Más Joaquin y Allie

Joaquin and Allie have been spending considerable time together b/c of swimming lessons and it's starting to show in their outfits. Tuesday after swimming lessons, Kara and I pull out outfits with shirts the exact same color of orange. You would have thought we'd purchased them together. So when we went back to our house for lunch we had to take a few pictures as they were so coordinated. Here they are on Joaquin's playset posing like the well-photographed children they are. They played relatively sweetly for a long time and then we picked a bunch of our grapes and they chowed down. Our grapevine has surprisingly good grapes and Allie loved them!

Fingir

I really need to write a post on Joaquin pretending. He is turning into a serious pretender lately and I find it very endearing. I used to play pretend for hours, and my brother still remembers what a great imagination I had (although now he claims I stole much of it from books). Joaquin doesn't yet make up a story, but he definitely pretends very concrete events with disparate objects. For example, tonight in the bathtub, he took the cup we use for washing his hair and made me tea in it, stirring with his toy trowel and pretending to pour invisible milk in. He also has this fabulous game with Daddy where his bed is a car. When the game first started, he and Daddy would look under his blankets at the foot end and pretend to tinker with the 'engine' or 'change the oil'. Since he knows where Daddy keeps the actual car parts, he quickly learned to run to the garage and get out the air filters, etc. and use them as props.

On this particular occasion he and Daddy had created an engine from a variety of frequently replaced car parts (which is why Daniel had them on hand) and then brought the steering wheel from Joaquin's 'bike' to the other end. They 'went' a number of places including the zoo and the grocery store. (The picture on left is the engine as it looked when I picked up the blanket.)

My favorite recently has been the "farmonium". Joaquin is a wild fan, as you probably know, of "Max & Ruby". One of his favorite episodes shows Max playing cowboy with a variety of props like a harmonica and a hobbyhorse. Yesterday in the car, Joaquin was holding the milk bottle from his happy meal up to his mouth and calling it his "farmonium". Then he asked me what he was doing with it, I had absolutely no clue so I said (very intelligently), "I don't know". Once he said, "I'm making music" I realized he meant a harmonica! Like Max's harmonica he told me. Tonight he turned his comb in a harmonica and rode his popper around as a hobby horse while Daddy sang the cowboy song for him. (Video below!)

No, no - Sí, sí

We were very fortunate to have Mi-mo and Billpa-pa come down last weekend to see Joaquin, I mean the play. (They said it was the play, but you guess what they actually came for!) Of course we took no pictures b/c I only take pictures when other people prompt me, but this video is of Joaquin reading a book that Mi-mo brought him. This particular book is very cute, the first page of every segment tells you "No, no" and then there's a picture what you shouldn't do, and then the next page says, "yes, yes" and there's a picture of what you should do. Joaquin, not being old enough to be bothered by the preachy message, loved it. Since you change many of the words each time, it's real easy for him to read. So he's been reading it to us since she left. The way he says, "no, no" absolutely slays me. Here's a video of him 'reading' it to Daddy and Aunty Boo-boo (that's the woman you sort of see that looks like me).

Natación (Verano 2009)

Now that we've had about a week of swimming lessons, I figure it's time I started blogging about them! By some lucky quirk of planning Kara and Allie are available to do swimming lessons with us! Yeah! We've had a ton of fun with them and a ton of fun doing a variety of playing before and after the lessons. Admittedly I've been less impressed with the quality of instruction this year as compared to last year. While the pool is (albeit only minimally) warmer than last year's ice bath, we are pretty much left to our own devices as far as instructions go. Admittedly toddlers don't follow instructions well, but if I thought I was completely capable of teaching my son to swim I would be doing it on my own. Fortunately the swimming lessons cost so little that they are cheaper than actually paying to play in the pool for that amount of time and we do get a whole area to ourselves without big kids splashing so that's a serious plus. We also get to haul both sets of grandparents and daddies along and even adopted grandparents Joe and Karen Morgan. What are swimming lessons for if not to take pictures? Pictures of me in a bathing suit with awful hair that I currently detest but will no doubt look back on when 60 and think how skinny I was. It's also been fun because Allie gets restless being held for that long and likes to switch Mommies. Yeah! I love that she likes me enough for this to be a treat. I have a great time with her, not solely because she's Kara's kidlet. She's currently the outlet for my little girl longings. Here's a few pictures of her and Joaquin at the park after swimming lessons. This is Allie's swimsuit cover-up which is slightly too big, but makes her look absolutely angelic. We've got one more week and apparently this week we get to play in the kiddie pool! So hopefully we'll have more cute pictures of our two intrepid adventurers.

Solana

So Joaquin and I have a new game. I sing, "You are my sunshine..." and then he says, "Who's your sunshine?" and I say "You're my sunshine" and then he says, "I go away" and I tell him no, I'd be so sad, please don't go, etc. Then he asks me to sing the 'Go away' song again. This can go on for a good fifteen minutes before he's bored. I guess he just likes knowing he's important to me. He's also learned to sing the 'Sunshine' song and it is so super cute to hear. Something about the little toddler over-inflection is riotously funny in this particular song. I'm sorry if you can't see the video very well (it was dark in his room and he's just lying on the floor waving his legs in the air), but really hearing it is the best part.

Papá durmiente

Does this seem odd to anyone else? Sunday was a long day (church, matinee performance and time at the grandparents) and apparently it wore Joaquin, I mean Daddy, out. I put on Max and Ruby for them to watch while I finished cleaning up and running Joaquin's bath. I came back and this is what I found. I'm not sure what's funnier, the fact that Daddy fell asleep on Joaquin's lap or that Joaquin is so unfazed by it. He is apparently used to his Daddy falling asleep randomly. Many times after Daniel comes home from work, his job is entertaining Joaquin while I make dinner. Frequently they close the door to his room and I have no idea what's going on. According to Daniel, he commonly starts dozing off and Joaquin will put him in his bed, tuck him in and attempt to turn on the noise machine. Then he plays quietly while Daddy sleeps. I knew Daniel had a racket going on!