Nochebuena 2011

 We had a lovely Christmas Eve, Joaquin sang with the kids choir for both services (fortunately right at the beginning, so we could go home after the second performance.)  He actually did a good job the first service (he knew the words and the tune, which is impressive for a little guy), but was a little squirrelly for the second.  However he did enjoy the Advent service and the candlelit rendition of 'Silent Night'.  (Mostly because he got to hold a candle)  Then we went back to Grandma and Grandpa's for some food with friends and family.  We attempted to take a sweet picture of Joaquin with Uncle Matty since they were very matchy (quite unintentionally).  Of course Joaquin doesn't take posed pictures anymore, so you're seeing the best of a crazy series of pictures.  However once Uncle Matty started playing some Charlie Brown christmas music, Joaquin was enraptured.  First he danced (surprisingly despite having never seen the movie he does a great Peanuts dance) and then he played along.  It was actually super cute to watch him playing with Uncle Matty, trying to make his hands look like Uncle Matty's.  Maybe he is ready for those piano lessons.

Nieve, nieve, nieve....

December turned out to be a wet month (thank goodness!), at least in the form of snow.  We had several snow storms, although the snow did not stay very well around our house.  Fortunately Grandma and Grandpa's house is right in the snow zone and faces north.  The snow builds up in their yard and stays for awhile.  So we put on Joaquin's snowsuit one evening (a gift from Mi-mo that fortunately went home with us because it won't fit next year and we're not getting up to CS this snow season) and went to play in their yard.  It had to be an evening, cause Mommy's not up for crazy outdoor play currently.  Joaquin, Daddy and Uncle Matty had a good time throwing snowballs at each other and the house before they finally got cold and wet enough to come inside.  We had to warm up a very wet, cold but happy Joaquin.  It takes a lot to make him admit cold.  But bless the snowsuit that let him stay relatively dry and enjoy an snowy night.  And bless a nice daddy and uncle, willing to play in the cold with a crazy little boy.

El Rio de los Luces

As part of our Christmas festivities we went to the 'River of Lights' at the botanical gardens.   It's an Albuquerque tradition that I've never been to, but having a kid means you do all sorts of things.  It was quite crowded so we had to park at the zoo and shuttle over, which I think was a huge part of the fun for Joaquin.  He loves buses.  The light sculptures themselves were quite amazing, and Daniel and I were blown away by the artistry.  However Joaquin was more interested in the plants at the garden and watching sticks float in the pond.  He did enjoy some of the sculptures, especially the ones that moved.  I think his favorite was a cheetah that 'ran' across a wall.  Despite being up way past Joaquin's bedtime, I think Daddy was the one who got cold and tired first.  But it was definitely worth going, and I think we'll make it a family tradition.
 

¡Cinco Años!

Joaquin is five!  Amazing isn't it?  Five seems very old to me.  We had a bug party (of course), with a cake that mommy did her best to decorate buggily, the Cootie game, a bug hunt, a bug story time, some drawing of mythical bugs and a giant star piñata.  Okay so the last part wasn't terribly on theme, but Joaquin picked it out.  It was actually a very traditional Christmas piñata and had a giant storage space for maximum candy spillage!  Also the kids were able to break most of it open, which is a big advantage.  Daniel did get to give it a serious whack to make sure all the corners were emptied out (that's important for his enjoyment of a party), but in general the kiddos were tough!  These little boys are getting bigger for sure!  I feel like people are also really getting to know Joaquin.  He received several lab kits for his birthday (we have been enjoying them immensely) as well as bug themed games and books.  Oh my little scientist you are your own person aren't you!  How can five years seem like forever and yet nothing at the same time?

La Litera

Starting on Eliana's room was more difficult because we had to finish some outstanding projects first.  The biggest was Joaquin's bunk bed.  But I am happy to announce we are finally done!  It looks lovely and Joaquin has discovered the advantage of having the ladder right next to his dresser.  The top is a California twin size to allow for a potentially taller teenage Joaquin to have a loft bed.  But the side rails are pretty high so Mommy doesn't have to worry about rolling movements in the middle of the night!  Joaquin immediately started sleeping on the top bunk (he was very excited) and now picks and chooses depending on how the spirit moves.  He also keeps insisting that Eliana will sleep on the bottom bunk.  After many discussions about this, I think he's aware that her first years will be in the crib, but he still likes to talk about it.  I hope he always wants her around this much.

