Cooking with Oma

We have two Christmas Days in the Netherlands. The first of course on the 25th, the second on the 26th. I don't know why that is, but it is considered a national holiday and nobody works. I think the main idea behind it, or at least the main use taken out of it, is that you can celebrate one day with your own family and the other with your family in law. Well, for us that is a bit difficult considering the distance between the two.... So, we generally have first and second Christmas year instead of Christmas day.... This year we were in the Netherlands and spent both days with my parent. One day at our house, the other at my parents house.

This picture was taken on second Christmas day at my parents house. Tobias is sitting on the counter in the kitchen. He is "helping" my mom with the cooking. Apparently the counter seat is his favorite in the kitchen. He even ends up eating his meal there sometimes! Anyway, I thought this was a cute picture.... :-) 

Christmas!

Christmas already came and went as I am writing this, but of course before it came we decorated the christmas tree. That was lots of fun, also for Tobias. Not only did we buy a fake tree (our first one ever, we always used to have a real tree, but I have to admit, a fake tree has its advantages too...), we also had mostly unbreakable ornaments.... This was mainly because they were nice, but maybe subconciously a little bit so that Tobias could safely help us decorate the tree... which he did as you can see in this picture.

He thoroughly enjoyed decorating the tree and having it in the house, and of couse watching the cats using the tree-skirt as a slip-and-slide (I don't really know what that is, but I heard that's what it was like...). He also made his own ornament at the daycare, and of course we put it up. It didn't really go with our "red and gold" theme (it is purple...) but hey, what can you do if your son brings home his own ornament.... :-)?

When we put all the gifts under the tree, Tobias wanted to start unwrapping right away. We told him that he had to wait until Christmas and that's what he did.... He only partly unwrapped that first gift (just a small corner was torn loose). We opened gifts on Christmas day with my parents, my brother, Lisa's sister and the three of us. Tobias got the gifts from under the tree and handed them out... He seemed to enjoy doing that although he did get distracted by his new toys!

We had a very nice Christmas, Tobias' second, and his first in the Netherlands.... 

Unexpected Initiative...

One of my previous post concerned me putting Tobias in my shoes and taking a picture... A rather staged, but at the same time quite funny picture. This time I am posting a picture of Tobias in Lisa's shoes. This time it is not staged at all, but entirely spontaneous....

We were all sort of hanging out in our bedroom. I read Tobias some books, but he had enough of that. He was just playing around on the floor a little and Lisa and I were just cuddling and being lazy. We weren't paying much attention to what Tobias was doing, except for the occasional laugh about him chatting away to himself. Suddenly we hear him saying: "Walking Mommy Shoes!". We look, and there he was, walking around the bed in mommies shoes! Sooooooo funny, even moreso because he had them on the wrong foot....

So, I dashed downstairs, got the camera and shot this picture! 

Sinterklaas

As you probably know, in the Netherlands we kind of have 2 Santas.... One comes on December 5th on a white horse, accompanied by "Zwarte Pieten", rides on the rooftops and throws gifts into the chimnee... The other one is just like the American one, except generally he is not our primary gift giver....

Needless to say that we were celebrated Sinterklaas... I guess Tobias is a lucky dude because he gets to celebrate both... Anyway, like I said, we celebrated Sinterklaas. He usually puts his gift in a sack ("De zak van Sinterklaas"), probably to protect the from all the soot in the chimnee... Well, Tobias was ready for gifts this time! As you can see in this picture he practically disappeared in the sack getting all the gifts. The cute thing was that his primary reaction was to hand the gifts out to other people, although, once he got the first one of his own he was less inclined to hand the gifts over....

One of the funniest and most unexpected moments was when he pulled out a gift from my parents, a Bob the Builder Lego set, shook it (unopened) and exclaimed "Lego!"... We all had to laugh...

Note: he already had some lego's and plays with them frequently. I guess he recognized the sound they make... 

Play House

Tobias and I have this new game: Playing House. Thas does not mean playing house like a mommy and a daddy and a child, no, we build a house. Tobias sits on the couch and I use the pillows to build a little house around him. He absolutely loves it. The best thing is when I put the roof on and he sticks his head out and I go "Peek-a-boo"! He can't get enough of it and laughs like crazy, literally to the point of burping/throwing up... (I admit, that was a bit disgusting...).

