Señor Rogers

Hooray! We've discovered that while the full shows are impossible to buy anywhere, clips of Mr. Rogers are viewable on the PBS website. Daniel and Joaquin spent close to an hour watching the clips from various factories. You can see from his rapt expression in this photograph that Joaquin was totally absorbed. I'm not sure what his favorite was, but he definitely enjoyed the crayon factory, one of my favorites of old. I had heard, but never really believed until I had a boy, that boys frequently prefer non-fiction. Joaquin definitely likes informational books and these clips where right up his alley. Another example of this information love is Joaquin's 'ornament' (pictured here). I forget what brought the subject up, but Joaquin was insisting that you can't bend metal. So to show him that it really depends on the type of metal and the thickness, Daniel got a metal coat hanger out and bent it and I got out some tin foil. Joaquin was quite intrigued by this and we had a nice discussion about different types of metal. We also showed him, using a small refridgerator magnet, how the aluminum foil isn't magnetic but the steel coathanger is. Then we discovered that nail clippers are way too thick to bend, even by someone as powerful as Joaquin, and are magnetic. Joaquin was so enchanted by this information that he created an 'ornament' out of our various different examples. While I saved the nail clipper, he insisted the rest of it be packed away with the other Christmas decorations. Here's hoping he doesn't recognize it next year. :)

Regalos

We received a few gifts for Christmas that I'm still a little unsure of. The first came from Daniel's Uncle Sal. Remembering that I'm a football fan, he bought Joaquin a little football outfit, complete with helmet and football. But he says that he couldn't remember what team I favored, so he just went with his, the Steelers! I can't help but feel that it's a subversive attempt to steal Joaquin's potential football loyalty. Ah well, currently it's no bed of roses being a Broncos fan anyway. The second gift was a laser space gun from Geoffpa-pa. I don't want to be one of those mother's who think they can protect their children from everything but I was hoping to keep him from guns for a little while longer. Although admittedly he already makes guns from his Duplos and pretends to shoot me, so who am I kidding. It is pretty cool as it makes laser beam noises and has flashing leds. What boy cold resist it? Both he and Daddy make this face when playing with it. Still, I think I'm going to have to really consider my policy on guns and what kind of playing about them we do. Eeek!

El Dia de los Reyes, 2011

We celebrated Dia de los Reyes again this year. Joaquin even elected to stay home from Cubbies and celebrate with us and some adult friends. (He was warned we would be boring, but he seemed to have a great time.) Here he is modeling his creation for holding his pants' legs up. It didn't seem to really work, but it definitely invoked images of my father clipping up his pants legs when he wanted to bicycle. Since Joaquin has never seen that happen, I thought he was very clever. And here's a similar pose after discovering the bean in his portion of our Rosca. Hooray for our king for the day. I tried a new recipe this year and it was definitely yummy and a little less sickly sweet than last year. But it didn't look near as pretty since the fruits on the top went through the baking cycle. However, dried apricots are still good baked, and luscious when warm. You can see we had very little trouble eating it. Joaquin helped me maked it of course, but that wasn't our only creative outlet for this mini-holiday. I also finished creating the Magi for our Nativity Scene. I ended up making them after Joaquin went to sleep so he was quite surprised and excited to see them the next morning. To make sure he didn't feel totally out of the loop, he helped me create and attach the gifts. He can also tell you which one is gold, which one is frankincense and which one is myrrh. He was very specific about that. I even had to pretend to put some olive

oil in the myrrh 'jar' so that it would have some sort of fragrant oil in it. We ended the day by putting out some hay (actually some dead flowers from the garden) for the generous, gift-giving camel and singing "We Three Kings of Orient are". Fun times.

El Frío en Enero

We've been working on a new dresser for Joaquin (and by we I mean mostly Daniel, with happy hampering efforts by Joaquin). However January has turned out to be a ridiculously cold month here. And I mean ridiculous, this is Albuquerque not Minnesota for crying out loud. So we had to be creative when the time came for some gluing. Hey, the house was warm enough to make it dry.

