Biking Practice

As I wrote a while back Tobias got a new bike. He has not been biking as much as I hoped though... That is because shortly after he got it he had two "traumatic" experiences.

One time he came back to our garage, where the road is sloping slightly. Because of that he went a little to fast to control himself, he bumped into the garage and fell over. Another time one of his training wheels came loose and he fell over because of that... After those experience there were a few weeks where he did not want to bike at all. In fact he reverted back to his tricycle for some time...

After some convincing I got him to bike again. I told him we were going to work in the sand and put his tools under the binders (a shovel and a rake...). That worked and we went for a little ride. I had to put a hand on his shoulder though...

That went on for a little while and I had to come up with another trick to make him bike without a hand on his shoulder. I sat down a little way down the road and would make a "whoosh" sound as he biked by. Tobias would say "Look papa, I am going really fast!". Once he got used to that he would bike by himself.

Now he is biking by himself and picking up speed and distance every day! So, he got off to a bumpy start, but now he is right on track, or so I think anyway. The most important part? He is loving it now!

Headphones

Of course I still enjoy it when Tobias grabs an instrument. He has been doing that quite a bit lately. At Oma and Opa's he has been playing the trumpet, the slide trombone and the accordion. At home he plays the flute, the harmonica, the tambourine, the guitar and the piano. In this picture he wanted to play with the headphones on.... the big ones :-). Cute huh?

Recently we had some funny language episodes. They had to do with expressions. Episode 1: We were in a furniture store to get Tobias new bedroom furniture. One of the items we were going to get him is a beanbag. So, we were looking around and found a nice one. It came in two varieties: blue mickeys and red mickeys. He wanted the red mickeys, we wanted the blue mickeys. So, I told Tobias "to sleep on it". I walked on to other items in the store. Tobias was quiet for a bit and then said "Mommy, I don't want to sleep on a beanbag, that's silly!" :-)

Episode 2: We were sitting at the dinner table. Tobias has not been eating very well lately. Some days he is fine, other days he doesn't want to eat. We try to encourage him of course, but one day Lisa said: "Tobias, you have to eat you're food. This time I am going to put my foot down!" upon which Tobias started to look under the table and said: "Mommy, where are you putting your foot down?" :-)

Episode 3: Tobias slept over at a friend's house (Marissa's) this weekend. He came home the next day and I asked if he slept well, and if Marissa's mom sang a song or read a book. She did read a book called "The Smelly Socks". He was talking to me in Dutch though and he tried to translate... He said: "Ja Papa, ze heeft de Ruikende Sokken gelezen.", which means she read The Smelling Socks :-)

I love his innocent literalness (I looked it up, it is a word...) and his cute literal translation efforts...!

Ameland

Before we took our vacation to Kos we had Lisa's parents over. They were here for two weeks and we took some interesting trips, one of which was to one of the Dutch islands: Ameland. The Dutch islands are biker's paradise. On some of them cars are not even allowed... On Ameland cars are allowed, but we did not take it. Instead we took a biking trip around the island. This picture is taken on that trip.

We went for about 15-20 miles. It was really nice weather and a really nice ride. I don't know if all the participants would agree to the same extent, but hey, this is my side of the story...

We were on the island for 3 days and nights. We had a good time, a nice hotel, good food and good fun playing Skip-Bo.

(We = Nonny, Granddaddy, Opa, Oma, Mama, Papa and Tobias).

Vacation: Kos, Greece

Well, after a while of absence I am back. Back from vacation, back to work and back to blogging. We went on a vacation to Kos. We went for a little under two weeks. It was a very nice vacation. We had already booked it in January, so we had quite some anticipation time...

The way we booked was quite new to me... I was planning on taking a trip by car to one of those vacation parks connected to a chain. Those usually have a pool an other necessary facilities for a child. Well, as I was checking that out on the internet I saw a commercial for Sunweb Vacations advertising sunny destinations. So, I checked out their website. They had a very good set of selection criteria:
- Destination (Greece, because we have always wanted to go there)
- Children's pool
- Playground
- Four stars and up
- All inclusive

So, there it was, three possibilities, all three on Kos. We took the one closest to the beach!

The weather on Kos is kind of boring to a Dutch guy... 30 degrees (Celcius), blue sky, blazing sun and a nice breeze every single day. This is boring because in the Netherlands you never know what to expect, but in no way unpleasant... I loved it! You can imagine we spent quite some time at the beach, but also in the pool as you can see here. Tobias loves to swim and the hardest part was getting him out of the pool. He was actually quite self-sufficient with those arm-bands on.

We did take some excursions and I took some bike rides on the island and I have to say, even though the island is one big tourist factory, it is a beautiful island! We had a great vacation.

(I kept a diary while we were there, but I think it is a bit too much to put it on here... :-))