Anyway, I started this game with him this past tuesday and he remembers stuff now, so sure enough, the next day he was walking around saying "Papa, build, ouse" over and over. Since Tobias has so much fun playing the game, I enjoy it too. He runs to the couch, throws the pillows off and sits in the corner. Then I build the house around him which he then tears apart while we are both saying "Peek-a-boo". Then we rebuild the house, and so on.

Doesn't that sound like fun? In this picture Tobias is sitting in his house getting ready for the "peek-a-boo"-moment. Like I said, Tobias can't seem to get enough of it so I am expecting a lot of playing house for the weeks to come... :-).

Loads of Fun in a Car...

This is probably the trillionth time I am telling this, but I still love my daddy days. Unfortunately there is only one every two weeks, but fortunately there is one every two weeks. Like two weeks ago, when this picture was taken. I usually take my time getting up and getting ready. Most of the times I take Tobias to my bed and we cuddle for a while, or I read him some books, or we listen to some music. Then we have breakfast together, both of us still in our PJ's and sometimes we spend half the day like that...

That was also the case on this daddy day. We were just goofing off and Lisa had put out this push cart for him the day before. Well, he likes to push Mr. Potato Head (Tato..... Ead) around in it, or tinky winky, or elmo, but he also likes to be pushed around in it. He calls it a car and he askes me "ide, Tadas ide!" (Tadas is what he calls himself these days...). Of course I am a willing daddy and I race him around the house....

Tobias can have loads of fun like that in his "car", and of course daddy does too!

The Wrong Shoes...

Some frustrating misfortunes with blogger were my part earlier this week when I tried to post this picture. I'll try to rewrite the story I had typed up to go along with it....

Tobias loves his shoes. He has a whole ritual for putting them on and taking them off, especially taking them off. We take them off since he is not able to do that himself yet. Then he walks to the back door and bangs them together. Then he walks to the front door and he puts them away. All these actions are accompanied by exclamations like "Oes Off", "Nean Oes", "Oes Away"...

He also likes our shoes, particularly mine. They are too heavy to "Ean" them, but he can bring them to me one by one and he can clean them away one by one. He can also put them on and walk on them.... like in this picture. He was actually able to take a few steps in them :-) As you can see he is enjoying it!

The Giraffe (Waf...)

Two weeks ago we went to the Zoo. It was the first time we took Tobias to the Zoo. We went to Rotterdam, to Blijdorp Zoo. It was a nice day and Tobias had some good fun (we think :-)).

In the weeks preceding this visit he had been playing with a train with animals as passengers. One of the passengers is a tiger (who, according to Tobias, says: whroah!), another one is a giraffe (which Tobias calls a: Waf). What I find quite amazing is that for the longest time a giraffe (or a tiger, or any of the other animals) to him was that little figure that he played with. They don't even look like a real animal really, they are sort of cartoonish... Yet, when he saw one in real life he recognized it right away! Apparently the figures have sufficient resemblence to the real animal for him to do that...

We were in the zoo for about half a day and only saw the main attractions, the big animals like the lions, the tigers, the elephants, the gorilla's, and... the giraffes. The main problem we had was getting Tobias to switch animals... he would get so much into one animal that he would not want to leave. When we just took him to the next one it took some crying before he would start laughing again and getting enthralled with the next animal...

His favorite animal was probably the ostrich, because that one was sort of bopping his head up and down, switching between looking over and looking through the fence. Tobias interpreted this as the ostrich playing peek-a-boo with him and he could not stop laughing!

In short: a nice picture to remember a nice day! 

Difficult food

Man, time goes by fast! I realized that it has already been three weeks since my previous post. So, time to go through the pictures of the past three weeks and select the most interesting/cutest ones...

Well, here's one. For quite some time now Tobias has been eating what we are eating. This sometimes poses a problem because he does not always like what we are eating, but I guess that generally speaking it is going OK that way. I can't even remember the last time I fed him baby food from a jar.

Most of the times when Tobias eats what we eats he eats a cut up version of what we eat really. Of course Tobias is always more interested in what we are eating, especially when things on our plate really look different, or in this case, are different.

He seemed to really want the corn so, we gave it to him. I guess in this picture it looks like he is really eating it, but he was mainly licking/kissing it... Well, it makes for a nice picture! 

Ice-cream

Tobias' first word, other than papa and mama, was probably "IJs"... That is Dutch for "Ice-cream"... Tobias is talking more and more now and he has been for the past couple of weeks. It is hard to say if his first word actually was "IJs", but it was the first time he spoke with intention. It was at my mom's birthday and we were having desert, ice-cream. He wanted some and he said "IJs" pointing at our ice cream. He had heard that word before and he actually had ice-cream before, but he had never said it before. Needless to say we were pretty surprised and needless to say that he had some ice-cream :-).

