4 Years Old

My little baby boy turned 4 years old, yesterday. Where has the time gone?

Birthday's throughout the years, 2010-2013.

He is growing up too fast. Though I do love seeing him learn and do new things.

This is where I take a moment and brag about James. He can write several letters. Pretty sure he knows how to write them all, but he'll only do his favorites X & Q on a regular basis. He loves to draw roads and train tracks. If given a piece of paper, that is usually what he ends up drawing on it. Then he'll start playing with his cars non the paper. James is my shadow all day long. He's always right there where ever I am. He most recently started wanting to help cook meals. He's become quite good at stirring what ever I have cooking on the stove.

My favorite thing is seeing him progress with his gross motor skills. He'll go up and down stairs that have shorter rises than your normal steps with out any help or holding on to the rail. He can remove his shoes and put them on. He can also get some pants on and off, though it takes a bit of a struggle to get him to try. Lately he's been trying to get his jacket on and off (mostly off), so maybe he'll have that down soon. This week accomplished climbing up the big slide on our play ground.

Yesterday, was a very fun day for James. He sure got spoiled. Friday night after he went to bed, Tracy and I filled his room with balloons. A tradition we started last year on his birthday. This year's total was 73 balloons. Would have been 75 but we had one casualty (not fun having a balloon blow up in your face) and one defected balloon.

He prefers to sleep in his reading corner, instead of in his bed.

James woke up and played with his balloons for awhile, which was nice it gave us time to wake up before he came to get us. He soon kept asking where all the balloons came from. Later in the day he told me, "I was sleeping and I woke up and there were balloons every where in my room." He cracks me up.

After breakfast, we went to see "The Lego Movie". It was such a cute movie. James loved it. Legos have become a recent discovery for him. (And a recent rediscovery for Tracy. He was playing with James' Legos last night as I was writing most of this post.)

Then we had his birthday party. We didn't have as many of his friends come that we were hoping for, but it was still fun for him. I probably wouldn't have done one, if he hadn't started saying his friends were coming for his birthday last week. So we threw it together kind of last minute and told people on Sunday they were invited.  It wasn't anything fancy, just pizza, cake and letting the kids play on the playground.

He very proud of his new skill at climbing the big slide at the playground.
Also you can see his sporting his "Birthday Boy" badge.

James and Emery posing for a picture.

Cake Time! He requesting a baseball cake.
I think it turned out fairly well.

He got carried away with blowing out the candles before we got a chance to sing. Silly boy.

He opened the present he got from his friends Emery and Caleb and it was a game. I didn't require anyone to bring presents so it was nice of them to get him one any way.

After the party, James and Tracy went swimming. I cleaned the house a bit and rested. I developed a terrible cold yesterday and it is kicking my butt. Terrible timing cold, terrible. Once they came back in James opened his present from us and grandparents. The video is kind of long.  He kept wanting to open the toys and play with them before moving on to the next present. (Ignore my non matching outfit. I had already changed into pj bottoms. Got to be comfortable.)

We played for a bit. Then sent James up to his room for quiet time. (My efforts in trying to keep with the daily schedule). He usually spends an hour in his room playing with his toys or he's allowed to watch shows/play games on the tablet. Occasionally he'll fall asleep, like today.

This is how I found him when I went to get him.

Then we just spent the rest of the evening playing some more.

We had such a fun day celebrating our sweet, silly, crazy, cute boy. Happy Birthday to James!

January Beach Trips

We took two beach trips this past month. The first trip was on December 31st. Tracy was picking up one of his professors from LAX, so we made it a day. We went to the beach, called Dockweiler State Beach, which is right by LAX. James went right up to the water and got his feet wet. He had only done that a few times before. Most of the time he's been too afraid of getting wet. 

Here are the pictures from that day:

Running from the waves!

I think he was pointing to a bird or maybe to a truck on the road.

He loves to follow Daddy.

Following Daddy.

Asking why there was a puddle here.

Tracy's turn with the camera.

Telling me to take my shoes off and get my feet wet.

Running away from another wave.

Our second trip this month was this past weekend, January 25. We took the Metrolink to Oceanside. Played on the beach, had shrimp tacos from the Tin Fish and malts from Ruby's. There was a storm off shore somewhere causing large waves, so lots of surfers were out. James actually ran right up to the water on his own, first time he didn't wait for one of us to come with him. It was a fun beach day.

Waiting for the train.

He kept filling his bucket up with water.

Daddy helping him fill his bucket.

Beautiful day.

We found a total of 3 Sand Dollars and
 some other shells we haven't seen on the beach before.

Sometimes the waves were strong enough to knock James down.

A nice big wave!

Such a cute picture of James holding onto his daddy
because a big wave is coming.

One of the times he ran back to fill up his bucket, he had to stop to do something else.

A video of Daddy and James playing together.

Who's this cutie at the beach?

One can not have enough ocean pictures. ;)

My turn to play with James.

Surfer!

Videos of Surfers.

There was this guy on the pier blowing giant bubbles. 

If you paid him a certain amount (we didn't find out how much), then you could have a turn.

Big Bubble.

A picture of the sunset from the train as we left the coast.

We sure do love the beach and feel lucky to live so close to the ocean!

My Little Helper

James has taken to helping me with just about everything I do. It is so nice to have him so willing to help and always asking to help. At times, though, I get frustrated because it is nice to not have a 4 year old helping you do somethings. Then I have to remind myself, I should feed into his willingness or he may stop wanting to help and then I will have to fight him to do things. 

He helped me more furniture last week. It was cute to see his little body trying to help me move bookcases. After we got on area of the living room how I wanted it, he sat down and started looking through photo albums. So I took a minute and told him what each album had pictures of.

He really loves to help me clean. He comes running over, "I want to wash." He has one of those corn popper push toys and pretends it is a vacuum. He'll follow me around while I'm vacuuming with his "vacuum". 

Last of all, his absolute favorite thing to do is help me cook.

Here he's rolling out dough for cinnamon rolls:

Here he's stirring the Alfredo Sauce we had for dinner one night:

I just love my little helper.