Happy Valentine's Day!

I am so lucky to have such a sweet little boy, words can't express how much I love my little guy. I enjoy spending time with him, he is so much fun. I would have never thought a 4 year old could be so entertaining.

J.R. and I have a new routine at night, Tony gives J.R. his bath then I go up and read J.R. a book or two. The new "thing" J.R. and I do is talk about our day. Tonight J.R.  started the conversation by asking me what I did at work today. After talking about my day, I asked J.R. about his day. I LOVE to hear him talk and listen to how he puts things together. I found out today that he got a time out at school for saying "booty butt"?? He said that Mauren was sitting on him and he got mad at her so he called her "booty butt". Mrs. Debbie, J.R.'s teach heard him and gave him a time out. I asked J.R., so are you going to say that word again, he responded NO MOM! Tonight after I gave him a kiss and started to walk out of his room J.R. said, "Mom come back, I still have things to say.... I want to talk more." This guys knows how to work his mommy!

Last night after J.R. fell asleep I went to go check on him. It's amazing how fast he's growing, I would have sworn that he grew since I had left him a few hours before. His legs are so long, I have to retire some of his pants, they are now officially highwaters! We have his yearly check-up in a few weeks it will be interesting to see what percentile he's in now.

We have lots of pictures since our last post. Here's some pictures from J.R.'s birthday party. We had so much fun, I think everyone had a lot of fun. We had a bar for the adults and carnival games, face painter and balloon artist for the kids.

Merry Christmas 2013! This was the best Christmas yet! J.R. really got into the holiday and understood so much more. He misses his elf, Sheriff and can't wait until he comes back next year.

J.R. just woke up Christmas morning.

J.R. must have been a good boy if Santa left him all these stocking stuffers!

Here's J.R. at his school Christmas production. He's with one of his best buddies, Elizar. They looked so cute in their hats and santa beards!

J.R. got a leap pad for Christmas. He loves it and spent a few hours playing with it, nothing has ever caught his attention for that long!

Here's J.R. a few hours later on Christmas, what a great babysitter!

J.R. is loving playing on his baseball team. He's doing really well, we put him in "coach pitch" because t-ball would have been too boring for him. He's the youngest on his team, all the other little boys are 1 to 2 years older than him. He looks forward to practice on Thursday and his games on Saturdays.

A few Saturday's ago J.R. woke up, put his uniform on and came running out of his room ready to go to find out that his game was cancelled due to rain. Here's a picture of him looking out the window at the rain. He was so sad, it was heartbreaking!

Check out that swing!

Notice the clay stained white baseball pants. All mother's must wonder like I do, ,why do they make baseball pants white? It takes me a few days to get them white again!

I had to add this picture. We haven't played hockey in awhile but a few weeks ago Tony took him.

This is how we spent New Year's Eve 2013!

We were at dinner with Sandi before she left to go home for Christmas.

This just happened last week, J.R. came home and wrote his name!

Tony and his mini-me!

We had a playdate with two of J.R.'s best buddies, Gavril and Elizar.

J.R. and I went to visit grandpa, HULK SMASH! Grandpa is in the background watching basketball.

J.R. went skiing for the first time. He did so good!

I've always loved J.R. sleeping pictures.. I couldn't resist.

Here's J.R. passed out in our bed.

During Christmas while grandpa was in town we went to a UNLV vs Northern Iowa basketball game.

J.R. holding a talking bear that Nana and Papa sent him for v-day.

Here's J.R. enjoying part of Auntie Lori's Valentine's Day gift, yum!

A lesson learned from J.R. to Mommy and Daddy.

Today Tony took J.R. across the street to the park to play baseball. J.R. came home so excited he asked if I would take him to the park so he could play on the jungle gym. I couldn't say no, he was so sweet. Historically, J.R. has a hard time leaving the park, he typically has a breakdown because he doesn't want to leave. So, I sat him down before we went and explained to him that I would take him but he was not allowed to give me a hard time when I said it was time to go home. J.R. responded, "Momma, I won't give you a hard time, I'll be a good boy. But can you please point out the good things I do and not the bad things?" Wow mom, lesson learned. The entire way over to the park we talked about all the good things he does.

Thanks to Aunt Lori's suggestion we got J.R. Elf on the Shelf. He is now adopted into our family and J.R. named him Sheriff. I'm so excited to see where Sheriff ends up each morning but you should see J.R. it's so great to see his reaction, it's priceless. This morning Sheriff was in our pantry getting into trouble!

I didn't know Sheriff liked Molasses?

J.R. ran errands with me Saturday afternoon. The first stop he made with me was getting my eyebrows threaded. This was a first, I've never taken him there with me before and wasn't sure how he'd react. We pulled up and there was a Dunkin Doughnuts next to the eyebrow threading place. I told J.R. if he was a good boy, he could get a doughnut. Well, what do you know.....