Eve de Año Nuevo, 2010

For us New Year's Eve is more than just the welcoming of the new year, it is also Great-Grandma's birthday! So we started our festivities by eating dinner at Buca di Beppo's with the whole fam. Which of course means Joaquin got to kick up some ruckus with his beloved Uncle Bryan. Here they are as hoodie buddies. Bless that man, he's so good at entertaining Joaquin. After that we started a late evening with the Carrolls who were still in town (albeit it just barely). Here Kara and I are looking 'lovely' in our fabulous headbands. When I think of the number of New Years I've rung in with that girl. She totally kicks Daniel's butt in that arena (although obviously New Years with him are special for different reasons). We were only going to stay until we couldn't stand the kiddos anymore, but once we started the Curious George going they were little angels. There's some magic about toddlers where they know when it's past bedtime and that they must be charming or be put away. Really, for a good time with your tot, keep them up about a half hour past bedtime. So we stayed and stayed up until midnight. Here's Daniel breaking out the champagne and channeling his inner KISS persona. I think he was attempting to imply that we were wildly partying, although That's only slightly ironic as we aren't really that much of party-ers and so drinking champagne with friends might count as it for us. Here's the six of us at actual midnight. (Shiloh is represented only by his thumb and the children by eyes.) We look a little bleary, but we made it!. And here's Allie and Joaquin embracing and kissing at midnight (It looks a little blurry b/c Joaquin was moving out from pecking her on the cheek). Hey, all the adults were doing it. It's actually quite fitting as their tempestous relationship has been much more amicable this Christmas season. Let's look forward to peaceful relations in 2011.

Los Primos de Mi Corazon

Fortunately Rachel and Kara were both home the week before Christmas so we got to have our annual playdate with Joaquin's other 'cousins'. I love this collage Kara made of Joaquin and Jonah dancing. We (Mommies included, see Rachel) were playing Cranium Playground and one of the categories is a dancing one. You spin these thingys and then do a dance based on the steps outlined on them. Even though it was my turn, they were helping. I highly recommend this game, it's fun, has lots of different things to do (that are semi-educational) and moves quickly. Very good for toddlers. It was also very cute to see that they are getting older. Jonah saw some coloring books and then everyone started coloring. It actually kept them occupied for a while. It was really sweet to watch them all concentrating and just enjoying the company while they colored. It was fun for the mommies too since we could talk and play with the little ones. I got my Bella fix and had a chance to watch Isaac in action. I haven't seen him much so it was really fun to get to know him. He is a smart little guy with some serious fine motor skills. He's a whiz with Duplos. We also took a picture with all of them on my bed. (Which was very necessary as Bella had several faceplants during the photo session. It's hard to keep your balance with a bunch of wiggly big kids.) This one is the best as they all look so charming in it. However, we have tons of them looking cute, they were very adorable the whole time. Jonah looks like a little angel in half of them. He's a very conscientious little guy who knows how to pose for a camera-happy Mommy. And he's definitely the best behaved of all our little crazies. So I love these pictures of them kicking their feet. Allie and Joaquin started kicking wildly and making silly noises and you can see Jonah starting to let his hair down and kick too. Nice to see his goofy side coming out. It's amazing how well Joaquin and Jonah have always gotten along and even Joaquin and Allie have a much lest tempestous relationship nowadays. I figure they really are the cousins Joaquin doesn't have on my side. It wouldn't be Christmas without a chance to see them all together.

El Paso y Primo

After Christmas we headed down for a few days in El Paso. Joaquin always likes to see Mi-mo and his 'Tias', but this year we also got see his second cousin 'Jose' (not his real name). We haven't seen Jose since he was 6 months old or so and Joaquin was 18 months. So now being 3 and 4 it was much more fun (and explosive, they had a fun time, but also had the usual trouble sharing, etc.) Here's a few pictures of the shenanigans we got up to (I love the one of Mi-mo hula-hooping). Family gatherings are getting much more exciting with all the kiddos to play with. Joaquin, Jose and his little brother, plus Elissa, Marcela and now Amelie. It's basically a kid circus nowadays. The last picture is of Joaquin and Daddy testing out Marcela's new rollerblades. She'd received them for Christmas and was still practicing them (sometimes inside). Joaquin thought they were so interesting we had to take a spin. Not sure he's ready for them. We also got to go out as adults (all the parents of small children I mean), since there were so many aunties and grandmas on duty. Fabulous.