Lollipop

No, this is not a photo-shopped picture. Yes, Tobias' tongue is green here...

The day I took this picture was a daddy-day. When Tobias woke up and I went to get him he said that he wanted to go into town with me. He was even more specific than that, he wanted to go to the blue chairs, no, even more specific: the light-blue chairs....

At first I had no idea what he meant with that. It took me a while but then I realized he meant the bagel place on the market square, a place we have been to before. On most of my daddy-days I take him into town. Sometimes we will just walk around, sometimes we'll bike around, a lot of times we will stop at some place to have a drink or lunch or something. One of those places is the bagel place. I guessed he must have remembered from a previous time we were there.

After we parked the bike in town he walked right in the direction of the bagel place. He looked into some windows to see if they had light blue chairs and we eventually ended up in the bagel place. We had some drinks and lunch and then, when we were paying and leaving the place I finally realized why he had been wanting to go there..... a lollipop!!!

Unbelievable that he remembered that because it had been quite a while since Lisa or I had taken him there. He picked a green one, hence the color of his tongue... :-)

Elmo

During our vacation we tried to get Tobias potty trained. We did not succeed although he is dry pretty much troughout the day. He just doesn't want to do Nr. 2 on the toilet. He did one time, but that was it. Any way, that is not the point of this post. What we tried is give hime some candy as a reward. This worked that one time but not after that. What was so funny is that one day we saw him acting out the entire routine with Elmo! We burst out laughing, it was soooooo cute. I guess he really wants some candy. Well, we hope that it will work someday soon...

Ever since that Elmo episode he has been lugging Elmo around everywhere we go. Like today, we went into town on the bike and Elmo had to come with us. Of course he could not just be in my coat pocket, no, he had to ride in the back with Tobias. As you can see he is securely buckled up :-).

What about his hat, mittens and scarf (not visible) :-)? Cute huh? We bought that during fall break. Oma had to complete the set by finding the matching scarf that we could not find at first.

Vacation (Fall Break)

Two weeks ago we had fall break. Obviously Lisa had the week off, but I also took the week off. Initially, we thought about going somewhere, but we decided to stay home and enjoy our new house to the full extent. Well, that's exactly what we did and it was very nice.

We did go out a couple of times. We went to a big swimming pool with lots of big water slides. This was like heaven for Tobias. We also went somewhere for a walk. Well, actually we went somewhere to get a screen for our fire place and made the most of our day... but it was nice all the same. In this picture we are at the beach in Scheveningen. We first went to Sea World there and after that we took a little walk on the beach.

We also purchased two important new items for our house:
- A screen for the fire place
- A flat screen TV
And we used those items every day during our vacation. We watched quite some movies and we lit the fire place every single night. Lisa grew up with a fire place, but I didn't. We both really enjoyed it!

It was a very nice and cosy vacation during which the continuous dry and mild weather enabled us to take pictures like this one...

Goggles

A few weeks ago friends visited us and brought Tobias a gift, a new drill. He already had a drill, as you have seen from previous posts, but this one is much more powerfull! Not only that, it came with lots of other cool things. Especially cool are the goggles, as you can see in this picture. Like his first drill, he didn't play with much else the first week or two... I think if it were up to him he would wear his goggles to bed!

Anyway, it was a really nice gift and he likes it a lot. We also got a gift, a birdhouse and some winter bird food to hang on the trees (or, in our case, the rose bushes). Tobias was also rather fascinated by that. We hung the house last weekend and we also put out the winter food. He looks out the window a lot to check if the birds are eating. I haven't seen very many yet, but I hope there will be a nest in our house. That would be so nice... Well, we'll see.

The Photographer

Today, yes, another daddy-day, the photographer came to the daycare. Of course Tobias wasn't going today but you could bring your children to have their picture taken. I did that too. Of course I dressed him in a cute outfit (that Lisa had just recently bought, in part for this occasion, in part because he has outgrown quite some clothes...).

