"Reading" the paper

Tobias loves reading, or should I say that he loves tearing apart the paper, magazines or anything else made out of paper that he can get his hands on. Here he is "reading" the newspaper with his greatgrandmother. Her house was the destination of one of his biking trips with my parents. My parents house is only 6 miles from her house, so that was a nice trip for them. My greatgrandmother also loves seeing him and as she does not see him as often she is always very surprised and amazed by how fast he grows and develops. I hope that she will be around long enough for Tobias to remember her. For now she is doing fine and she really enjoys when we visit with Tobias.

Well, those were some of the pictures my parents took during the past few weeks. It is nice for us to see how he spends his time when we are not around.... :-)

Tobias Biking

For the Dutch biking is pretty much as natural as walking. I think I mentioned before that biking is "poured into us with a porridge spoon" as we say, meaning that we start young. Moreso, we do not only bike for pleasure or sports, biking to us is also a very important mode of transport. For example, we don't really have a schoolbus, we ride our bike to school. To give you an idea of how important biking is in the Netherlands: there are more bikes than people in our country.

So, I guess my parents thought that Tobias should also start young.... My aunt gave my mom this bike (if you can call it that) for Tobias to use. I think he is a bit to young for it though, hence grandma's helping hand, but it is a good start! And it looks like he is liking it too, or not?

Biking with Opa

My parents also love to go biking with Tobias. They courteously waited until I had biked with him first, but then they took him out as well. As you can see Tobias is loving it and so is Opa. And Tobias has his own little steer, which he doesn't when he rides with me.... My parents live near a sugar beet factory and hence pretty much in beet country. That is what you see in the background, a mound of beets.

That brings me to an (maybe not so) interesting fact about the Netherlands: we eat beet sugar, as apposed to cane sugar eaten by most of the rest of the world as far as I know. At least I am sure about the Americans because I could only find cane sugar when I was there.

Anyway, this picture was taken not too far from my parents house.

Drinking without hands...

I think I have written about Tobias' weekly schedule. So, as you know, one day of that schedule (currently friday) is spent with Opa and Oma de Pee. This is great for Tobias, because he really gets to know and love his grandparents, for Opa and Oma because they really enjoy being grandparents, but also for us, primarily because of the advantages described above...

At Opa and Oma's Tobias also has a playpen. My dad likes to play around with him as he did here. He stuck the bottle between the bars where it would be stuck enabling Tobias to drink without hands. Some, or maybe even most of the toys in there belonged to me when I was a baby. I don't quite remember that, but there is one wooden rattle that he absolutely loves. That is probably his very favorite toy and according to my parents I also loved that thing.... Interesting huh.... I'll see if I can find a nice picture with Tobias playing with it.

By the way, the pictures I am posting today are taken by my mom and dad on the days Tobias spent with them. I just got them recently. This was taken about a month ago.

Higher grounds

Ever since Tobias started crawling around he has really been noticing the cats. But not only that, he has also been trying to get them or catch them or grab them or pet them or whatever it is he is trying to do but never succeeds at... His ability to get up and stand up, in addition to his ever increasing crawling speed gets him closer and closer to his goal, or so it seems.... The scratching post was always a safe haven for the cats. They would lie on that thing and observe Tobias from higher grounds. Well, those days are over.... Tobias is now able to reach those higher grounds as you can see in this picture. As you can see, Jip is not amused and getting the hell out of there. I guess the window sill is next....

Getting up!

You may wonder what is so special about this picture. Tobias has been able to stand for quite some time now, right? Well, for the past two weeks or so, Tobias has been able to get up and stand by himself without us assisting him. Of course he still has to hold on to something, but oh well, fair enough... He usually sort of drags himself up although he is getting better an faster every day. Anyway, whenever he gets up like this he starts giggling. Apparently he likes his newly acquired point of view. Until last thursday, whenever he did this I never had the camera close at hand, and by the time I got it the opportunity was already gone. Fortunately he can stand like this a lot longer now and that's what enabled me to take this picture. As you can see he is really enjoying it. Here he is using the couch to hold on to, but he also uses the chair, the play pen, his daddy, and basically anything else that will allow him to do so :-).

Here comes Tobias...

