Random . . .

JJ's truck taking a "drive" in the refrigerator

JJ "helping" with the dishes, notice his truck is in the tray next to his hand!

Tristan running the bases in t-ball. He's the one in the hat : )

Right before Tristan kicked JJ off the baseball field because JJ's not big enough to play baseball, per Tristan : )

JJ and I have had a pretty eventful month. Since coming back from Washington, my mom came to visit and we went up to LA for the weekend. The boys did pretty well together and since it's been so nice we were able to be outside most of the weekend, which really helps!

Yesterday, I started school. It was really hard since I've been with JJ for about the last month and now I don't get to hang out with him all day anymore : ( It was also hard since the lady that had been watching him decided to get a "real" job so JJ started his new "daycare" yesterday. A friend/navy wife will be watching him for the next few months. She has 3 kids and we've been over there a few times so he is comfortable with them, which really helped. Yesterday after I picked him up, he was exhausted from a big day of playing, but seemed to be happy that I was there to get him. Today, he gave me a hug right when I walked in, but then threw a huge tantrum when I said it was time to leave! I guess it's good that he's having fun!

JJ randomly comes out with new words these days and his current new word is "cool." It's pretty funny, but I like that he says I'm "cool" : ) He's also been saying "no" a lot lately. It's fun when he uses it correctly as an answer to a question, i.e., Me - "JJ, do you want to go take a nap" JJ - "no"! It's not as funny when he is intentionally doing something he shouldn't and telling me about it, i.e., last night while I was doing laundry he walked in and started turning the dial on the washing machine saying, "no, no, no, no" the whole time he was doing it!!! It's so annoying and cute!

We hit one HUGE milestone this week - we're now more than half way through Brian's deployment!!! We're finally into a "real" countdown and very happy about it : )

Talking and Sliding!

Saying "thank you" to Oma!

So JJ has been talking up a storm lately! Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's frustrating : ( It was fun a couple days ago when he got up from his nap and was going through his list of words and then looked at me and said "tickle" which was a new word that I hadn't heard him say. So much fun to have new words!

A very large frustration lately though is that he thinks I should understand more than I do. At least a few times a day he will look at me and say, "a mabeb abba maabea babba." I have no idea what he is saying, but he thinks I should! He also on an every day basis will walk into the kitchen and say, "milk, cracker, stick (a fruit/vegetable stick thing that he loves), apple, babba (still no idea what this means), banana." When he does this, I have no idea what he actually wants and keep offering things until he finally eats something! Sometimes it's soooo frustrating for both of us : (

This week JJ starting going down the slide all by himself! He is definitely showing that he has no fear and will do whatever he wants. He is a handful!!!

Home again, home again. . .

We're home from a wonderful trip up to Washington and had a great time visiting friends and family. Since we were there for almost 10 days, it was more of a relaxed visit which was really nice. We were able to get down to Portland to see our friends Paul and Stacy again and to Vancouver to see all my dad's family, which included a dinner out at a pizza place where JJ, Tristan, and my cousin's daughter Ryland had the run of the restaurant and created some real havoc! We also got to go up to Snohomish for a few days and visit our friends Tifani and Michael and their two boys, Elijah who is almost 2 and a half, and Isaac who is 4 months. It was so much fun to spend time with them but it did scare me back into taking birth control for a little while longer!!!!

We stayed at my parents' house while we were there and JJ loves playing the piano both with my mom and by himself! I think he is a budding musician and maybe he'll play Brian's tuba someday : )

We're now back to sunny San Diego which we are both enjoying! It is strangely warm right now, but I'm not complaining : ) The only problem is that JJ doesn't have any short sleeve pajamas that fit him so I think I'm currently cooking him in his crib!

Fun in Washington. . .

Cousin Sawyer

Friend Elijah

Friend Harry

Grandma

Uncle Kevin

Loving on Cousin Sawyer

It's sooo cold here. Can't wait to get back to the 70's in San Diego!

Children's Museum!

16 Months, a few days late. . .

The little girl JJ was following around until he ran into her and they bonked heads which apparently sent her into shock since she didn't move for like 5 minutes!

Tristan "let" JJ ride around his old tricycle : )

JJ is now 16 months old, crazy! Not a lot has changed in the last month; he's becoming more vocal, more opinionated (for the last 3 nights he will only let me read Pat the Bunny for his bedtime book), and still a horrible night time sleeper. He is now down to 1 nap during the day which is better and he seems to enjoy since today he napped for 3 hours with only one break half way through due to a very dirty diaper! Since I'm not working right now, I got to sleep too which was amazing : )

He did accomplish three things last week for the first time -

1. he climbed out of his crib (I think he got out since Tristan was here and he really wanted to play with him)

2. he pulled the wallpaper border down off his wall (I'm not sure exactly why he did this, perhaps he thought it was too girly)

3. he went up to the front of the church for the Children's Sermon for the first time (the Christmas Eve service at my church was the family service and filled with kids. When the pastor asked the kids to come up, JJ immediately ran down the aisle by himself to follow the other kids. He definitely isn't shy!)

My parents were in town for almost 2 weeks which was great. JJ really enjoyed having them here and so did I : ) We spent about a week with Michael, Krista, and Tristan also. It's so fun to watch the boys together. JJ follows Tristan around and wants to do everything he's doing. He also harasses him a little by poking him and stealing his chair and typical boy stuff. Tristan pretends to hate him, but when he thinks we're not looking, they're really sweet together and play and "talk" to each other. It's so great having them close.

We did a lot while everyone was here, they went to the Wild Animal Park in the rain, we all went to the Children's Museum (pictures to come tomorrow), we went to church, we went to the park, and played a lot. It was a great couple of weeks to be followed up by us going up to Washington this week. The fun never stops!

Fun with Grandma and Grandpa. . .