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!)