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... 

My New House.... (what a mess!)

As you may or may not know, we bought a new house. The house is great, but needed some work. Actually, it needed a lot of work.... well, actually, we stripped the entire place and are redoing everything..... Well, we're having it done, but it is stripped all the same.

Today we went by to see how it is going. It is going a little slow. We hope to move in the beginning of february, but we are afraid we won't be able to... This picture shows you why... (this is our new living room).

At first whenever we would go into the house, for some reason Tobias would cry, or be sad or something. Recently he has become more accustomed to the mess I guess because as you can see in this picture, he is enjoying the mess...

More pictures of the house are at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/cgdepee/pietretiefstraat6/