J.R. picked out the Christmas doughnut!



Today we decorated a gingerbread house with Christmas tree. J.R. did the roof and two sides but then lost interest so I had to finish but I think he did a pretty good job overall. I'm not sure how long the gingerbread house is going to last in our house, J.R. keeps eating the house!



Saturday night we went to Opportunity Village. It's a Christmas wonderland, I've never seen so many Christmas lights in my life. We went with two other friend's families. There were rides, games and hot coca and cookies! J.R. had so much fun! Oh yeah, and he got to sit on Santa's lap with Audrey and Alexis!

J.R. and I rode the Christmas train together, can you tell he's having fun?



J.R. has never had tootsie rolls before. One of his classmates gave everyone tootsie rolls so when he got home Friday he tried his first one and LOVED them. He ate five!

We decorated Christmas cookies. J.R. actually didn't lose his attention span this time!

It's Christmas season!

J.R. did two cute things today that I want to remember.

Today I put all the Christmas decorations out, it took all day, ugh! I put up the lights outside, put out all the decorations around the house, put up the Christmas tree and the last thing I had to do was the ornaments on the tree. J.R. hung the stockings and put on the first ornament on the tree.

Here are the stockings J.R. hung.

J.R. picking out the first two ornaments for the tree.



J.R. getting ready to hang the ornaments.



J.R. hanging the ornaments.

 In the middle of putting up the ornaments he came into the living room and asked if he could put on his pj's. This was a shocker, he NEVER asks to put on his pj's. I look at him and see a big wet spot on his crotch, J.R. peed his pants! I sent him  upstairs to change and wipe himself down. A few minutes later I hear, "Wow, that's adorable!" I look up and see J.R. coming down the stairs with a big smile on his face. Then a few minutes later we walked by and said, "mom, the Christmas tree is beautiful." This guy really knows how to get himself out of hot water! I was so tired of the Christmas decorating and his comments and appreciation made me muddle through with a smile on my face.

Right before J.R. went upstairs for bed I made him clean up all his toys he played with throughout the day. I found a candy wrapper on the floor and asked J.R. to put it in the trash can, which he kindly obliged. J.R. asked where the wrapper came from and I told him it must have been daddy or Scott. J.R. swiftly responded, "now mom, I know it couldn't have been Scott he's not here mom so it had to be one of you two. Mom, you can't fool me I'm smart."

Last year I posted the picture below, I remember this moment so well. He opened up the Santa music box and was so memorized somehow I had my phone close so I could take a picture. Well this year I pulled out the same music box and he still loved watching it. I took another picture this year, I think this may turn into a yearly picture.

2011

2012

This Saturday we went to the Boulder City Santa Parade then met some friends out for dinner. J.R. was with Audrey and Alexis the entire time having a blast. He is so excited spend the weekend with them in Scottsdale soon!

J.R. with his two girls!

Here is a picture from last week of my sweet baby boy sleeping. I can never pass this up, he is so sweet when he sleeps.

Toughen up mom!

Ah, finally J.R. is healthy and back to his normal self, it only took 2 weeks! I took two full days off work to care for my little guy and besides the fact he was sick I loved staying home with J.R. I told Tony I wished I was a stay at home mom and he replied, "honey, it was two days, I know you and you would go crazy after two weeks of staying home." I feel like we've been pretty fortunate when it comes to J.R getting sick. In his almost 4 years of life he's had the flu twice, croup once and a few viruses here and there from school. Typically, when he gets sick, I never worry because from past experience he'll be over it in 24 hours. Well, not this time! J.R. got a virus that turned into the worse chronic cough you have ever heard in your life. This poor little guy was in the er twice and the doctor's office three times in one week. He winced in pain after days of coughing. His little ribs hurt and his head hurt from coughing so hard for so long. I remember the night of Tuesday November 13th my little guy didn't know what to do with himself he was in so much pain. He just cried and cried there was nothing I could do to sooth him or make him feel better. I remember praying, please take this away from J.R. and give it to me, please. I wanted to crawl right out of my skin, this was the first time since I had J.R. that I didn't know what to do. Then I thought, what the heck am I complaining about, my little boy has a bad cough and I'm reacting this way when there are mother's out there that have terminally ill children. Any of those mothers would feel like they hit the lottery if their child had a bad cough. I told myself to stop being a pussy and toughen up and feel fortunate the J.R. will get better and not worse, feel fortunate that my child will live and is not terminal with a disease or disabled. Be thankful for my life and family.

Here's J.R. mid cough during going to the doctor.

