Let There Be No Doubt......Jordan is a JEW!!!!!!!!!

Today I decided to take Jordan to see Santa and to have her picture taken w/the jolly dude in the red suit.  Well that didn't quite go the way I had it planned out in my head.  Jordan took one look at this red suited, big bellied, white bearded guy and she FREAKED OUT!  She was terrified!  She was clinging to my body so tightly, arms wrapped completely around my neck, legs would have been completely wrapped around my body had it not been for those pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream I've been consuming..........

So I revert to what every mother on the planet does in a desperate time of need:  bribery!  "Jordan, he's a nice man and he's the guy who brings you presents!"  "Jordan, he has a present for you but you have to sit on his lap."  Meanwhile in her mind she's like, "Duh, I'm not falling for this b/c my mommies are the ones who bring me presents and all I have to do is go to the store w/them and not sit on some strangers lap!"  

I have scratch marks on both sides of my neck from attempting to pull her off me so I can place her onto Santa's lap.  The instant contact was made on the lap of the dude in the red suit, Jordan reached a whole new level of freak out so I immediately put a stop to the every-kid-gets-one-every-year Santa picture.  And all was good in the world once we were far enough away from the dude in the red suit.

Ahhhh Chanukah, calm, candles, latkas, 8 nights of presents, no need for dead trees in the living room, no scary red suited men.

Jordan is beginning to recognize certain places or areas when we are in the car now.  Like when we're heading towards or near our dry cleaners she starts spewing from the backseat:  "APPAPOP, APPAPOP" which sounds like 'apple pop' but really means 'LOLLIPOP' b/c the wonderful folks at our dry cleaners give Jordan a lollipop each every time we go there.  So I find myself avoiding the "APPAPOP" roads on the days we do not have to pick anything up at the dry cleaners.  She also recognizes the Y where we take our Parent/Toddler class which I've been calling 'school', so when we pull into the parking lot she starts saying "FAN" which really means 'Fran' who is Jordan's teacher.

Hanging out w/mostly heterosexual moms and their kids has had some affect on Jordan.  I wasn't aware that she was being affected by this until the two of us were shopping in Bed Bath & Beyond and Jordan started yelling at the top of her lungs, "DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY"..........now that made for an interesting moment.

Jordan is madly in love w/our cat Nina.  Nina, not so much w/Jordan.  I bought 'snacks' for Nina and put them in 'the snack' cabinet which is full of Jordan's snacks and Jordan can go in there at any time and pull out what she wants.  These days it seems she is only interested in Nina's snacks, not to eat, but to insist that we feed these snacks to Nina a minimum of 7 times a day.  Jordan, using her 2 word sentences will come up to me w/the Nina snacks in her hand and say, "NINA EAT" so we go upstairs to where Nina is sleeping (and pretty much living during Jordan's awake hours) and we feed her a few snacks.  I'm thinking this might work out for Jordan, Nina will most likely start associating good snacks w/Jordan and then start to love Jordan.......that is until Nina came downstairs after a full day of "NINA EAT" and Nina proceeded to puke at my feet.  

Speaking of 2 word sentences..........they are awesome and they are amazing!  Most of Jordan's 2 word sentences start w/"MOMMY" but I am soooooooo good w/that!  In fact I'm in love w/it!  "MOMMY COME."  "MOMMY MORE."  "MOMMY TENT." (meaning come and play in the tent w/me)

That's it from the Land Of Jordan for now, hope everyone has an amazing Thanksgiving!

Daylight Savings = Insanity!

I'm sure majority of you out there are enjoying the extra hour of sleep due to daylight savings.  That's just great, swell, lovely, wonderful (dripping w/sarcasm) and really frustrating to those of us living in the Brooks/Minardi household.  I am hereby demanding to speak to whomever is in charge of this daylight savings thing.  I would like to do away w/it.  We have gained NOTHING in this savings, NOTHING!  If anything we have LOST an hour of sleep.  LOST!  Who looses an hours sleep when you turn the clocks back?  Jordan.  That's who.  She is so thrown off by this and now we are so thrown off by this.  What's going to happen when Spring comes and we have to turn the clocks ahead an hour?  Oh good God, we're doomed.  That's it, I'm revolting.  I refuse to turn my clocks in any direction, we are staying on the old time - who's with me?  

We made it thru our 2nd Jordan Halloween w/only a slight sugar buzz.  Jordan was invited to a funky cool Halloween party where cupcakes and cookies covered in orange icing were readily available to the kids and they quickly figured out that each of them could reach up and grab whatever they wanted from the table of orange icing.  No words were spoken.  They all just somehow knew the table of orange icing was there in the other room waiting to be taken over by 25 little arms reaching up and randomly pulling down some sugar filled treat.  Every single child at the party had orange icing mushed across their face, in their noses, hair, fingernails and yes of course all over their costumes.  And this was all BEFORE we went out to trick-or-treat.

Trick-or-treating was pretty fun this year.  Fun to watch your child be pushed up to some strangers door, forced to knock or ring the bell, forced to stand there waiting for the unknown to happen, promises of candy delivered by the stranger behind the door.......only thing is nobody was home at that house.  Hmmmm, okay.  Due-over!  Anyway, totally cool to see Jordan up on someone's porch giving her candy.  Jordan was mesmerized by the whole process and couldn't quite understand that after you got the candy you said thank you and walked away.  She just stood at each person's door and didn't move.  Very cute.  After about 5 doors of receiving candy she told me she was "all done" so we packed up and went home.  And that's actually where I think she had the best time b/c when our doorbell would ring she would go running to the door all kinds of excited and was so happy to be giving out candy to all these people dressed up in silly costumes.  She enjoyed this so much that she nearly gave away our entire candy bowl to the first 2 kids who came to our door!

Speaking of "all done"..........Jordan and her cousin Max had a fun filled trip to Build-A-Bear a few weeks ago.  They each chose to stuff a dog instead of a bear.  By the time Max was done his dog was decked out in a Batman outfit.  By the time Jordan was done (more like by the time I was done) her dog was decked out in a WNBA outfit!  What?  Jordan actually chose this outfit

after I pulled it down from the shelf, showed it to her, hid all the other outfits in the store and told her this was the coolest outfit I'd ever seen and didn't she think it would look amazing on her dog?  So we go to the finishing area where you create your birth certificate for their newly stuffed/built dogs and you get to give them a name.  Max's dog was given the obvious name:  Batdog.  Jordan's turn.  So mommy says, "Jordan, what would you like to name your dog?"  To which Jordan replies, "All done."  And that's the name I put on her dog's birth certificate.  

A few little awesome tidbits about Jordan:  she can count to 10, she can pick out the letters P, O & N from the alphabet, she is putting 2 & 3 words together to form her sentences, she's bossy (and getting bossier), she is 23 months old today which means we are exactly ONE MONTH from her 2nd birthday, she likes pumpkin pie (discovered this last night), she imitates nearly everything I do or say.

That's all for now from The Land of Jordan..........