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Pictures have been updated! Here’s a teaser of what was updated on the gallery.

Jordan at Disneyland:
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Sleeping while clutching a pretzel stick:
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Jordan with Merrigan. Jordan wants to walk around holding her hand whenever she sees her. It is the cutest thing. I haven’t gotten a good picture of it yet, but they are so cute together. They have become fast friends! They met at 7 weeks old, and have been going to Gymboree together ever since (And Merrigan’s only 2 days older than her.)
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Heading home:
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Mike’s birthday:
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Birthday dinner at Wood Ranch- Jordan enjoys some artichoke and spinach dip!
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Jordan after eating some celebratory cotton candy ice cream!
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Playing at the park
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For some reason I am quite addicted to Noah’s Ark. It’s a Pop Cap game that I first found on Yahoo Games. I used to play it at work (yes, I know- BAD Maren, but it was a desk/phone job where the phone never rang, and I would only play after I’d finished all the work, and usually a few extra projects for others working in the same building.) and I recently started playing it again. When my husband realized I was so addicted to it, he suggested a different addictive game. Yet another Pop Cap game- Peggle. Well, I tried it tonight, and blew through the 60 min trial of the game, and now I’m trying to decide if I need to spend $20 so I can play it all the time! heehee. It’s a fun little game, but it can tend to suck time away very quickly. Not really sure I need something like that!
Anyhoo- here’s a recap/update on the potty training: Day 1- 10 accidents, no successful potty trips, Day 2- 2 accidents, 7 successful potty trips, Day 3- 0 accidents, 4 successful potty trips, Day 4- 1 accident 6 successful potty trips, and the accident was kind of my fault. We ventured out for the first time, and she was fine for the quick trip to Target, and the post office, went in the potty at Gymboree before AND after class, fine through lunch and a quick trip to the pet store, but then we pushed it and went to Mervyn’s. I should have known to look for the potty as soon as we went in, but I didn’t. By the time Jordan told me she needed to go, and I finally found the potty, she had wet her pants right before we got to the potty. At least I thought to bring extra clothes, so it was no big deal, but I felt bad. Thankfully Jordan doesn’t understand yet about being embarrassed when you wet your pants. Then today she had 3 accidents and 4 successful potty trips. One accident was during her nap, and the other 2 were while I was at work when she was hanging out with Daddy. I think she is getting it, but it’s just hard to stay on top of her all the time. I need to learn that when we go out I need to know where the nearest restroom is at all times, and be able to get there at the drop of a hat. And I have to ask her about 500 times a day if she needs to go potty. She is starting to answer that question correctly, so that’s encouraging. Generally if she says “no” right away she doesn’t really have to go, but if she hesitates, then I take her anyway, or if it’s been a really long time. We shall see how tomorrow goes. We’re going to music class at Gymboree, and it will be the last day I have with her before Daddy gets to be in charge all day (I work for 7 hours on Saturday). Hopefully we can keep it up next week, too. I have a meeting on Monday afternoon, so that might be a bit interesting.
In other Jordan related news, she is singing a lot more. Her repertoire is HUGE now, and I’m able to recognize her songs a bit quicker. The latest funny one to see is “Slippery Fish” which is a song we learned at Gymboree. THe funniest was to hear her sing “Enormous whale, enormous whale, ‘pouting (spouting) in da wader(water), enormous whale, enormous whale, CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP!” If you don’t know the song, it starts out with a Slippery Fish who was eaten by an Octopus, who was eaten by a Great White Shark, who was eaten by an Enormous Whale. It’s pretty silly. Jordan does the hand motions to it as well, so I’m hoping to get her on tape soon. She was reminded of the song today at Bubble Camp. Gymboree is doing a new series of events this summer- it’s 8 weeks of 4 different themes, 2 weeks for each theme and it started today. It’s a 2 hour program where they have face painting, different play stations, story time, dress up, and themed activities and songs. Today was “Under the Sea”, then it’s Animal Playground, Fairytale Storyland, and Planes Trains and Automobiles. Jordan will be allowed to go as long as the days don’t fill up, since I’m an employee. She can go for free, but isn’t guaranteed a spot. Anyway, I think Jordan enjoyed it today. There was a “tactile table” where they had seashells with sand, and she spent most of her time there. She’s never been to the beach, so that was a new experience for her. It’s past my bedtime, I’d best be off!

Today I spent almost the entire day in the bathroom. No I’m not sick. Jordan isn’t either. We were “kick-starting” potty training. It was a rough day, but I’ve heard that this works pretty well. We shall see. I’ve heard that if you take out a week or two and put the kiddo in cloth pants only during the day they start to understand when they need to go, and will eventually tell you when they need to go. My plan is to stay home most of this week, and try to stay consistent next week when things are a bit busier. I’m hoping tomorrow we spend less time cleaning up messes, washing underpants, and talking about how we need to go to the potty BEFORE we wet our pants. I’ve also decided we need to stick to pull up diapers for sleeping times after mopping her mattress after her nap. Poor little thing is so tiny that they just don’t make potty training items in her size. I’m thinking about washing her cloth training pants in HOT water and drying them on high to see if I can shrink them. Not sure what I can do about the plastic covers- I’ve tried every size they make, and she leaks out of the 12 month size, but the other sizes that are smaller leave big red elastic marks on her legs. :S Poor thing.
In other news, I’m trying to import all of my photos from my desktop computer to iphoto on my MacBook. Hopefully I’ll be able to figure it out. I’ve never used iphoto before, so I may end up going to the Apple Store to take a class on iphoto. Once I get all the photos on this computer (providing I have enough disk space) I’ll try to upload the new ones. I’ll blog about the photos once they are up!