El Cuarto de Eliana

In the midst of Christmas cheer and excitement we also have to finish Eliana's room!  Johanna came over and helped us paint since Mommy was kicked out due to Eliana's presence in utero.  At first Joaquin hung out with me, but he got excited and eventually went in to help.  His unorthodox attire is due to the fact that it's much easier to clean paint off a little boy than off his clothes.  He actually did a fair amount of painting before we decided he had to go to bed.  I was quite impressed with his industriusness.  So now Eliana can know that even Joaquin was prepping for her arrival.  They didn't get it all done on this occasion, but now her room is a beautiful light yellow and most of the furniture is in.  We are almost ready!

Decorando

Apparently decorating provided Joaquin with some inspirations.  Using his Goobi magnets (pic right) he made a 'spinner'.  At least that's what he called it.  He told me all about how he made a triangle (over quiet time) with a connected handle.  He wanted to hold it up and let it spin.  Unfortunately the triangle was too big and fell apart when he picked it up.  He then experimented and found if he made a triangle out of several smaller triangles it would hold together when picked up.  Then he thought it was cool and made this triangle.  Mommy thought the explanation was the coolest part. :)  This next structure is an 'ornament' and a holder for it.  Also created during quiet time, which is when Joaquin does his best work.  I had to come help him strengthen the stand so it was able to hold up the ornament.  But the idea and the structure was all Joaquin.  His version of Christmas I guess.

Galletas de Navidad

After Christmas decorating comes cookie baking!  Joaquin is surprisingly less helpful recently with baking than he used to be.  Definitely more into eating the ingredients!   This year we made several batchs of peanut butter blossoms, one for eating and one for taking to school for his birthday snacktime.  I put Joaquin in charge of unwrapping the chocolate kisses with instructions that he could only have one for every dozen unwrapped.  (So nice that he's such a good counter that this is possible.)  I'm not sure he held to that perfectly, but he was pretty good.  We even made a pyramid with his unwrapped kisses.  He was very proud of it.  He also helped putting the kisses onto the warm cookies.  And they were very yummy. :) 

¿Mi Cartera?

This is Joaquin's invention for carrying his change.  It's a can lid taped to his pants leg.  Then he used his strong magnets to hold a string on the lid and the other end of the string on an old Altoids tin.  He filled the tin with coins and came out to the living room to show me proudly.  (He sounded a little like the Jacob Marley scene in "A Christmas Carol".)  He told me it was a great way to carry around his money.  I suggested that perhaps most people just put their money in their pockets and he could too.  He said this was more convenient.  

El Arbol de Navidad

Christmas, woo-hoo!  We had a great time putting up the tree and decorating.  Joaquin's sense of equal distribution of ornaments needs some work, but not his enthusiasm.  I loved how cute he looked standing on his stool so he could reach higher.  If I had been mindful about dressing him cutely we could have used that for the Christmas card!  As it was, we went to the shop and stroll around Old Town (they light up the tree and luminarias and have all sorts of music, etc.) in the midst of some picturesque snow drizzle.  (Fortunately our December has been wet!  With snow and rain and everything in between.  We need it desperately!)  This second pic is us in front of the historic church San Felipe de Neri.  It's beautiful and we look coordinated, but getting Joaquin to cooperate was difficult.  We did manage one semi nice picture (which if you get our Christmas cards you will see!), but this is a sample of what most of the pictures look like.  He's just lucky he's really cute in person!