Since he was so cute I thought I'd try to take some nice pictures myself. Equiped with my Canon Digital Ixus i I went to work. Well, that is not so hard, but not easy either. The main problem is, my camera is too slow... Whenever I had him where I wanted and would try to take a picture he would already move around, lean over, look down, have his eyes closed, or whatever.

But, I ended up taking quite a few nice shots. This one is my favorite. He was sort of dancing for me and then he tipped over. He had to laugh so hard. I took this one as he was getting up again.

My conclusions?
- I need new equipment, a camera that can take a zillion shots a minute... :-)
- I took some very nice pictures...
- Tobias looked soooooo cute today
- I will probably scan the result of the photographer and post it here for comparison :-)

Still Webcamming

Since Nonny and Granddaddy live so far away we frequently webcam with them. I have written about this before but it is becoming more and more interactive these days because Tobias starts to realize that he can also converse with whoever is on the other side of the "line".

That results in funny moments like the one in this picure. He is talking to Nonny, but the funny thing is, Nonny just sees the top of his head because he kind of "crawls" into the screen and gets so close that:
1. The camera cannot capture his entire face anymore
2. He is not in front of the camera because he talks to the screen (i.e. Nonny), not to the camera...

It gets even funnier when he tries to show Nonny something, like here where he tries to show her something he made at the daycare. What he does is, regardless of the camera position (a lot of times I am holding it so I can follow him around as he plays), he walks up to the computer and puts the object he wants to show right in front of the screen (i.e. right in Nonny's face...). He will do the same when showing his new slippers or shoes, or his rake or whatever object he tries to show... I wonder when he will make the connection between the camera and what Nonny sees...

That reminds me, he now also talks on the phone more than he used to. In fact when I call Lisa on my way home from work a lot of times I will hear him shouting "I want to talk to Pappy!". Well, it is now actually possible to converse with him over the phone. But what happens when he wants to show me something? Well, he just says: "Look Pappy, like this." or "See, here, this one.". So, I also wonder when he realizes I cannot see what's on the other end of the phone line :-).

A Promise Well Kept...

July 27th 2006, Italy: I received a phone call from the realtor that we had a deal to buy our new house. We were at the side of the pool in our vacation park in Italy enjoying the sun, the pool, our vacation and Tobias. That was quite a thrill.

July 27th 2006, Italy, 2 minutes later: After letting the first thrill settle in and jumping in the air a few times, I promised Tobias I would get him a swing in our new yard.

February 28th 2007, Gouda: Moving in to our new house

Easter 2007, Gouda: Groundwork for the swing: grass (we emptied out the yard and put grass down...)

July 30th 2007, Gouda: The Swing: a promise well kept!

And Tobias loves it. He wants to swing every single day of the week! On this picture he is already in his pajamas. That was the night we built it (my Dad and I). (Of course) it took a lot longer than we anticipated resulting in Tobias looking out the window waiting and waiting until it was done. It almost came to the point where he would not be able to try it before he went to bed, but when we were almost finished he was able to do a little swinging before bedtime. After that he was good to go, he pretty much fell asleep right after that...

We finished the job that night and well, we enjoy the hard work pretty much on a daily basis!

A New Bed

I have said it so many times: Tobias is growing sooooo fast. And with a growing boy comes the need for a bigger bed. So, a couple of weeks ago we bought him a new bed...

Now, you hear all these stories about children not wanting to sleep in a new bed and crawling out in the middle of the night and waking you up and all sorts of stuff like that. Needless to say we were a little worried that something like that might happen to us.

Anyway, we took some precautions on of which is putting up a stairway gate at the top of the stairs (right next to his room). That was quite a job actually. I did that first and then I still needed to put the bed together. It was fun, for both Tobias and me because he helped me of course (he never passes an opportunity to imitate me with his tools...