Tobias LOVES taking a bath. He has one of those seats that stick to the bottom and he really enjoys using that. We have all the other stuff too, you know, a tummy tub, a baby bath, a stand for both, but so far we mostly put him in the regular bath and one of us is in there with him. In this case mommy who I discretely left out of this picture. She was having some fun with Tobias as you can see. I heard lots of laughter as I was making Tobias a bottle and I thought I'd go check out what was going on. I found this little man with foam hair and beard..... As you can see Tobias was lauging as well!

Car Seat

I guess biking wore Tobias out... As you know Thursday is my daddy day. Friday Tobias stays with my parents. On Thursday afternoon/night I take him there. Last weekend we tried the car-seat, instead of the Maxi-Cosi, for the first time. This was in Lisa's car. We only had one seat, but we had already ordered a new one. That arrived yesterday so Tobias got to try it out today in my car, on our way to my parents. Well, I guess he liked it because to me he seems pretty comfy here.... :-). By the way, he also likes it when he is not sleeping, because he can look out the window now. That was not possible before, in the Maxi-Cosi. When we went out in Lisa's car this past weekend he was really enjoying the view and laughing as we rode along.... From now on when he is in the car, not only does he have a good view, if he chooses to enjoy that, but he is also riding forward like a normal person, instead of backward like a little baby in a Maxi-Cosi :-).

Biking with Tobias

The dutch are known for many things... In order of fame, based on observations of the average tourist in Delft, Gouda and Amsterdam and reading such classics as "The Undutchables": Coffeeshops, Legal Prostitution, Wooden Shoes, Windmills, Tulips, Cheese, Hans Brinker, Johan Cruijff..... etc. Somewhere in that list must be: bicycles... because biking is "poured in with the porridge spoon" (wordt er met de paplepel ingegoten) as we say. So, rather sooner than later should any dutch kid have their first biking experience. I have been out on my bike with Tobias in my belly carrier before, but today I mounted the bike seat. We went for a ride, and although initially Tobias had to get used to the feeling of it, I think he liked it. Of course I stopped to take a picture of which this is the result. Anyway, not only did Tobias get to ride the bike in the seat for the first time today, we also improved OUR mobility significantly!

New sweater!

Just after Tobias was born his grandmother gave him a sweater she had knitted herself. Of course that sweater is much too small now, but grandmother had been busy and she knitted another one! Tobias is wearing it in this picture. Isn't it nice? Since the weather has turned a lot colder in the past week it is now appropriate to wear. Judging from the size he will be able to wear it more often than the other one because we still had to sort of roll up his sleeves a bit. I wonder how long grandmother is going to keep up with him....? Who knows, maybe she is already working on a new one.... :-).

Tobias 'Ray'

I think I wrote before about how Tobias likes it when I play the piano. Now that he is more stable when he sits, and now that het has a booster seat, he does not necessarily have to sit in my lap anymore to play the piano by himself, and he likes that! Initially, I guess he had to get used to the fact that if you bang a key it makes a noise, even when daddy is not there, and that the piano is not made to drool on, and that the purpose is to hit the keys, not to eat the sheet music, and stuff like that. He seems to get all that now and he just plays, or maybe I should say pounds, the keys. It doesn't sound like much, but he is having loads of fun. When I took this picture he was actually enjoying himself at the piano for like half an hour or so, without interference, well, except this "staged" impersonation of Tobias 'Ray'.... :-)

Hurricane Rita: Back to normal

We 'webbed' (chat with webcam) with Lisa's parent earlier tonight. Of course the aftermath of the hurricane was still an issue we discussed. The sole fact that we were able to 'web' is a sign that things are back to normal. Lisa's dad is back to work at the UTMB hospital in Galveston and the entire UTMB campus has been left unharmed in terms of storm damage and flooding. The patients were moved to other hospitals but they have returned. Tomorrow Lisa's parents will have new furniture delivered (they already ordered that before hurricane Rita came along...) so logistics in the are seem to have been restored as well.

In conclusion, everything in the area where Lisa's parents live is pretty much back to normal. Of course many others further east are still struggling to recover from the massive damage hurricane Rita caused. I guess we, but of course mainly Lisa's parents, have been pretty darn lucky......

This concludes my 'coverage' of hurricane Rita.