Thanksgiving 2011

So, since it's the middle of December, I guess it's time for a Thanksgiving blog!  We had a very full Thanksgiving which, per usual, was somewhat inadequately photographed.  First we had a "Thank you Jesus Feast" at Joaquin's preschool.  It was very cute, Grandma and I went and ate while admiring some lovely centerpieces made by Joaquin and chatting with other mommies.  My favorite was the poster of things they were thankful for.  Due to my son there were plenty of bugs and snakes on there, but there was also hand sanitizer.  Some child is a budding germaphobe if I ever saw one!  Once school was out, we drove to El Paso for a fun few days with family.  Joaquin had a great time since the relatives were very impressed with his encyclopedic bug knowledge and listened intently while he expounded.  Nothing more fun than a bunch of adults willing to listen to you!  On actual Thanksgiving he was somewhat bored (food doesn't interest him that long) so Billpa-pa and then Daddy took him outside to admire the "barracuda" vacuum in Elodia's pool.  (It's good to be in El Paso where hanging out outside is actually feasible in November.)  Joaquin loved it!  He watched that little robot vacuum zoom around for a long time, and then had fun dipping plastic cups in and trying to capture air bubbles.  When we finally got him back inside he was wet and freezing!  But we warmed him up with snuggles and he behaved pretty well for the actual dinner.  Per usual he enjoyed hanging out with his Tias, Marcela and Elisa, even learning a few games.  I love this picture of him watching Marcela on the iPad.  The video is of him trying to master the 'Bop it' game Elisa purchased on Black Friday.  It was actually surprisingly hard, challenging even the adults.  Joaquin managed to do it some after practice, but it's pretty hard coordinationally for a little guy!  We had a great time, but headed home on Saturday to rest up for the coming week. 

Dibujos de Joaquin

And now for a brief break from actual events to an artistic moment with Joaquin.  Since he scribbled for so long before breaking out into full-fledged big boy drawings, I still find Joaquin art somewhat miraculous.  This is fortunate because he creates a lot of it.  He knows exactly where the computer paper is and that's his favorite backdrop.  When we ran out recently I realized that (due to Daniel and my limited printer usage) he had drawn, cut or glued through 3/4 of a ream in sixth months.  Goodness!  This first drawing is a very typical Joaquin effort of a 'mythical bug'.  This bug is an Curly-Eared Ice bug, who eats ice.  You can see the curly ears and you need to know that he will sneak into your drink to get some ice, but usually leaves after getting one piece.  So if you want to avoid drinking him, wait for your drink to cool down.  They are also found at the top of the Sandias where there is frequently ice because it is high up.  I'm not making any of this up, Joaquin is.  The second masterpiece is a painting of a dragon from school.  The head is toward the bottom, with wings outstretched toward the top.  The red and yellow streaks pointing toward the bottom are his fire.  The third drawing is a broom moth caterpillar.  Joaquin found one on our Spanish broom and after showing mommy and then being persuaded to leave it in its home was inspired to draw the little guy.  It's actually a relatively accurate representation of its colors and it was indeed spiky.  The green lines extended from the branch are the stick leaves of the Spanish broom.  It was important to draw the plant since Joaquin had named this caterpillar the Spanish broom caterpillar so to identify it you needed to know its home.  Seriously.  When he and Daddy trimmed the Spanish broom a few weeks later they found three more who are currently metamorphosizing inside cocoons in Joaquin's bugbox.  We looked it up and found they were caterpillars who prefer Brooms (in our case Spanish broom) as they turn into Broom Moths.  Go budding entymologist, go.

La Luna

One of our favorite libraries had a special 'moon night'.  They had telescopes, real owls, moon lectures and a moon storytime.  Joaquin begged to go and see the owls, so we went.  He looked at the owls for about 4 seconds.  (He was a little blase, he, Daddy and Mi-mo had gone to the Weems art festival the week before and saw lots of hawks, etc. so the owls weren't as impressive as normal.)  However the story time was lots of fun and then we went to the telescopes.  Unfortunately, the sky was too cloudy for serious moon-gazing, but at one point Jupiter became clear enough to see through the telescope and Joaquin thought it was super cool.  Doesn't he look so adult peering through the eyepiece? 

La Brújula (why is the word for compass so similar to witch?)