His vocabulary is increasing daily. He now says many words, like blue, green, yellow, bear, ball, bye, hi, wall, trash, red, and quite some more actually. I think it is hard to keep a list of his vocabulary because it is growing so rapidly! That is great to see and it is amazing how many words have been stored in his head and how well he can apply them. For example the colors that he uses, he applies them to other objects than the initial ones he identified first as being blue or yellow or green. They now apply to trees, balloons, cars, etc. He also knows a lot of letters. He has a letter toy that seems to work really well. Whenever he sees letters, like on a t-shirt or a store window or something, he will point to one and make its sound. He knows d, e, f, h, i, k, l, m, o, p, s, t, w, z. He knows some others as well, but he can't say them yet.

The most amazing thing with his language to me is the fact that not only does he know all these words, he knows some of them in both our languages!..... AND he will use the Dutch word when talking to me and the English one when talking to Lisa! AMAZING! To me it is anyway... The other night I was reading one book to him in Dutch and one in English. Both books feature a blue butterfly. While reading the Dutch book the butterfly was "blauw" (or "bauw" as he says it), while reading the English book the butterfly was "blue" (or "bue" as he says it). So he distinguishes between mommy and daddy as well as between daddy reading Dutch and daddy reading English! Once again: AMAZING!!!

Mama....

I believe this is my first post without a picture. I know that sometimes a picture says more than a thousand words, but this time words will have to do because
- first of all I did not have my camera at the time of the event I am about to describe
- second, I would have needed video in order to show what happened, and
- third, I had to laugh so hard that I would not have been able to capture the event anyway....

Ok, what happened? Well, let me begin by telling you that twe weeks ago Lisa bought Tobias a barn with barn animals. There are three kinds of animals: horses, sheep and cows. Each animal comes in a mother and a baby size. So, Tobias goes "mama, mama, beebee, beebee" when he is playing with them. Of course we ask questions like "Where is the baby horse?" and "Where is the mama cow?".

Another thing I should tell is that Tobias is very much into trashcans of all kinds. Whenever he sees one he point at it and says something like "da da". We are supposed to respond by saying "Trashcan!" and he will go "Ja.". He has proven to be a very good trashcan spotter. As we were biking this past weekend he would go "da da" pretty much every 5 minutes. A lot of times we didn't even see a trashcan, but at closer inspection there always was one, or just a tiny part of one visible somewhere...

Ok, here's the story... As you know we bought a new house. Currently we are looking for a new kitchen, bathroom, floor and such. So, the other day we were looking at bathroom stuff in a lowe's like place. As we were walking the various aisles we came across a tiny trashcan. The kind that has a footpedal operated lid and shines and everything. Well, needless to say it caught Tobias' attention. He walked towards it and started to thump on it an raising the lid, all the while going "da da". So, I responded "Trashcan!". Tobias went "Ja." and kept playing with it. At one point we wanted to go on so, I asked Tobias "Where is mama?" expecting him to go to mama so that we would be able to continue our tour through the store. Well, guess what happened.... he went to the bigger version of the trashcan, the "mama trashcan", instead!

I hope this story is as funny in writing as it was in the person, because I just couldn't stop laughing.... but then I guess a picture does say more than a thousand words sometimes. Well, I just know that as I re-read this in the future I will remember... and laugh...

Cleaning

Ok, I am back in order. I have decided to just skip some of the pictures I intended to put online when I took them. Due to vacation and other stuff I just got too far behind to catch up.... I don't think it would be appropriate to put a picture of Tobias with the Dutch flag painted on his face, because the Dutch soccer team was playing, online now, almost two months after the World Championships... :-) Other than that there were no super-milestones or anything like that, just some pictures taken on my daddy-days. I will try not to get that far behind again. For now I will continue after our vacation...

For some reason Tobias is into cleaning stuff. He loves taking a broom and a dust pan and walk around the house cleaning everything. He will clean the couch, the armchair, the desk, Jip, Janneke, the carpet and, as you can see in this picture, the floor. Quite funny to look at and hopefully he will still like it this much when he is older, although I guess I should not count on that too much....

He also likes brushing things, like his hair, daddy's hair, Jip, Janneke, the carpet, the bed and such. He also likes to stick mommy's make-up brushes in his ears.... a bit disturbing, but it makes for some great pictures (taken during our vacation...):

Eh... strange bird...?