This day was the first day he wasn't feeling good. I knew something was wrong when he just wanted to lay in bed all day and cuddle.

Another bad night, poor guy was up almost the entire night.

Ah, starting to feel better!

This past Monday morning was a rough morning. I was trying to get J.R. to school and work was blowing up in my face, which is typical after a holiday. Headquarters is on east coast time so things start to rock n' roll at 5am our time. Nothing was going right and I was very frustrated. As I was putting him in his car seat he looks at me with those big blue eyes and said, "Mom are you mad at me?" Whoa, talk about slap in the face. I told him, "no honey, I'm not mad at you I'm just mad at work, it's very frustrating right now. I wish I could just stay home with you today and not go to work." J.R. replied, "Oh no mom, you have to go to work so you can buy things for yourself." I chuckled and said, " you mean, so I can buy things for you." J.R. said, "no so you can buy things for you and daddy". Sometimes I make life way too complicated when it doesn't have to be and I had to thank J.R. for pointing that out to me that morning, I really needed a reality check!

We headed to Arizona for Thanksgiving the Tuesday before to be with my grandpa. My uncle went down a few weeks before to help my grandpa since he's been having back problems. My uncle is still down there and we hope his back gets taken care of this week with a nerve blocker. We're praying he doesn't have to have surgery. I've never seen my grandpa in so much pain before, it's pretty scary. He's always been a tough guy, going to work no matter how he felt. I was just glad we could be down there and lift his spirits with J.R. for a few days. Our family is so different with my grandma gone. The house smells different, there's a different aura there now. This is the second Thanksgiving without her and our family will be forever changed.



J.R. with his POWER RANGERS headphones!

 

J.R. got plastic little swords with his drink at the airport. He talked our waitress out of 5 little swords. We had sword fights all the way from Vegas to Tucson.



This kid LOVES Jenga. The changed up the game and built "windows" 8 stories tall!

Playing Jenga, he's really good. Honestly we don't let him win, he'll beat us sometimes.

J.R. watching a football game before bedtime. My grandpa has his "coke bottle" glasses on. When I was little I always loved seeing his "coke bottle" glasses.

Check out those blue eyes.

Playing tough guy.

Love his smile!

Pre decoration of the gingerbread house.

Post decoration of the gingerbread house, with a little help from Uncle Scott.

Our family tree. J.R. had this as a school project assignment.

J.R.'s toys laying everywhere one night after J.R. went to bed.

At the airport on our way back to Vegas. J.R. is waiting for his tacos, one of his new favorite foods!

Cheap Tacos!

Last Saturday night J.R., Tony and I were at home watching movies. I can't remember what movie but I'm sure it was a super hero movie of some sort. There was a Taco Bell commerical that came on and J.R. kept asking for tacos. J.R. got Tony in the mood for tacos after a few minutes so being the mommy that I am, I went out and got taco's for my boys. After I got home Tony asked how much the 12 taco pack cost, he was curious as we rarely eat fast food. I told him it was $10.81 and J.R. pipes up, "that's cheap"! Are you kidding me, what have we created?? I informed Mr. Zaino that it was in fact not cheap and $10 is a lot of money, especially for a 3 year old! Boy, this kid is his father already!

J.R. went trick or treating with his good buddy from school, Elizar. We went to his neighborhood which is only 1 mile from our house. I had no idea how close they were! They had such a fun time and got so much candy, J.R. was asking to be done trick er treating before we were finished. I also had no idea how much candy weighed! He had such a good time, this was his first year really trick er treating!



Here's J.R. right before we headed over to Elizar's for trick er treating. He's fighting Uncle Scott in front of our house!

J.R. has recently started wearing unmatched socks. This started over the weekend and has continued through the day today. With the time change Mr. Zaino was up at 7:30am. This kid normally sleeps in until 10 or 11am if we let him. Today he woke up early and as I walked out of my bedroom there's J.R. in our loft waiting for me with mismatching socks! He says he likes them that way, who knows maybe he'll be starting a new trend?

Here's J.R. driving the hummer. Tony took these pictures Friday after taking him to the Jump Zone. Yep, it is what it sounds like, this place has a huge 10,000 foot indoor trampoline. J.R. and Tony LOVE this place.



I forgot about these pictures. Here is J.R. enjoying his loot he got trick er treating. We realized J.R. had never had a Reece's pieces or snickers! I had to take a picture of both firsts! Yum!

We are on our way to the UNLV football game. J.R. does not look very excited in this picture but trust me, he is VERY excited! He's totally into football right now. God, please don't let my little boy want to play football!

I'll leave  you with this last picture of J.R. making a funny face. He loves for me to take pictures of him making funny faces. It's kind of funny, he considers something funny doing something with his mouth. He normally sticks out his tongue!