It must be said that Joaquin has always had interests in unusual things.  So the fact that one day I walked into his room to see him creating a compass rose out of tinker toys wasn't really a surprise.  But it was very cute nonetheless.  He didn't call it a compass rose, he told me it was for finding directions.  Then he told me about how there was a volcano direction and a mountain direction and the other directions didn't have names.  I'm ashamed to admit I was confused for a couple of minutes, but then I realized he's a true Albuquerquean.  East - mountains, west - volcanos, north and south whatever!

Halloween 2011

 So December first is a good time for a Halloween blog, right?  I've officially become a horrible blogger lately.  And I have no real excuse now that I'm down to only one child.  Well, with an attempt to make amends, here is Joaquin's Halloween blog.  He decided he wanted to be a robot.  We had been planning a Curious George costume with Daddy as the man with the yellow hat, but Joaquin changed his mind.  He wanted to be a robot like when George dressed up like a robot.  Go figure.  While I made up a body (of pizza cartons and tinfoil) for him to wear at AWANA, the costume really took off when Daddy got a hold of it.  He fixed it very solidly with foil tape, jazzed up the painted egg carton buttons with a outside coat of gold paint and created a helmet.  For both Daddy and Joaquin it was very important that he could see out but that no one else could see his face.  The spray-painted a screen gold to reflect light and therefore people's glances.  This was placed in a box covered with tinfoil and attached to the body.  Then they added LED push on lights and dry hose arms.  I think they had more fun actually making the costume then actually trick or treating!  But isn't that the point of making your own costume?  On Halloween they sallied forth to show off their craftmanship (I stayed home sporting my pregnant mommy passing out candy costume) and were a great hit around the neighborhood.  After returning with an already obscene amount of candy, we continued our last tradition of avoiding the more grown-up trick or treaters by turning off our lights and driving to our various nearby friends and relatives.  Aunty Boo-boo got a visit as well as the Sturdys, Chelsea and Grandma & Grandpa.  Everyone was suitably impressed. :)  Joaquin wanted to surprise Grandpa who had never seen any part of his costume, so Daniel and I had to hide behind my parent's courtyard wall while Joaquin rang the doorbell solo (after first explaining to some confused and suspicious neighbors).  Then he marched inside without saying a word, which of course tipped Grandpa off as to the identity of this particular robot.  The last photograph is Daniel's favorite since he feels we could make a lot of money by selling it to the National Enquirer.  "The Eagle has landed"  One Headley tip for future Halloween fun, the push-on LED lights turned out to be very helpful as flashlights for the whole family, I would definitely recommend their usage on any costume as a convenience and safety measure.

Adios Jamie

We recently took our foster daughter Jamie to live with her grandparents.   It was definitely a rough weekend, but made better by a visit to the Carrolls in Phoenix.  I think that I can safely say that although we all miss her (including Joaquin) we are glad she's with them, and recovering, slowly.  When we got to Phoenix, the Carrolls had planned for us to accompany them to a "trunk & treat" at a friend's church.  Admittedly it was a week early, but still fun.  We didn't have any costumes so we borrowed the Carroll's from last year - The Incredibles!  We looked great despite the fact that Joaquin had no idea who we were and I was a pregnant Elasti-girl.  We played little kid fair games and Joaquin tried bobbing for apples, much harder than it looks apparently.  So after accumulating too much candy we went home to rest up for our next adventure.  Back to Schnepf farms for their pumpkin patch festival.  We rode some rides for children and Daddy and Joaquin rode a roller coaster (that's the picture with the rather unnerved Joaquin).  To recover we visited the petting zoo and Joaquin showed Daddy the young goats that was convinced were the older version of his ugly goats from February.  We had a great time and it definitely took our minds off of everything.  However I could tell Joaquin was missing Jamie since he got along with Allie and Bella extremely well.  Sunday morning they spent like 3 hours just hanging out and watching TV, etc. while the adults lolligagged getting ready and chatting.  And they didn't try to beat each other up or start some screaming fest.  SERIOUSLY!  That never happens, Joaquin must have needed some girl love right then.  Thanks Carrolls.