Well, from minute number one Tobias loved his new bed. He has not had one problem sleeping in it (so far). And the few times he does wake up are not so different from before anyways... he does not come out of his room, he just stands there next to his bed until we arrive...

Recently he has had some trouble sleeping though, but that has nothing to do with his bed, but with the fact that it is starting to get dark so early. His current room is darker than the one in the old house. Also there is no lamppost right by his window, like in the other house, which means that when it is dark outside, his room is really dark. I guess that scares him.

So, we have a new deal now which is that we keep his nightlamp on (a little lamp on his nightstand) and we leave the door open just a little bit so that IF he wakes up he can call "Pappy, are you coming?!" (he does this in a "raspy" voice which is kind of hilarious...). And this deal works, he doesn't wake up crying anymore, when he wakes up, during the night (which is still rather rare) or in the morning, you can hear him call "Pappy, are you coming?!" (Papa, kom je?! in Dutch).

Vacation

Man, it has been a long time since I posted any pictures. You would almost suspect that Tobias is not as interesting anymore or something like that. Well, on the contrary... It is just that the main interest is now in his language. That is developing so fast. More about that later.

The reason I have not been posting regularly is more than one thing. Of course I have been busy, but that's always the same excuse, never valid though... Another part is that we have been on vacation and here I post my favorite Tobias-on-vacation picture of this year.


We had Lisa's parents over, Nonny and Granddaddy for Tobias. They had fun, we had fun and Tobias had fun. It was a good vacation. We went to Germany for a few days and visited some places in the Netherlands. We also discovered that it is hard to tell how fast Tobias is growing through a webcam.


Another thing that is hard to follow is how well Tobias can speak in both English and Dutch. That is because het is "webcam-shy" or was anyway. These days he is speaking more when we are online. I think I have told you before that everything has a sound with Tobias and me. Sounds like bonk, donk, kling, klont, baf, boom etc. Well, Tobias is now making those up himself and everytime he does he laughs like crazy, and of course there is a new sound every day! Like I said, the interesting part is now more the language than anything else. It is so funny because sometimes he has to laugh so hard that he literally falls over...


Also his mind is working like crazy. The other day (that was such a proud day in my life :-)) we were in the car together and I was playing Bob Dylan on the radio. Tobias said:

"Hey Papa, that's Bob Dylan! I am going to listen to him..... Papa, first Raymona, then William Zanzinger, and then Mr. Tambourine Man..... Papa, Bob Dylan can sing it really well!" (Note: Raymone = "To Ramona", William Zanzinger = "The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll").


Well, there were three things to be proud of here and I guess it depends on who you are in which order they come, but I'll list them here in an arbitrary order :-):
- He recognized Bob Dylan
- He used perfect grammar
- He can name three Bob Dylan songs
When we got home it became even funnier..... I stopped the car and was getting ready to get out when he said: "Papa, we have to wait until he's finished.". So, we sat in the car until William Zanzinger was over drawing Mama's attention and astounding her when she realized what was going on.


The things that are going on in his head.... Another time we were in the bathroom where Granddaddy had left us a couple of bars of soap. He wanted to smell the soap. He told me: "Papa, that's granddaddy's soap." I said that we had to take it back to Granddaddy when we go over there for Christmas. He asked: "Papa, where is Christmas?". Hilarious, right?!

As you can see, it is not that Tobias has become less interesting or anything like that. There are many many stories to tell. I just have not had enough time (or energy; too many projects at work, redoing a house, moving, decorating the house really takes it out of you...) to keep my blog updated.

Of course, during a vacation you have time to thing about things and one of the things I thought about was how wonderful it is to have daddy-days. So wonderful in fact that instead of having one every two weeks, I decided to ask for one every week..... and I got it! I am now off every wednesday, so I will probably be better at posting stuff again (don't take that as a promise though...). Anyway, I took a picture I like today, I will put it on right now. We were playing with the Lego's and he was building a tower....



Until the next post...

