Cuatro Años para Joaquin!, Feliz Cumpleaños

So, taking a break from Christmas, let's talk about Joaquin's birthday! Yeah! Joaquin is now officially four, sigh for Mommy. Actually, while I miss my little baby sometimes, I'm pretty excited about four. He's really managed to grow-up some. And the fits are much, much less frequent, which is lovely. So I'm anxious to see how he changes this year. Anyway onwards to the party. We had a 'storytime' theme with everyone coming to our house. We still had most parents, but we also had a few kids all by theirselves. Which was kind of hectic, but also fun. We read several of Joaquin's favorite stories ('The Very Hungry Caterpillar', 'Curious George & the Dump Truck', 'Gingerbread Baby', and 'SkippyJon Jones') and sang songs and played games. The kids were great. They listened so well, Daniel's crazy rendition of SkippyJon Jones had them almost in hysterics. They were also very cooperative for the pinata. And man can some of them hit hard. One of Joaquin's little friends (not pictured) has an exquisite batting form, I swear she's a future little Babe Ruth. I tried to make every activity match the stories; for 'Gingerbread Baby' I had little gingerbread men cookies hidden around the room and the children 'chased' them. So of course we had to have a piata for 'SkippyJon Jones' and it had to have jelly beans for filling!

After Daniel broke the pinata and the kids grabbed their share we had cake and ice cream. We made a very hungry caterpillar cake which didn't turn out as well as I wanted it to, but was still charming enough for the kids to eat!!! Joaquin got some fabulous presents, but this was his favorite, a set of gears from Uncle Jeff and Aunt Alicia. Isn't it fabulous?

Joaquin y el Sentido de Navidad

We've been working on Christmas carols with Joaquin and doing Advent every night. (Which I highly recommend as a calming down activity for the evening. Gives him quality time with both parents and a relaxing fun activity.) It's very cute to see how well Joaquin picks up on stuff this year as compared to last year. Amazing what a difference a year can make. Since we have our Advent celebrations every night, he really remembers things. Right now he can tell you how the first candle is the prophecy candle, the second candle is the Bethlehem candle and the third candle is the Shepherd's candle. It's also nice because we sing the same carol for Advent all week long which makes it easy to learn. Now he knows "Away in a Manger" and "Go Tell it on the Mountain" and can sort of fake through "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem". (The movie is of Joaquin singing and doing actions to "Away in a Manger". He learned the actions at school and pulled them out the other night while we were singing. I was totally cuted out.) He also really understands the Christmas story as well. And, this is a total nerdy teacher thing, my little genius is totally able to answer some higher level Bloom's taxonomy questions! I stupidly asked him the other night, "what's important about a manger?" That's a hard question because it's not concrete like, "What is a manger" or "what did they use for baby Jesus to sleep in?" But he stepped right up, thought a second and said, "because baby Jesus used a manger for a crib". I was so proud!

Aspiraciones

Joaquin is beginning to have ambitions. Like most small children, he's always had goals, especially of the variety designed to annoy a mother. (Usually involving some cheap plastic toy doing something completely outside of it's intended usage and ability.) However, now we have some lifetime goals as well. Here you can see him creating a 'piping' system out of the gluesticks for my hot glue gun. (We were making our own Nativity scene, more of that in a coming blog.) He was very excited about his pipes and explained to me, ad nauseum, about how they piped in water from far away, etc. He apparently told a friend's mom about his love of pipes and she told him he should be a plumber when he grows up. This has taken hold of his fancy and he now consistently talks about when he grows up and is a plumber. My favorite of these was this, "Mommy, when I grow up and be a plumber, I want a little boy to help me like I help Daddy." So apparently Joaquin wants to be a plumber and a father. :) He's also become aware of how grown-ups can do more things than he can and how you have to learn to do some of those things. So he'll tell you that he'll do certain things when he's a grown-up. For example: he'll speak Spanish with Daddy when he's a grown-up, he'll drink coffee, etc. We also had a fun conversation with one of Dora's friends over Thanksgiving. She and Joaquin talked about how sometimes you don't like some food, but you may like it later because your tongue can sometimes change. Since it didn't come from me, Joaquin believed her and now talks about how he'll like some vegetable when he's grown-up. These last pictures are Joaquin's little drumset that he made with some of Daddy's

percussion equipment while he was supposedly 'helping' Daddy in the garage. Apparently the design was all Joaquin, Daddy just helped secure items together. I think he was inspired by the church's trap set from the other night.

La Foto de Navidad

A friend of ours with a nice camera very sweetly volunteered to take our Christmas photo, so we posed in front of the pretty church decorations after our normal Wednesday biblestudy. Such a great idea in theory but in reality Joaquin was totally wired after a night at Cubbies. He had quite a bit of trouble being still for the camera (as you can see). However, we were able to interest him in the church's advent wreath and that settled him a bit. We were able to get a pretty cute photo (which you will all get in your Christmas cards) even if the process was a little silly. However, the best photos were from afterward when we let Joaquin play the church's trap set (don't worry he was heavily supervised by Daddy). We were at a drum shop one time (getting something for Daniel) and Joaquin witnessed a young man going to town on a trap set. Ever since then, his idea of drum playing is somewhat frantic. So as you can imagine, he got somewhat worked up again. This photo is priceless because it captures his crazy face so well, even if only in profile. He had a great time and made

some seriously fun noise. Woo-hoo!