The order got a little messed up here because I wanted to post pictures from our vacation first. Well, I did and now we're back to the week before our vacation. We bought a baby toilet seat in the shape of a bird and put Tobias on it... without much, although a little bit of, success.

At first he was not at all happy to be sitting on it, but as soon as we started reading to him his smile returned. As you can see in this picture he is still somewhat hesitant... Of course I can agree with him on the weirdness of sitting on a bird... especially when mom and dad are telling you to take a dump on it...

Well... we put him on that thing somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes at a time and read to him. He has done a poo and a wee (combined) two times now... Of course we have not been too good at putting him on there, but I guess we have to start somewhere. Hopefully it won't take him too long to get used to it... :-) 

One more from Italy...

Well, actually this picture was taken in Monaco, so I guess the title should be more like "One more from the vacation". Just because it is such a cool picture. Of course we have loads of cool picture from our vacation, but I chose this one because I remember so well how much fun we had sitting out there, despite the unbelievable heat. Tobias was laughing, looking around and kind of goofing off, as were we. It was a very nice day out there. I guess Tobias is flagging a waiter here because he wants more juice of some kind (who wouldn't with 100 degree weather!?).

Well, like I said, that was it for our vacation.... 

Look at me in Italy!

For some reason or other it is difficult to keep up my blogging frequency.... I can name a few.

1. We have been on a vacation to Italy. This picture is taken in Genoa and as you can see Tobias is having a good time.... he says "hi" :-) We had a good time too. We went for two weeks and stayed in what they called a bungalow but what was really a shack. This, although a slight shock at first, did not matter too much because we were outside most of the time. Also, the shack was next to the pool at which we spent a lot of time too. Tobias loved the pool. He would jump in and climb out of it, throw balls in it, splash his feet in it and so on. We had some great fun at the pool!

We did not spend as much time as we might have sight-seeing, but I guess that is to be expected when travelling with a young child. We did go to Genoa, Savona, Torino, Monaco and Albenga and we also spent time driving around the area. But, however beautiful and nice that was, being with my boy full-time for two weeks in itself was the highlight of my vacation!

Two weeks went by way too fast and now we have already been back for two weeks which have gone by very fast as well....! which brings me to the second reason.....

2. We bought a new house! (It is nice to be able to say "We bought a house in Italy!".... :-)). We were already looking into a house close to where we live now when we left for our vacation, in fact, we were already negotiating the price and the negotiations just went on into our vacation. On the last day of our vacation we reached an agreement, so, now we have a new house! This has taken up a lot of my spare time since we have been back because a lot of stuff needs to be arranged... for example... money.

We need a mortgage, but Dutch banks do not like to provide mortgages to people with a temporary residency permit, which Lisa still has due to a major screw-up at the immigration office. Rectifying this screw-up basically means reapplying which will take about 6 months! Too much time for us, so we had to look for a bank that doesn't make such a big deal out of that. We did find a bank, but it took quite some effort. We hope to sign all the papers this week. The transfer of the house is set for October 2nd. Then we are facing a lot of re-doing, which is another thing we put time and effort into (we are having it done, but we had to find a contractor). Finally, we need to sell our own house. This should not be too much of a problem, but again, it takes time and effort (for example, some cosmetic touch-ups and such...). We are absolutely excited about the house though. All the re-doing enables us to make exactly the way we like from the inside, and the style of the outside of the house is what we have been wanting for a long time! So, exciting but busy times...

3. We have been trying to catch up with a lot of people since we came back from our vacation. Friends had babies, bought new houses and so on. So, our weekends were spent doing that.

4. I am very busy at work. Just before my vacation I was asked if I were interested in a very interesting position on a very interesting project. Needless to say I said yes to that one. That is starting now. Also, I am working on some other ongoing projects. On top of all that, two colleagues are leaving the company and I am taking over some of their workload as well. So, busy busy busy there as well.

If you add it all up I have nothing to complain about because these are all very exciting things going on. It is just a bit busy and that is why I hadn't taken the time to post to my blog. I have a lot more pictures that I wanted to post even before the vacation. I will probably post some of those later, but for now here is another one that kind of sums up our vacation in Italy...... I LOVED it!

Balls and Bubbles

Tobias loves playing with balls. He will pick them up and play with them one way or another. The bigger the ball the harder it gets of course. Usually he will just pick up the ball and throw it on the floor, then walk after it and repeat the process. The other day he had a tennis ball in each hand and he would bang them together before throwing them both on the floor at the same time and then going after them while laughing like crazy....

