I wanna be a Toys R Us kid

Buying safety gates for the duplex

Late night show by Jaime on HSR

Long day-trip

Why is the train station 40 minutes by shuttle from the center of the city???

Boy in the Bubble

Rent-a-bubble in Taiwan

High Speed to Tainan

"Cambo"

Joaquin is going thru a "silly talk" phase, and the current favorite word is "cambo" (we haven't quite figured out what he means by it).  Maybe it's genetic: I used to call my bear "Chicambo".

Music Class

Bye Bye We're Moving House

Carritos

Joaquin: Papa, but in the new house, will there be little cars?

The Musician & The Engineer

One of the very interesting things about having 2 boys is being able to compare & contrast their interests and personalities. We don't think we've done a whole lot of different things with them, or exposed them to different things, yet the things they are into are so different.

Anybody who has spent more than 10 minutes with Joaquin will know that he is into cars. 

'

Into tools and fixing things

And into obsessively preparing food:

He also surprises his Dadu with abstract thinking:

Joaquin: Papa, why don't round things have "points" [in Spanish "puntas"]?

Papa: [incredulously] you mean corners?

Joaquin: Yes, like that [points to a triangular restaurant sign].

Papa: [still incredulously] you mean like this [I point to a rectangular sign], how many corners does this have?

Joaquin: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Papa: [!]

Javier's favorite toy seems to be the percussion set Auntie Vanessa bought (for Joaquin, who's never much cared for it), or any Xylophone. He plays long extended sets:

Joaquin was born into an apartment with a piano, but never used much other than banging randomly on the keys for 5 seconds at a time. But the first time Javier's been presented with a piano he didn't want to stop rhythmically pressing the keys. 

And after Father had use his finger to play simple tunes on the keyboard, Javier would then try to move his Father's hand had to get him to play them again (which is the first time we've seen him actively make anybody do something for him, like Joaquin's first "meta" moment).