Play-Doh

Here is the drill's current biggest competitor: The Play-Doh!

Every single day Tobias wants to "Pway Pway-Doh"... Loads of fun for both Tobias and us! He makes shapes, rolls balls, rolls saucages, makes spaghetti, makes whipped cream, uses his press as a vacuum cleaner, uses his press as a drill. In short, there's lots of things to do with Play-Doh. We even caught him eating some of it for real, which we immediately turned into a big game: making a play-doh cake and then fake-eating it. Of course mom and dad also have to have a fake-bite :-).

Not only can you play with play-doh, you can also learn a lot from play-doh: for example colors (but Tobias is already very familiar with naming lots of different colors), shapes (but Tobias is also quite fluent in that department), etc. But today he explicitly realized or at least pronounced that mom and dad say things differently. He was playing with his press and using it as a drill (of all things... :-)). Anyway, I said: "No, Tobias, that's not a drill, it's a press.". I said this in Dutch where "press" is "pers" (the e is pronounces similar to the e-sound in press). Tobias replied by saying "Papa says pers, mommy says press.". 

He has been speaking two languages ever since he has been speaking. He has been switching languages between me and Lisa, but he never so explicitly pronounced the distinction before, even in the absence of (in this case) mommy... Fascinating!!!

The Constant Gardener...

Tobias could very well become the constant gardener... In my previous post I talked about watering the plants, this one is about mowing the grass. Here he is mowing the grass at our friends house in Paris. We visited them two weeks ago and had a good time. As you can see Tobias had a good time too.

He walked around with that mower pretty much all day! Sometimes it is good to play with some other toys than your own. Other things of Valentine's (our friends' little girl) he liked were a shopping cart, a baby stroller, in short, everything with wheels that can be pushed around the room or the grass :-).

We only stayed two days, but I think we should be looking into buying him a mower too because here he is mowing the grass with his golfbag...

Watering the Plants

We have had quite some nice weather in the Netherlands a while back. Recently we have had a sufficient amount of rain though, but that didn't keep Tobias from watering the plants! He loves doing it and he wants to do it sometimes more than once a day... Here he is working on it. He can only carry half a watering can of water at a time because otherwise it is too heavy.

It is so cute to watch him do it and hear him comment on it as the water seeps away into the dirt: "I'm watewing the pwants!", "He dwinking!", "Slurp!" (drinking sounds). For me it is quite convenient because he actually waters all the plants... he doesn't skip a single one, which leaves me with only the grass to water. 

With the current amount of rainfal we're experiencing none of the watering is quite necessary so I hope the plants won't drown... :-)

The Drill

Like I said in one of my previous posts I got Tobias a drill (or the Bzzzzt as he sometimes calls it :-)). That is by far his favorite toy (although play-doh is now tough competition :-)). Tobias drills just about anything with his drill: the floor, the table, the chair, the bookshelve, the glass, and if we're not careful even himself! Good for us it's plastic...

Since we moved into our new house so many people have been doing work involving a drill and Tobias sort of got obsessed with drills. He knows the color of everyone's drill:

- Papa has a red drill

- Opa has a black drill

- Geo (the contractor) has a yellow drill

- Rocco (the electrician) has a green drill

- The kitchenman has a yellow drill

He also knows that nobody has a purple drill :-)

Anyway, he loves his drill and it is fun to watch him use it (although is does require quite some batteries :-)).

Workbench

During Nonny's visit, Tobias got spoiled. I guess that is something grandparents are supposed to do, or genetically inclined to do, or have an uncontrollable urge to do. Anyway, Tobias got spoiled in many ways. He got loads and loads of attention of course, he got to eat candy, chocolate, cookies and stuff, but he also got some toys!