Tobias also loves bubbles, or "baba's" as he calls them. We have a bubble blow thing which we use inside the house. Of course it is lots of fun to try to get a bubble and then see it disappear... Tobias also got a bubble machine as a gift. We do not use it in the house, just outside... Recently the weather has been really nice so we have been outside a lot.... and we have used the bubble machine, much to Tobias' delight.

What is even better than balls OR bubbles is balls AND bubbles!!!

Water is Fun

A couple of week back we went to visit my parents on their vacation in Renesse, a small town close to the beach. A friend of my dad's has a summer house there. My parents go there frequently and we visit occasionally.

When we visited this time the weather was perfect. My mom thought that Tobias would like playing in the water. Well, she was right. What started out as just walking around and stepping into the water tub gradually went to splashing the water, to throwing balls of all kinds and sizes in the water, to Tobias sitting in the water entirely!

Lots of fun for him, but also for his audience... :-)

Drinking from a straw

Tobias has been able to drink by himself for quite a while. Mostly he drinks from a sippy cup, but he can also drin from a normal cup as you may remember from previous posts. Recently Tobias added a way of drinking by himself to the list: drinking from a straw. To us that is very convenient because at restaurants we don't have to bring his cup necessarily anymore. We can just sit down at one of the lovely terraces in Gouda, or in this case Oudewater.

Not only is it convenient, it also makes for a nice picture, like this one... We were on a biking trip in the Gouda area and stopped for lunch in Oudewater, a lovely small town, not unlike Gouda, just a lot smaller. I like Tobias with his hat and sunglasses on, and the good thing is, he doesn't take them off. I think he likes wearing them. The wind just took off his hat once during the trip... 

Loving the Cats

Tobias is a very affectionate guy who loves his daddy :-). He will kiss me. He will hug me, which means putting both his little arms around my face and pulling myface against his, or putting his face sideways to push his cheek against mine. He will also "nose" with me which means rubbing our noses together. Of course I am a very affectionate guy who loves his son, so I think it is great.

Needless to say Tobias loves his mommy too and he does the same with her. What is a little disgusting to me though, but at the same time quite cute is that he does the same to the cats, especially Janneke, the disgustingly fat one... Tobias figured out that the cats need a very silent and delicate approach in order for them not to run away. So, now he approached them from behind and technically hugs their butt.....

Anyway, the cats get kisses too, on their noses (or in that area anyway). In this picture Tobias is kissing Janneke on the nose, cute huh? 

Bug-eyes

Even though sometimes it seems like the Netherlands is completely full, flat and boring there are some places, even close to where we live that are just beautiful. Recently I have been biking a lot because of a challenge at work: a two day, 150 mile biking trip through the Belgian Ardennes, which, for Dutch standards, is mountainous (I would estimate that the mountainousness (is that a word?) is comparable to the Blue Ridge Mountains). Of course the occasional dike is the only mountian I get on my trips, but that was not the point I was making. Biking around Gouda can be absolutely beautiful, especially when the sun is out. That was the case last weekend so the three of us went biking.

Tobias loves the countryside too, because there are lots of cows, sheep, ducks, horses, dogs etc. He especially loves cows and makes his own cow sound when he sees some. He also does his dog sound when he sees or hears one. That is so funny. He is riding in the front of my bike and whenever he sees something he is really enthousiastic about he looks up as if to say "look at that daddy!". Soooooo cute!

As I said it was sunny last weekend when we went biking. So not only did we grease up Tobias with sunblock, we also put his cap and sunglasses on. Lots of people are surprised by the fact that he keeps them on, and he did keep them on the entire 20 mile ride.... To us that's quite normal, because he would already keep them on during walks we took last summer.... Well, aren't we the cool dudes with our "bug-eyes"? 

Taking a bath (lying down)

As I have reporte (probably more than once) before Tobias loves taking baths. I usually take a bath with him. That accounts for lots of laughs for both Tobias and me! Sometimes I would lay him down just to see his reaction. Well, he would like that, just as long as I would hold his head while doing it.

The other day I already layed him down while the bath was filling up. At first he was a little hesitant, but as soon as the water surrounded him he stated laughing and never stopped... He loved it. Now we start of the bath like that every time. So, I am only welcome in the tub for part of the time..... but, it is still lots of laughs and lots of fun....