Corral de Calabazas

It must be said that Heather is pretty good at research.  In general, if she proposes something she's thoroughly looked into times, locations and necessary equipment.  Quite convenient really.  Especially in this instance as she found a cute little Pumpkin Patch for free in a vacant lot on the west side of town.  It was really small and wouldn't entertain big children for very long, but considering it was free, we felt comfortable enjoying ourselves and then leaving.  They had an amazing variety of pumpkins and gourds, which fortunately Joaquin found just as intriguing as I did because I spent a lot of time looking at them and wanted to buy some to bring home.  He thought that was a great idea and even helped me pick them out.  So I could say it was for my son!  They had a corn maze (really some metal fencing put in a maze with corn stalks woven through it) which Joaquin was very excited about.  We (meaning Aunty Boo-boo, Mommy and Uncle Matty) let him lead us around and he promptly brought us out again with very few wrong turns.  Joaquin really is very good at mazes, paper or apparently 3-D.  They also had these little troughs attached to old-fashioned water pumps were you could do rubber ducky races.  Joaquin LOVED this.  Seriously, after he beat Uncle Matty like a gazillion times I had a tough time pulling him away from it.  He developed a technique of a giant pump right at the beginning to jump start and then some frantic pumping to finish.  My favorite was watching him and Uncle Matty attempt to rope a steer dummy.  As Matthew would be the first to admit, despite his two turns as a stage cowboy, his roping skills are abysmal.  Joaquin's are likewise untrained but much more zealous.  They didn't hardly come close, but they did entertain mommy.  We then drove around on the little tractor trikes (or rather Joaquin did) and admired a variety of animals.  I liked the goats who were climbing around the top of the little structure made for them, but Joaquin was fascinated by the turkeys.  Admittedly turkeys are interesting and they had an older male with the full plummage, snood and wattle.  He was definitely something to see.  Their plummage isn't as colorful as a peacock, but it is totally gorgeous.  Finally we paid for our swan gourd and dragon toe squash (seriously!  that's the name) and went home.  Fun and it got me out of a long drive to the McCall pumpkin patch that is the normal October destination for Albuquerqueans.  Good job Boo-boo! 

Célula

Oh the magic of a boy and his bugs.   Apparently Daniel talked a bit about Joaquin and his enjoyment of his praying mantis Fast Catcher because when a coworker saw another praying mantis outside the trailer he caught it for Joaquin.  Daniel faithfully brought it home and we managed to keep this one alive for another few weeks before she laid an egg sac and then died.  Joaquin named her Cell because that's what she was made of.  I feel that this name would apply just as well to a whole slew of living creatures, but hey!  Joaquin had a great time watching her catch and eat crickets (especially since she was a much more ferocious hunter than Fast Catcher and she always ate head first) and Daniel got these rather cool pics.  Joaquin handled her passing very well, especially since after she laid her egg sac we warned him it might be imminent.  We have plans to release the praying mantis nymphs (they hatch after winter apparently) in grandma's garden since they'll be helpful eating pests.  (We decided on grandma's garden since I asked Joaquin who had a beautiful garden that might need them and he thought of grandma's) Fortunately we seem to be developing an interest in snakes recently since Mommy is tired of reading books about bugs!

Los Thunderbirds

So realistically I shouldn't be the one writing this blog since I wasn't there, but here's some pics of Daniel and Joaquin at the air show!  The Thunderbirds came to Albuquerque and since Mommy was occupied at a little shower for Eliana the boys decided to be manly.  They had a great time.  They got to see a Stealth Bomber fairly close and an Osprey and all sorts of stuff.  Then of course there was also the Thunderbirds themselves.  I saw them a bunch when I was a little girl (part of an Air Force brat childhood I guess) so I was a little emotional about Joaquin watching them too.  Oddly enough Joaquin always includes how after they parked they got to ride on a school bus (apparently the base was PACKED, so there was a lot of organization to keep things moving).  This bodes well for his first year at school.  He was also full of facts about the rescue helicopter he saw and what it did.  Nice father son time.