I have finally gotten caught up with the pictures! There are a bunch of new ones in April and May.
Here are some highlights:
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My mom’s Mother’s Day present with a mini-version I made for Jordan, and Jordan modeling her backpack
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Mother’s Day:
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Playing with Daddy
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A couple days ago I bought Jordan a baby doll stroller, and she wanted to go for a walk with it yesterday. Here’s what that looked like:
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And a quick update on what’s going on here:
Jordan news- she can count to 12, and recognizes all her letters. She’s speaking in sentences, though not completely clearly. She’s doing really well with potty training. I’m thinking about taking a week off work to try to kick-start her training. She’s actually “trying” every time she sits on the potty, so we are making headway! She’s stayed dry for longer chunks of each day lately, too. And she’s still waking up dry many mornings, then using the potty when she wakes up. She’s very in to pretend play- mainly with her babies, or washing dishes, or cleaning. I guess that’s a good sign!
Mike news- he’s still busy with school, and work, but the end of at least this degree is slowly approaching.
Maren news- I just finished co-teaching the Baby Signs: Sign, Say and Play program at Gymboree, and I’ve been accredited to teach this summer! I’ll be teaching the 6 week series July through mid August. And, in the absolute latest news… I am now the proud owner of a MacBook!! Mike got me one for an early b-day present. Our current laptop was a hand-me-down that was getting a bit on the old side, and kept crashing on us. Plus I’ve been looking for something to help me get Jordan’s videos on the computer so I can make DVDs. So now I have to learn all about the Mac, but I’m excited! We’ll see how it goes!

I have so many photos that I need to upload, but I just haven’t done it yet. I’m downloading the newest version of Gallery Remote (which is how I upload my photos) so that I can get that done. I had a problem with it last week I think it was, and my brother (also my webmaster) got it fixed for me. Now it’s up to me to actually download and install the latest program! Anyway, I can’t even remember what all the pics are of, though I know there are some from our Disneyland trip that Jordan and I took last Monday. We’re going again this Wednesday with a bunch of people from Gymboree, providing they can all go! Jordan and I also were able to go over to Erin and Christopher’s house this past week and meet baby Casey. Dummy me forgot to take any pics of him, or of Jordan and Christopher playing, though Erin did get some. We got to play in the backyard for a bit, feed the chickens and the GIANT fish, and even collect some eggs from the chicken, and we got to bring some home with us, too! (eggs, not chickens ) We had a good time, and it was great to see Erin again. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of months. Anyway, the latest news here is that both Mike and I have plans to start a fitness routine tomorrow. He’s doing P90X, and I’m going to start doing Pilates. We took the embarrassing “before” pics today, and measured/weighed. Well, I didn’t measure anything yet, but I might before I start working out tomorrow. Anyway, we shall see how we feel by Jordan’s birthday- Mike’s program will last 90 days, and mine is supposed to be 10 weeks, but I’m not doing the diet portion of it, so I may not get the results that quickly.
In Jordan news, we’ve had a set-back with potty training, though I’m hoping to really get back into it the week after next. I’m planning on staying around the house for most of each day that week, except for when I have to work, and I’m going to try to get her into the cloth training pants, or maybe underwear if I’m brave enough. Tonight she was getting ready for her bath, and I got her pull-up off, but didn’t tell her to sit on the potty, and she wet on the floor, but the good news is she said “oopsie” as soon as she did it. I had her sit on the potty after that, and I cleaned it up while telling her she needs to do that in the potty, but I didn’t make a huge deal about it. In other “Jordan” news, she can almost count to 10- she sometimes gets stuck at 2, but if I say “three” then she will go on through 10. And she can recognize a 7. Don’t know why that’s the only number so far, but hey- it’s something! She also can almost sing her ABC’s, and recognizes and correctly identifies almost all of them at one time or another. She gets tired of naming letters after about 13 so it’s hard to do it in one sitting, but she will identify them out of order until she gets tired of it. She also finally knows her colors, and is getting better about her shapes. She always knows circle, but sometimes confuses square and triangle. As for any other shape, she doesn’t seem to know they exist, aside from star and heart which she knows as well. She’s learning more and more signs the more we watch Signing Time, and is now starting to sing a lot more songs. She loves the music class at Gymboree, and loves her teacher Megan. The other day I was trying to figure out what she was singing, and it was a song that we had sung over a week ago in music class. We’ve also learned from that class that Jordan really enjoys Polka music. She also greatly enjoys dancing. Mainly her dance consists of twirling in a circle until she is so dizzy she can’t stand up. Occasionally, though it’s rocking from side to side while lifting up her legs as high as she can. I’m hoping to get her into ballet classes when she turns 2, because I really think she’d enjoy it. I’ve also thought about swimming lessons for the summer, but I haven’t priced that yet.
In “crafty” news, I found a new crochet pattern that I’ve been working on since Friday, and have completed 2 versions of it thus far. Jordan enjoyed it so much that I had to make her a smaller version of it. I’m speaking in code as the recipient of the first version reads this blog, and I don’t want them to know what I’m up to! But I took pictures of it today, and will post them later after the item has been gifted! Now I’m making one for myself, too.
Well, I think that about covers all that’s been going on here!

At her friend Preston’s 2nd birthday party.

After eating about half the container of Yoplait Jordan asked to have some noodles. That usually means she wants ramen.

Jordan just woke up from her nap, and she was hungry. Of course she didn’t want to eat the vanilla yogurt that she already opened this morning. Instead she wanted the strawberry yogurt.