In the previous post I talked about a stuffed animal from the Zoo, but he also got a workbench! He loves that thing. From the first time it came out of the box, until pretty much last weekend (that is when I bought him a drill, which might actually be on my next post :-)) he played with it non-stop! He especially loves hammering the nails, and he is quite good at it too... He holds the nail at first and hits it very gently and then he lets go of it and hits it harder, just like a real carpenter I guess... Is also had a wrench, a screwdriver, and a vise.

Anyway, this was a very good gift and Nonny got to see Tobias enjoy it quite a bit!

Nonny's Visit

Nonny came over for a visit. We all enjoyed that very much! Tobias still talks about her all the time, like "this is Nonny's chair" or "Nonny's on the airplane" and such. Nonny, Opa and Oma took Tobias out to the Zoo one day. This picture is taken there. They all had a great day and Tobias got to pick a stuffed animal... He picked a green snake!

Nonny was here for a little over two weeks and her intention is to be back in August, together with Granddaddy. We are all looking forward to that.

Grass in our Yard

One of the purposes for moving was to have a bigger back yard (so that Tobias has room to play. Well, we do and we recently put some grass in there. Also we had some very nice weeks, weatherwise, so we, and especially Tobias (and the cats for that matter), have put our new grass to some good use!

Tobias played soccer, golf, and as you can see in this picture, the harmonica on the grass. Very nice. It is our intention to put a swingset on there as well, but we haven't gotten that far yet. I hope we will be able to have one this summer though. We are also going to expand our yard this fall and perhaps we will add a sandbox then too. After all, like I said, we bought this house and this yard for Tobias to play in...!

Fortunately, so far he has been loving it!

One in a Million

This is one of those one in a million type pictures. It is so hard to capture just that giggle, laugh, face, cry, shout, step, jump or whatever on CCD, but every once in a while you get lucky. This time Oma got lucky because she took this one.

This one was taken in her back yard where Tobias was playing with this garage. He had just discovered that you can jam the lift up and the car will jump up in the air. He had to laugh so hard every time that happened... as you can see in this picture. The car is still airborne and Tobias just burst out laughing!

Easter Egg Hunt

Easter has already come and gone! Time flies when you're having fun.... in your back-yard. Like our entire house, the yard needed quite some work too. The day before Easter we did a lot of work and my parents helped us a lot. In return we made them a big dinner and had them spend the night in our new house, so we could give them a big Easter brunch too. That was loads of fun, and Tobias got an Easter bunny and a lot of Easter chocolate. But, in all this activity we totally forgot about the Easter Egg Hunt!

Fortunately we have two Easter days in the Netherlands, so we had an Easter Egg hunt on the second Easter day instead... Tobias was so surprised to find all these eggs in the yard! That was funny. In this picture we are opening up the harvest...

This Easter was pretty much Tobias' first encounter with chocolate... All this Easter chocolate may very well have turned Tobias into a chocolate addict because he is asking for chocolate eggs pretty much every day now!

Tobias' first Haircut

It is unbelievable but true: Tobias had his first haircut, from Oma. She used to be a hairdresser, so it was a professional job, and fun because Oma was playing with him and enjoying every minute of it. Of course we saved a couple of hairs....

I think I had my haircut when I was just over one year old and judging from the pictures I had a lot more hair by that time. I was a blonde too, but Tobias' hair is so light that it seems that he still doesn't have a whole lot of hair. But, after his haircut it did look a lot better :-).

He is growing into a little boy so incredibly fast!

Riding My Bike!

For his birthday we gave Tobias a tricycle. In the old house we stored it in the attick, but in our new house we keep it in the garage. That makes it easier for us to take it out, so we have been using it quite a few times recently...

This picture was taken the first time we took Tobias out on it. He loved it and so did we of course. Recently the weather has been really nice out here so we have been taking him out a lot. Tobias is not yet able to paddle it all by himself, but he is gradually getting there. I am sure he'll get the hang of it soon.

Obviously we will be taking him out on his tricycle a lot!

