El Zoo

Our second Spring Break hurrah to warmer weather was going to the zoo with Uncle Matty and Johannah. We had a great time although I admit that Joaquin enjoys the periperhies of zoo trips almost more than the animals. While the animals are fun, they can't compete with lunch on the the grass with the aforementioned companions. Then dippin' dots ice cream! I mean, come on! There's also a ton of 'rock' formations that the zoo uses for decor to climb on. So animals, perhaps not doing anything interesting, sometimes come a distant second. However his favorites, the flamingoes, where all hyper so we had a good time watching them. Seriously they were running around in herd formation, pivoting together, etc. It was really interesting and a little odd. The seals and sea lions where also a hit, especially since the new warmer weather was getting actually hot and you can watch them in a tunnel! Shade, yes! The elephants were also quite interesting because they were actually eating and drinking and spraying themselves. This led to a very interesting conversation later with Daddy where Joaquin told him how elephants don't just use their noses to hold their mocos but also to suck up water. As if that were what noses are normally for, holding mocos. I love it! The other animals Joaquin really found interesting were the naked moles rats, seriously. Since they're blind the zoo put them in clear tunnels so you can watch them scurry around and crawl over each other. It's oddly fascinating and Joaquin duly was. We

managed to pull him away after Matthew and Johannah had their surfeit of horror, but he definitely could have watched longer. It was very fun, made more fun by having 3 adults to one child. There was always a ride for Joaquin and always help for the luggage for me. Hmmmm.... I could get used to this.

Sicomoros

Last week was Spring Break. Woo-hoo, I guess. When he's only at school two days a week for four hours, Spring Break just seems more like a week where Mommy has to be extra entertaining. At least the weather cooperated, it was absolutely gorgeous, as Joaquin himself informed me. So we did a few warm weather things to welcome early Spring. First we met Daddy for lunch on the base. Yeah! The base has a McDonald's and a fabulous covered playground. Honestly if it weren't 30 minutes away we'd spend more lunches with Daddy. It's definitely a treat for the entire family. We (being Joaquin and I) got there early and while we were waiting for Daniel, Joaquin had fun playing with nature. Per usual, he picked up some sticks, but he also had a whale of a time trying to burst those round seed pod balls that drop from sycamore trees. I know they come from sycamore trees because that's what Joaquin told me. I was impressed and not sure if that was true, but he's right. No clue how he knew, Daniel thought I'd told him, which is a reasonable assumption seeing as I was a biology teacher. However, I'm not good with trees so it must have been somebody else. Go Joaquin and his acquisition of natural knowledge. Turns out sycamore balls are hard to burst, even with sticks. You have to stomp on them :) These last pictures are of Joaquin at the playground with Daddy. Nobody is more fun than Daddy!

Flechas

It's spring break, which means very little when you're in preschool. All it really means is that mommy has to work harder for a week. But we've been enjoying our relaxing mornings, playing instead of rushing to get someplace. Monday I made an 'arrow' by using some of Joaquin's duplos. The arrow was a hole around which the blocks were assembled. My arrow really looked like an arrow, but we got started making more shapes and they don't look anything like arrows although Joaquin still calls them that. I got him up after 'naptime' and he had created the great wall of arrows. Fabulous isn't it?

Bebé Enfermo

We got back from Phoenix and were immediately plunged into an ugly cold. On an up note, Joaquin only needed a few days to get back on his feet once the fever went down and Daddy was sick enough to justify two days off work. Family bonding time, especially when all you have the energy for is cuddling. I came home to this naptime. That's how you know Joaquin is sick, he would never fall asleep like this normally. Poor baby.

