested in the recipe and I know sugar would counter the whole effect so I do it hardcore without any sweetener.  Let me tell you the taste of this is terrible!  But it gets the job done and once I spit and rinse I'm perfectly happy with the result and because I use the peppermint oil I still smell good to the rest of the world.  I will continue to use this because it's cheap, better for me and it does a great job getting my teeth clean and my breath fresh.

Now the shampoo and conditioner, or the lack thereof, is really cool too!  The pain about it is that I have to make a new batch every week but I love the result enough to continue and really it takes less than five minutes to make so it's not a burden.  Anyway, this one was a hard adjustment to make because it felt like I was just pouring water on my head because it doesn't lather like shampoo but as I've been using it for a while now I've gotten used to it and can actually feel the difference between water and water mixed with baking soda so I know where its at on my head and if I have enough.  At first I was completely overdoing the conditioner since I couldn't feel it but that was another thing that I've learned and adjusted along the way.  And after reading that kids don't really need their hair washed I've quit using baby shampoo on Jordan's precious head and just give it a good massage with my fingers and water of course.

Last but not least I made my own yogurt in my crock pot on Friday.  I'd been curious and wanting to try this one for quite a while but we just don't eat yogurt much but now that I have my new blender and we've been having smoothies on a daily basis I decided it was finally time.  Making yogurt is SO easy!  And I think my favorite part about it is that you can then turn that yogurt into cream cheese just as easily!!!  We all know how expensive cream cheese can be and this is a really cheap alternative!  It's so amazing to me how this process works and how this is exactly like store bought yogurt!  Just incredible.

I hope this blog post wasn't too boring for you guys but I really wanted to share my experiences to make you all aware of the simple and cheap ways we can impact the environment, our lives and our children's lives and so that you know someone who has actually done these things and enjoyed the results.  I hope I made sense!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter!!!!

dress up!

The other day I was in the living room and Jordan was roaming the house. She kept going into her room and coming out to bring me a new piece of clothing. After a couple times of this I decided to start putting each piece on her when she came. She loved it! Here is what we came up with. We had lots of fun!

Crazy cup, cute kid

I have so many blog post ideas it's not even funny; this tends to be a problem when a person takes so much time off from blogging! Hopefully I am finally up and running and start blogging again every Monday. I was just telling my mom earlier how I have SO many things to blog about but choosing what pictures to add takes so much time, then once I finally pick the pictures I really want to edit them all (I got Photoshop over a month ago and have been watching some tutorials but I still suck) and once I'm finally done weeding through and editing I then have to type up the blog post. It's such a time consuming process ESPECIALLY as far behind as I am. I'm overwhelmed just thinking about it. Ok, that's enough about that!

I originally started taking pictures during lunch this week because someway, somehow Jordan managed to, unknowingly, set her cup like this in her cup holder and it STAYED!!! I couldn't have propped it up that way if I had tried and she did it without even watching what she was doing. Very impressive!

Once I started taking pictures I got a little camera happy. I'm only sharing three of the twenty three pictures I took. She seems so big in this picture! I still just can't believe my baby is one!

She has become quite the little ham doing things on purpose because she knows it'll make us laugh. She has also become quite the little runner too! If we are making a quick trip into a store I don't bother with a cart and instead of carrying her the whole time sometimes I let her walk beside me holding my hand. She's decided it's really fun to let go of my hand and play "see if Mommy can catch me." I don't think it's a very fun game at all. She was going through the maze of clothes in Target the other day giggling away when I caught her she just squealed with excitement. I've been trying to exercise the past two days in the afternoons while she is awake. She plays pretty good by herself while I am doing my workout but sometimes she'll come up and look at my feet in the air, get a big grin on her face and try to grab them, or she gets in the way and I nearly knock her over, or she'll come and sit on my belly and bounce up and down it's quite the distraction but so funny! I'm going to have to find something that we can do together...Kelley???? ;)

That's it for tonight folks. It's late and I need some shut eye. Jordan missed a nap today so I decided to lay her down early for the night so just in case she wakes up earlier tomorrow because of it I really need to be prepared. Night!