Tobias Woods

Ever since Tobias started using them he has had pretty good fine motor skills for his age (as far as I can tell... based on what I see in his peers...). He can be so incredibly gentle when he picks something up or when he tries to put something away or when he pets our cats or anything else basically. It is adorable to see him use his little fingers and hands to do stuff.

Also his hand-eye coordination seems to be quite OK. We have this fishing game he got as a gift for his second birthday. We has a feeling it would be tough for him to pick up the fish using his fishing rod, but he has been able to do it just fine picking up exactly the fish he says he will pick up or we ask him to pick up.

Because we moved we got a good look at all the stuff we have. One of the things we found is a toy golf set that I got as a bachelor party joke... Well, now it is being used pretty much every day by Tobias... And again Tobias shows his excellent hand-eye coordination because he can hit those balls pretty darn good... He can hit a long drive all the way across the living room, but when I tell him to hit it gently so that it will go in the hole he can do that as well. Ok, it does not usually go in the hole, since that is virtually impossible, but it does reach and "hit" the hole.

Anyway, I am impressed.... (yes, and biased too :-)). 

Boxes and Cookies

When you talk about moving and small children are involved you always hear these stories of how traumatized kids can be when they move. I don't know if it is because Tobias is too young for that, or if we did something right, or because he is just a layed back kid, but Tobias seems to really like our new house and his new room and everthing.

What we did is involve him every step of the way (except the day we moved all our stuff). We involved him in decorating his room, putting his furniture back together, hanging his curtains, unpacking boxes, everything. And he enjoyed everything. He was lugging his toy-tools around and "helping" us with everything we did. He also helped vacuuming and cleaning and stuff like that. Anyway, from day one he has talked about "Tobias' new room" and loved it. He has not been waking up or screeming or any of the other things you hear about small children moving.... So, we are happy about that.

Here he is on the first day we stayed at our new place. Like I told you our stuff was already here. That day we did a lot of cleaning and rearranging so that we could actually live here... Tobias found all those boxes quite interesting although I think at this particular moment his attention was more with the cookies he is holding and eating... :-). 

Gwasses On

Like I said, many many cool things to play with... He found Oma's glasses (or gwasses) as he calls them... Of course he has seen glasses before and has had them on. He has a pair of sunglasses himself. I never took a picture of him wearing glasses (other than his own sunglasses). He looks so intelligent, doesn't he? I just thought it was a cute picture. We were just goofing off a little bit when I took this one.

Well, that's all from my parent's place for now. The next pictures will be in or around our new house (or anywhere else we take interesting pictures which might even include my parent's house, just not taken during the three weeks we stayed there... :-)). 

Tobias Davis...

There are sooooo many cool things to play with at Opa's and Oma's place... Like the trumpet. Of course this is not a toy but fun to play with anyway... Of course it is quite a joke when Daddy tries to play something on it, so Tobias probably thought it better to try himself. No sound came out, but it was fun and resulted in this cute picture. I admit, I should stick to piano and guitar (and maybe some singing), but Tobias should stick to his own toy trumpet... 

Pay Me My Money Down

As I told you before we stayed at my parent's house for a while. Well, that time is over now. We are (almost) fully settled in our new house, even though some things still remain to be done. It is very nice and comfortable and we have been living her for about 3 weeks now. Recently our internet connection was hooked back up so I am now fully equipped to start blogging again.

Before I go on to pictures in the new house there are still some I would like to post from the time we were living at my parent's place. Even though it was not the nicest reason to stay there, we had a good time staying there and so did Tobias as you can see here.

I love this picture because both Tobias and I were so into the moment... My dad has the new Bruce Springsteen CD: "We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions". The Boss plays Pete Seeger songs one of which is "Pay Me My Money Down" and Tobias and I love that song. This picture was taken when we were playing and singing the song really loud! Tobias is shaking his maracas and singing and smiling all at the same time. Great! We played that song a lot while staying there. I have a feeling I will associate that song with the transition from one house to another from now on... 