Phoenix en Febrero

For some reason, it takes me forever to blog about anything we do with Kara and her family. I think it's the sheer volume of pictures she takes of any event. Just figuring out which ones to use, takes me longer than most blogs. We were in Phoenix last weekend, Daniel and I attending a church-planting conference. Daniel went both days and I skipped out on one, spending the day with Kara and kiddos. She was nice enough and brave enough to watch Joaquin on Friday. I was very impressed, especially since she piled all the kidlets into the car and took them to Schnepf Farms (That's three little ones, all 4 and under, yikes!)Turns out to be a really cool place, with a little train (hence all the train track pics.), tractors, a playground and a petting zoo. Good thing it's so fun since Joaquin got sick on Saturday and we had to scrap our original plan of the children's museum. It seemed irresponsible to take him someplace while he was feeling blah and then have him touch and engerm things that would then be used by other children. So we went back to the farm and I got to enjoy it as well. A few highlights.... Kara's day o' babysitting apparently went well, except for the annoyance of Joaquin's extreme distractability (it's hard to keep him moving towards one destination when there's cool things to look at or pick up, like sticks!) The petting zoo was a big success both days, but on Kara's day they got to see baby goats being born! Joaquin's main comment on the miracle of life was that the newborn goats where 'slimy'. He then christened them the ugly goats and referred to them as that from then on. However they were much cuter and really active when we saw them again the next day. One little guy even escaped the pen and as there were no workers around Kara and I cornered it, and let Allie and Joaquin hold it before putting it back. They really enjoyed holding the baby goat and where very grown-up about holding him carefully and being gentle. This made me think of a picture my parents have of me as a little girl. I'm in a petting zoo smiling sweetly while a goat munches on one little curl. It's a ridiculously cute photo since I'm in a little pink sundress and my hair is in perfect pigtails. Another pleasant surprise was that Joaquin and Allie got along very well on this trip. Their relationship in the past has always been a little volatile, but they've both matured (sort of) and had a lot more fun on this trip. This wasn't always the case, I love the picture of Kara with them both on the train where they are obviously arguing and Kara is keeping her picture smile, but only just. Still they were really quite good. Joaquin did apparently ask Kara at one point why there were so many princess toys at her house, but other than that he didn't want to go home. And who can blame him, a big family is always more fun. Plus he gets to watch a lot more Curious George at Allie's house! I love the last picture because it shows what a day outside can do to Joaquin (he really was getting sick, we came home and then he was sick as a dog for several days), and a day listening to people can do to Daniel. Fortunately they just need each other to relax. :) I love the total abandon from Joaquin. He's still such a little guy no matter what he says.

En el Mente de Joaquin

As usual at our house there is a lot of building going on. But a boy can't live on Duplos alone (gasp, it can't be true) and we've been enjoying some of our other building toys lately. Uncle Jeff and Aunt Alicia bought him these gears for his birthday and he's been having fun making them work. Unfortunately since he wants them to all move each other they have to be perfectly squished in. And the tolerances on plastic toys aren't all the good so they have to be in the just the right spot for everything to work. It's a recipe for frustration, but when it works, fabulous! The funny part about Joaquin is that he's always made fantastic contraptions with his building toys. Frequently they bear absolutely no resemblence to the description he gives you. But he definitely sees it, b/c if mommy knocks a few blocks off while trying to clean he is upset when he comes back in the room. (How does he even know? Some Joaquin creations are very crazy looking, how can he keep track?) So I was very

surprised when he called me to come see his legos 'playground' the other day. This is what I found, a cute little slide. Actually it's two slides, see the two scoops? The straight part is actually the ladder up. He was very proud of himself and I could see why, it was really quite slidelike. He was very excited to continue but was then frustrated by the swing (honestly Duplos are not meant to build a swing). So Mommy got creative with some outside toys and then we added a teeter-totter to complete it. Isn't our little playground lovely? But this is one representational artistic moment in the crazy surrealistic world of Joaquin. To give him credit he always has a vision of what he wants and he stays pretty faithful to it. You can even see it in his imaginative play. He's famous at Little Gym for the day he ran around the entire hour with one hand up like he was balancing a plate. They asked me afterward why he was holding his hand so oddly. I said, he's probably pretending something. When they asked he said he was holding a pie. It was chocolate pie if I remember correctly. After we all asked for a piece and it was eaten he dropped his hand. Another example was last Saturday while we were painting the FLC at church. Since all his playmates (Mommy, Daddy and Uncle Matty) were painting diligently he had to make his own entertainment. He played outside for awhile but got lonely and came inside to play in the room. He found a ball and some various bits of our equipment. Then he made up a game where he had to bounce the ball over the various pieces. And he had to do it in some order without knocking them down before he could move on. I'm not kidding, it was actually this complicated. And HE FOLLOWED THE RULES. Isn't that odd? If you make up the rules can't you just change them so you win? He was so frustrated with himself when he couldn't make it work. Sometimes I'm frustrated trying to get him to do things my way and sometimes I just can't wait to see what else is going on in that little head!

Cocos

Ahhh coconuts, a fruit I find absolutely disgusting. And since they are obnoxiously hard to work with I have an excuse never to use them despite the fact that Daniel's a fan. However I always give him Almond Joy's in his christmas stocking since I love him. :) So after partaking of some this Christmas (Daddy is very generous), Joaquin decided he likes coconut (with vanilla he always adds, I don't know why). He says this, but he hasn't had any since. The other day at the grocery store they had coconuts and Joaquin demanded one. Being an indulgent mommy I purchased on. He and Daddy had a fun evening breaking into it. (They used a drill I believe.) Joaquin was underwhelmed with the coconut milk but he enjoyed helping Daddy grate the flesh with our cheese grater. I don't know if they ate straight coconut, but Daniel found a way to make sure Joaquin was game for the whole experience - chocolate! They made their own Mounds bars using chocolate chips. Woo-hoo! I'm not sure that Joaquin ate any of the actual bars, but I have photographic evidence that he enjoyed the melted chocolate chips.