I haven't forgotten!

I know I've been really bad the past couple of weeks when it comes to blogging. I haven't forgotten about you guys! My grandma had been diagnosed with lung cancer so we wanted to spend as much time with her as possible before she was gone. Now that she has passed we have been trying to get back into our groove and routine and it is quite amazing how quickly I have forgotten what we used to do on a daily basis that worked so well for us! I can't seem to figure out how to keep my house clean and keep Jordan entertained at the same time! I have even forgotten her nap schedule...we have certainly become a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants family and quite honestly I do not enjoy it! I miss our routine that helped me keep my sanity (and Jordan's!) throughout an entire day. We are also working on potty training right now and I'm finding that too is difficult when we aren't on our routine/schedule. I can only imagine if this off schedule thing is rocking my world so much what it is doing to Jordan...no wonder she's been such a crab lately (actually I think that new tooth that is working on coming through is causing her some troubles on top of it all). So in an effort to try to regain my focus and routine for both Jordan's and my sake I have opted to put blogging to the side just for a couple weeks. I'm hoping to be back either next week or the week after so please don't forget about us!

Touch your nose

Jordan is getting really good at knowing her body parts. She first learned nose but now when you ask her where our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and hair are she can very accurately point to them. Lately she has been learning about eye brows (she very curiously has been pointing to them), knees and hands.

These pictures have absolutely nothing to do with this post other than the fact that they are all about Jordan and that I think they are adorable. This picture below is what I see on a daily basis: it is Jordan coming at me with a book to read! She was really excited to get a new book from the doctor yesterday!

I have quite the helper now that Jordan is getting older. She is very quick to help with anything but in this story we will talk about all the help she provides when it comes to laundry and picking up her toys. When I was folding laundry the other day she was gladly pulling clothes out of the laundry basket, holding them up in the air for me to take and grunting to be sure to get my attention. After I would grab the article of clothing from her she eagerly repeated these steps, in fact, she was so efficient that she was grabbing clothes faster than I could fold and getting a wee bit irritated that I could not keep up but we finally worked out a system and became a great team! She has also gotten great at picking up her toys. Jordan's favorite way to play with toys used to be taking them all out of the basket then once they were out of the basket they would become such a bore to my little girl so she would crawl off to find some other container of toys to deconstruct. I was constantly picking up behind her only for her to discover what I'd done and remove all toys from their rightful container once again. Jordan's hobby of dismantling still exists, however, she has discovered how big of an achievement (we have quite the little cheer session afterwards) it is to put her toys back where she got them from...sometimes with Mommy's encouragement and other times completely self motivated!

Second Party

Because Joaquin & Jordan were born on the same day we decided to do a little celebrating together with our two families. Joseph and Abi had us out to their house for dinner and I brought some food to share as well. Abi cooked some wonderful, wonderful food that put my quesadillas to shame!

(This picture makes me giggle; it looks like Brandon is really short, either that or Jordan is really tall!)

We tried to get some pictures of the mommas with the babies and the daddies and babies. We Mommas were having a little trouble getting everything together:

But we weren't the only ones! The daddies had a little struggle too:

But in the end we got a couple of good pictures:

We even got a family picture! My mom thinks this one is awful because of Jordan bawling her eyes out but Brandon & I get quite the kick out of it!

And somewhere in there Brandon took a picture of my feet which I almost thought were Jordan's feet when I first saw them.

We had a really great time! Thank you so much for having us over for a wonderful celebration! I wish I had gotten a picture of the cake. It was a giant cupcake that was bigger than my head!

more presents

Jordan got a cute little baby doll that fits perfectly with a couple of books and snacks in the little purse she also got as gift. I put the purse on her shoulder and a headband with a bow in her hair and she walked off strutting her stuff like she was so proud to be such a girlie girl. By the way Jordan is primarily walking nowadays! She rarely ever crawls anymore. It still throws me off sometimes as she comes walking into the room rather than crawling but I love it! I know she's been wanting to do it for so long now so it makes me happy that she is finally able to fulfill her dream.

