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!

Happy Holloween

It's Halloween and J.R. is enjoying this holiday so much, I can't wait until Christmas! J.R. is growing up so fast and doing so much more than what he did last year at this time. J.R. is almost 4 and he has been testing his boundaries lately. His favorite thing to do is say the opposite of what Tony and I say for example, If we tell him to sit down he will respond "no" and stand for the next hour. We have a crazy busy schedule as usual with the holiday season approaching. I'm trying to live in the moment and forget about Pediatric Cancer. I try to forget the 45 kids were diagnosed with cancer today and 7 children died of cancer today. I pray that our family doesn't win that horrible lottery, there I said it. I try not to think of Ty Campbell's family, the little boy who recently died and how they have to somehow get through these holidays without their 5 year old perfect little boy. Ty's mother requested that we send pictures of little boys jumping in muddy puddles. Ty liked to watch Peppa the Pig (J.R. also enjoys this show.) and they love to jump in muddy puddles. Ty didn't get a chance to jump in muddy puddles, he couldn't stand let alone jump. So in honor of Ty Campbell we took a day after swim lessons and made a muddy puddle here in the desert so J.R. and I could jump in it. I don't know why but for some reason I didn't have the heart to send the pictures to Cindy, Ty's mother.

Friday was an eventful day. J.R. had the day off from school, it was Nevada Day. The plan: Tony was to watch J.R. until noon then I would take the afternoon off and enjoy the rest of the day with my son. Well at 11am Tony texted me that J.R. was grabbing his right ear and crying because his ear hurt. I ran home quickly by then Tony had given J.R. ibuprofen and I grabbed the ear drops and wrestled J.R. to get those in his ears. By the time we got to the doctor his pain was gone. The doctor gave us a presciption for antibiotics and we were on our way. We went out for lunch, by this time it was 2:30pm. Then since J.R. was such a good boy we took him to the toy store so he could pick out a toy. His new favorite thing is Ninja Turtles. Tony told J.R. a few days ago he watched Ninja turtles when he was a little boy and J.R. has liked them ever since. The picture below was J.R. having a breathing treatment. We suspect J.R.'s allergies has caused the ear infection. We've had him taking breathing treatments since earlier in this week. This is the first time J.R. will put the mask on, before we had to hold it to his face but now he's a "big boy"!



Here's J.R. one day after school. He asked to go to McDonald's. He recently figured out that he gets a toy with his happy meal if he goes there. We don't go very often but J.R. always asks!

We got a hummer a month ago. J.R. loves the hummer. He doesn't want to drive in my car anymore, only the hummer. Here J.R. is driving the hummer.

This is J.R.'s first hockey game of the season, the Wranglers. It looks like there's not going to be NHL hockey this year since the strike does not seem to be coming to and end.

These are picture from J.R.'s Halloween school picnic and party. All of his "best buds" were power rangers just like J.R.

A few weeks ago J.R. had his last swim lesson on the year. He did so well this year. He can swim across the pool both ways with his fins and swim goggles on. I'm so proud of him!

The 5 pictures below were from Audrey's birthday weekend! We went to Imagination Mover's and then a festival in Boulder City where J.R. got his face  painted.



We went to Batman, J.R. had to get the mask and cape to be  just like Batman. We watch all the Batman movies when they are on t.v. now!

Last weekend we went to the Mini Grand Prix. J.R. had a blast, he spent most of his time going down the slide. This is the first time he has been able to go down the slide by himself! He drove the car pretty well by himself also.

Here's J.R., Sandi and MaryLou. MaryLou bought tickets for all of us to go to Veggie Tails at the local church. We all had such a fun time.

Here is J.R. and his favorite Uncle. J.R. and Scott have such a special relationship. They are so good for each other. I remember Scott when I was little and I'm so glad J.R. gets to have Uncle Scott around like I did.

J.R. feel asleep the night he got the Ninja Turtle toys on the couch, clutching his toy.



Some cute pictures of J.R. enjoying Halloween.



This is after the UNLV football game with Katie. We got to go on the field after the game.

Last night we went to the "Truck or Treat" in Boulder City with Audrey. Here's J.R. in full costume! He had so much fun, there was on open grass field he ran on for hours plus two jump houses!

These picture were from today. We went to "the farm". This is a wonderful place, there are animals, horse rides, hay rides and face painters. J.R. had a blast and was exhausted by the time we got  home.

I love this picture. It's J.R.'s ear of course but if you look close there's a little freckle. This is just one of the little things that make J.R. unique. When he's big and "all grown up" I don't want to forget all these little things that make up my special little guy.

Okay, I apologize now for the picture. J.R. has a thing since he  became potty trained and he likes to name his poops. He'll say it's a shark, dinosaur, dog always some type of animal. This time he told me he pooped a J and a T.... sorry to say he was right... this is so gross but as a mom I'm impressed... LOL He said the J was for J.R. and the T was for Tonya!