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!