Speaking of girlie girl, Jordan got a tea set from her Auntie Heidi and her cousins. It has brought us so much enjoyment! Jordan has her special cupboard in the kitchen that we allow her play in/with. We put the tea set in that cupboard. She plays with that thing when I am cooking, or even when I'm not cooking. She and I have had several tea parties since she's gotten it. I have dreamed of this moment for so long. In fact, my mom and I have had several conversations about said dreams, dreaming them up together. Thank you Auntie Heidi, Brandon, Ethan & Ivan! You will have to come over for a tea party sometime!

Now don't get me wrong, Jordan does have her tomboy side! She got a rocket for her birthday too that she has been having a blast with! The seat opens up for storage; Jordan loves opening it and putting her dolly inside then closing it and taking her dolly out, this goes on for quite some time. Then there are three buttons on the dash that she loves to push and hear the noises they each make. And when Mommy is available she loves getting pushed all over the house riding her rocket ship. She turns her head around to look at me and laughs! What a thrill! She's going to love the day she learns how to ride it herself. Thank you Granny Jo, Grandpa Robert & the crew (Brandon's parents, two brothers & sister).

Back to the girlie girl though, she got some cute hair bows among other things from my cousin Amanda. At this point, as you know, Jordan doesn't like to leave things in her hair. I was trying to get the bows on faster than she could take them off and managed to get all three on her head at once! For some reason, she decided to leave just one in her hair...the one that happened to be sticking straight off the side of her head:

Jordan got a piggy bank that is shaped as Cinderella's carriage in some pretty pastel colors. After she opened it she really wanted me to take it out of it's packaging. Once I got it out she grabbed it from me and gave it a BIG hug! It was precious! She also got some really beautiful, springy dresses from my parents and a wonderful family friend.

Thank you so much everyone who came to the party and made Jordan's day that much more special!

Presents

This is a Rollie Pollie. I'd been enjoying the MADE blog recently, a sewing blog I stumbled across, and when I saw the Rollie Pollie on her site I just knew I HAD to make one for Jordan! And boy am I glad I did! Jordan and I have had lots of fun with it already! At first she had mixed feelings. First she loved it because it was something new, then she didn't know what to do with it but now she walks up to it quite quickly and throws herself onto it. She rolls around on it, bounces on it, lays her head on it and says "Ahhhh!" (as in: Ahh, that's so sweet). She's still in discovery mode and I know this will bring hours of entertainment for years to come!

It was so much fun watching Jordan open her presents. Immediately she ripped into the first present and started handing me all the paper she pulled off (She has an old magazine that is exclusively hers that we let her do whatever she wants with. She tears pages out and tears each page apart. She used to try and put pieces in her mouth but after I started taking each piece away from her when she'd do that she's started handing the pieces to me instead).

After she opened her first present she didn't really want to open any more because the first one was books which are her favorite thing in the world! I was really happy that she got some new books too because I am getting tired of the books we already have. Jordan chases me around the house with books all day long (which is a good thing she likes reading so much!). We read books no less than 5 times a day at least 5 books each time and reading each book at least 5 times a piece (and that's just me! When Daddy gets home, he reads to her too).

All the kids that came to her party were really intrigued by all her presents and wanted to be right up close to see everything she got and even help her open them if she was distracted or too slow :) It was really cute! I love the middle picture above with the back of everyone's heads. I'm really surprise and excited that Jordan did so well having so many people so close to her especially for not having much sleep (we tried laying her down a little early for her nap so we could ensure that she would be awake when guests started to arrive. Well, she did NOT like that one bit and it took us an hour to get her to sleep! Then she decided to take a little nap that was barely an hour when they are typically 2-3 hours long. I guess she showed us!). I love getting to watch all the kids interact. Most of them didn't know each other yet they all quickly bonded and started talking and playing games together. The ages range from 1 to 8 years old and they all played together so good!