Staying at Oma and Opa's

We have been moving for about 3 weeks now... A few posts back I talked about us redoing our new house and everything. Well, that we did and it still is not finished, even though we had to be out of our old house two weeks ago... and we have been out of there for a little over two weeks now.

We have not yet moved into our new house... Well, our furniture has, but not us. The contractor was not finished yet and is still working on it. We now plan to move in this wednesday.

As a consequence we have not had a descent internet connection for the past couple of weeks so I have not been able to post any new photo's, much to the dismay of some of my most loyal readers... So, this morning at work I put posting a message on top of my todo list... :-).

Another consequence is that Tobias has been playing with all sorts of new stuff at my parent's house. For instance, Oma's hat... It was hanging on the coat rack when he spotted it and I couldn't resist putting it on his head. He had to laugh and was running around with it. Of course it is way to big so it would fall over his eyes as he was playing with the ball. A pretty funny sight, and, as you can see in this picture, pretty cute too, right? 

Peek-a-Boo -> Hello

Tobias has always loved playing peek-a-boo. We have been playing it for a long time. Recently the words of the game have changed though and now it is "Hello" in various pronounciations, ranging from Dutch to American, but his (and my) favorite one it probably the very overdone Queen's English.

Most of the times we play his on our armchair. He loves that game and he sometimes has to laugh so hard that it hurts...

On my daddy-days I often go into town. Behind the city hall of Gouda, which is situated on the town square, there is a sort of a balcony supported by some pillars (one of which is in this picture...). About a month ago when we were walking there I remember playing peek-a-boo with him by hiding and walking around the pillars. Last wednesday we did the same thing and as you can imaging now the game was not "Peek-a-boo", but it was "Hello", and he loved it! Here I captured him in one of the "Hello"-moments... 

Tobias Dylan...

We actually celebrated Tobias' birthday twice this year. Once on the day itself, as I wrote about in my previous post, and one two days later, on a saturday. We invited some of Tobias' "friends" meaning, some people we know that have children in a similar age range. Well, we ended up with quite a house full of people.

Tobias got spoiled like crazy with all the gifts he got, but one of his favorites (and mine too) was this nice red guitar. Ok, I agree, his technique needs some work, but boy, was I the proud daddy when he sat down with it and "sang": "How many woads must man walk down, fore call him a man". That's my boy!

The party was nice. Lisa made a cake this time which everybody loved. There was a nice mixture of Dutch speaking and English speaking people. I still can't believe it's already over.... I have a two year old son.... and I LOVE HIM! 

Tobias 2 Years!!!

Happy Birthday Tobias!! Tobias turned 2 last week! Unbelievable, time seems to fly. What is also unbelievable is that I have been doing this blog for two years now, and I have no intention to quit anytime soon... Because there still is something interesting to tell just about every day!

For his birthday we bought him a tricycle. We tried it out in the store and there he already loved it. Of course he was totally oblivious as to why he got to try out so many tricycles, but well, he had fun doing it anyway. As a matter of fact, while trying them our he ran into a dollhouse that then fell over an caused him to catch everybody's attention...

Anyway, on the morning I had high hopes for a big smile.... and boy did I get one when he saw his tricycle.... but the big question is, was it because of his tricycle or because of something else.... Well, it turned out to be more about the baloons, or aboons as he calls them. He was running around his gift and sitting on it going: "This is yewwow aboon, this is een aboon!"

Ah well, since then he did get on his tricycle a couple of times, but I am sure once we put it outside (we are now keeping it inside until we have moved) he will love it...

On his birthday we had a small party. I baked an apple pie, we had a nice dinner and Tobias got even more gifts. Since his birthday was on a thursday this year my parents got to babysit him during the day. They had fun doing that, even though they had to stay inside because of the heavy storms we had that day (I was having a meeting at a beach restaurant, from which we had a first hand view of the storm... beautiful!!!). So, it was a day to remember in more ways than one...