Decorado de Navidad

Yeah for Christmas decorating! Our first foray into beautifying for the holiday came while wrapping some presents (yes I actually did some shopping before I put up my tree, how's that for on the ball?) Joaquin has always preferred to 'help' me wrap, rather than spend some quality time with his toys. His help usually means making as much of a mess as he can with my wrapping supplies before I notice what he's up to and stop him. He's very quiet when engaged in this endeavor. Well this year he got the idea to use my paper cutter (the blade is couched inside plastic so I let him play with it as it's almost impossible for him to hurt himself with it) to cut foil ribbon into little strips. He made about a million of these and then announced he wanted to make a star and put them on it. So I got creative and we made a star with cardboard and gold wrapping paper. Then Joaquin glued several of his little foil ribbons on for bling. I made the tail long just for looks, but Joaquin, already the veteran of multiple tellings and pictures of the Christmas story, said, "It's the wise man star!" It does indeed look like many pictures of the star shining down on the magi traveling on their camels. Since Joaquin got to bring snack and show-and-tell in honor of his birthday this week, he brought his star. (It was perfect since the color theme was yellow and the shape theme was a star.) Apparently he gave his class quite the explicit rundown on our design process before explaining how it was the wise mens' star. Several days later we had our actual evening of decorating. First we got out Joaquin's big boy hammer again to hang some Christmas pictures. I saved some of the prettiest cards I received last year and framed them (Hobby Lobby was having a 50% off sale). They look beautiful, my new favorite decoration, and Daniel and Joaquin did a wonderful job of hanging them. They even got to use the backside of the hammer since we removed the props on the backs of the frames. (They were hanging crooked because of them.) Then we moved on to everyone's favorite, the tree! At least I assume it must be Joaquin's favorite because of his reaction here. He helped me put on quite a few ornaments although I admit to re-hanging some of them (he tends to decorate in clumps). This year we managed to get the top lights on our tree to work, but a small strip in the middle is still refusing to participate. I'm pretty confident that if Daniel can't figure it out, it's unlikely to be figured out. So we're pretending we don't notice it. :) These last pictures are extremely sweet ones of Joaquin helping me put up our Nativity scene. Unfortunately they also include some Mommy on what was, for a variety of reasons, one of the worst hair days of her life. I've tried to only upload the ones where you don't see much of me, but please, no heckling! Joaquin had a lot of fun setting it up since I actually let him hold the pieces this year .and he could remember all the main characters. He was especially fond of the donkey. I did give him the reminder of how he broke the cow as a much smaller

child and so he needed to remember not to pick up the people and play with him. This sobered him up and here he is staring solemnly at his damaged cow. Poor cow, our repair job still shows. He also helped me make a new Advent wreath (he picked out the red holly berries for it) and we've been having a lovely time doing Advent every evening. Especially since we have an Advent calender with little doors for everyday, each little door hides chocolate!! Won't we be so sad when Christmas is over. Don't worry, we're being very Mexican and vaguely Catholic and not putting out our Magi yet. We'll celebrate Dia de los Reyes and get some more celebration time. This family doesn't like to put Christmas to bed.

La Casa de los Pajaros

Over the break we also had some time to visit with old friends. Old friends of Daniel's that is. I don't know if Joaquin technically can have old friends when he's not even four. A few of them even brought presents, which was ridiculously nice. Monica's was a massive hit. She brought two little kits from Lowe's, one which had a tool apron, child-sized safety goggles and a small, but real, hammer. The other kit had nails and pre-cut wood pieces to make into a little house. Joaquin thought he'd died and gone to heaven. He and Daddy went out to Billpa-pa's shop and banged away. Joaquin is a pretty good hammerer for a toddler. I had forgotten that since he hasn't been that interested in carpentry lately. Apparently all he needed was real tools. He also loved the idea of building a bird house. I don't think it was actually meant to be a bird house since there's no hole for the birds to get in. Half the roof opens so you can see inside but

that's it. Still Joaquin was content with that. He kept telling us how it could open and the birdies could get out to go pee-pee and poo. Then they would go back in and be snug. And he wouldn't put snow in there because that was cold so he would just let warm sunlight in. He was so proud of it. Then he and Mi-mo painted it beautifully. Each side is a different color.

Thanksgiving 2010

We had a lovely Thanksgiving at Mi-mo and Billpa-pa's house. There was tons of outdoor exploring, especially since they had a smattering of snow! Thanksgiving itself was very yummy and Joaquin had a sweet little six year old girl to play with. They had a great time demonstrating all the acrobatics they could do. The accompanying video shows Joaquin demonstrating his 'handstand'.