Another bathing thing that started recently is Tobias' new shampoo bottle. It is "kandoo" and it is a pump system in the shape of a big frog-like creature. The shampoo comes out of it's mouth. Tobias just loves that thing and playing peek-a-boo with it is the best thing ever.

It is interesting how things other than toys can be loads of fun. Sometimes even more fun than the toy itself! Anyway, for Tobias' sake I arranged the bubbles in a discrete manner before taking this picture ;-) Isn't that smile adorable? 

Unexpected actions and laughs

Sometimes Tobias does the most unexpected things... In our office we have a basket of toys. Well, Tobias was playing with his toys and with other things while I was working on the computer. I was turning my head every once in a while to check how he was doing. Most of the times he was playing with one toy or another, with my guitar or harmonica or just sitting and bouncing on the couch.

Well, at one point he had taken all the toys out of his basket. Instead of playing with all of them, or putting them back into his basket (which he seems to like a lot because sometimes all he does is take them out and put them back in...) he put himself in the basket.... literally. Of course I could not let that CCD moment (digital version of the kodak moment :-)) pass. I carried him around the house in that basket showing mommy as well before taking this picture.

We all had to laugh :-) 

Milestone: Walking!

Another milestone was reached last week on wednesday (just one day before he turned 16 months, although I have no idea what the significance of that fact is... :-)). Tobias can now walk all by himself! I was so worried that this milestone would be reached while Tobias was in the US... I so wanted to be there to see it. Well, I wasn't.... and Lisa wasn't either.... Opa was there, and he loved it.... he was probably the proudest Opa in the world when I talked to him on the phone!

What happened? Well, on wednesdays Tobias is at the daycare. This past wednesday, May 17th, it was a special day at the daycare: Opa and Oma day. They invited Opa's and Oma's to come over and see what their grandchild is doing while at the daycare. A very interesting proposition, so my dad went to check it out. They had a great time with all sorts of activities, like story telling and dancing and stuff. After that was over Opa took Tobias home with him so that we would not have to drive over to their place to drop of Tobias at night. Very convenient, right?

Well, that afternoon it happened, at my parent's place, with just Opa there... Tobias started walking by himself. Just a few yards at a time, but he did it! That was last week. Now he is getting more comfortable and he can do more than just a few yards at a time. Also now he does not need much encouragement anymore, he just starts walking whenever he feels like it. As you can see he holds his hands up in the air and even though he is smiling in this picture I can assure you that it takes all his concentration and energy to walk. He is still a bit shaky, but getting steadier every day.

I am proud of my little baby.... oops, I mean my little boy :-) 

Self (almost) sufficient...

Tobias is becoming a little boy fast right now. There are more and more things he can do himself. I posted a picture a while back of Tobias drinking from a regular cup. It took a while before he got comfortable doing that, but he is getting there. We can now pretty much put it in front of him and he will just drink it without much of a mess.

Also he cleans his mouth after he eats and just yesterday it took very little help from me for him to take off his clothes. Of course a lot of his motions are not very accurately coordinated yet, but like I said he is capable of doing more and more stuff by himself... he is becoming a little boy, or sometimes even a big boy, like in this picture where he is feeding himself. He has some trouble getting food on his spoon, but once it is there (most of the time with some help from daddy) he can eat it himself. He looks so proud when he does that.... and I guess he should be. And I should add that he is not a very messy eater at all!

Even though I still love to think of him as my little baby, I think I have to get used to the fact that really he is becoming a little boy.... 

Spoiled...

Tobias loves to be with Opa and Oma, and Opa and Oma love him! He is with them on thursdays now and they do all sorts of things with him. A lot of times they will go biking, or they go for a long walk with the dog (and Tobias of course), or they will take him to the petting zoo, like they did on the day this picture was taken.

Tobias loved it there... he likes animals and apparently now not only knows what a cow, a sheep and a pig is, but also what a dog is because apparently if he sees one he goes "woof". I haven't experienced this, but Lisa has. He also saw goats and sheep and horses and he even sat in a tractor.

So, as you can see Opa and Oma are really good at entertaining their little grandson. But as we all know there is one thing that grandparents are masters at... They excell at this particular skill and I don't think there is one grandparent that does not in one way or another exercises this skill on their grandchildren. In fact, I think this skill is inborn in every grandparent in this universe, including Tobias' Opa and Oma: Spoiling grandchildren! As you can see in this picture they did quite some spoiling here too... he had never had an ice cream cone before, but he loves pretty much any desert we give him. As you can see we can add ice cream to the list of things he loves.... Thanks Opa and Oma :-).