Simply Adorable!!!

Lorelei came home today and the first thing Tobias called when I got her out of her carrier was "Papa, I want to hold her!". And as you can see in this picture he did! Don't they look lovely? What more can I add to that?

Well, maybe that Tobias is probably the one who had the hardest time with her being in the hospital. It started with Lisa going to the hospital before Lorelei was born. Then she was born and she had to stay at the hospital together with Lisa. Then Lisa came home and Lorelei still stayed at the hospital.... All the while we were hauling Tobias back and forth to the hospital with us... Now that we are all home he is already doing better....

We'll see how it develops. For now, as you can see, he loves his sister!


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Downloading...

Oh, I forgot to mention something about Tobias' new room.... his desk! He loves that too. It took some time to put everything up, with going back and forth to the hospital and all. We (my parents and I) did his bed on wednesday, because I had promised that he would be sleeping in it and I wanted to keep my promise. Then on thursday we did his wardrobe, because, well, I arranged some things for Lorelei, I had to register Lorelei (that took more than an hour!!! 98% of which was waiting in line...), I wanted to go to the hospital and, building the wardrobe was one hell of a job! But we got it done... Tobias slept in a huge mess on thursday.

We finished his room on friday when Tobias was at the daycare. When he got home I told him we had a surprise for him. I grabbed his "miffy-computer" (basically a toy that plays songs and shows pictures in the shape of a computer) and took him upstairs. He walked into his room and was in awe (well, he made noises like being in awe anyway...). The first thing he did was take the computer for me, sit down at his desk, opening it up and exclaiming: "Papa, I have to download something!". Too funny, right?

Oh, I have to add one more thing about his new room. During the night from friday to saturday he fell out of bed.... twice. I didn't hear it, but my mom, who was sleeping a floor below him, went up there and put him back in. It hasn't happened again last night, but well, I guess everything needs some getting used to, even a new and much bigger bed...


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Beanbag

There is one thing in Tobias' new room that I forgot to mention in my previous post. This is a thing that he probably likes even more than his bed. A thing that I have written about before (because Tobias thought it was silly to sleep on it...). A thing that Tobias is laying on in this picture...... It is a BEANBAG!

The fun started with opening the box, because it was a huge box. Tobias wanted to open it himself and he kind of did, with some help of Oma... Then the beanbag was in a huge plastic bag which was lots of fun to pull off. And then finally there it was, the beanbag. Tobias can sit on it, lay on it, roll on it, roll off it, jump on it, push it and shove it and many more things. What I like best is to cuddle on it and read books on it, and we did that too.

In a way the beanbag is changing our lives... because instead of the blue bear chair, from now on the mickey mouse beanbag will be part of our daily bedtime routine... :-)


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

A New Bed

Tobias has a new bed. We had been preparing the baby room for some time, but we did not have furniture yet, because the baby would just use Tobias' baby furniture and we had bought Tobias a whole new bedroom set including a wardrobe, a bookshelf, a desk and of course.... a bed! Here he is in his new bed. He loved it from the very first minute, which I think is quite obvious in this picture, taken the very first minute the bed was finished.

The interesting coincidence was that the furniture was delivered on the exact same day Tobias' baby sister Lorelei was born. I had promised that he would be able to sleep in his new bed that day. Needless to say it was hard to live up to that promise, but I did it with the help of Opa and Oma!


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Reading in the Hospital

Lisa is in the hospital. She has preterm PROM (google it for a definition...). She was admitted last friday and is probably going to be there until the baby is born, which could be tomorrow, next week or maybe even later.

This is of course somewhat awkward and unfortunate and not even close to how we imagined it to be, but it is good to know that she is being closely monitored...

And!.... Tobias gets to visit mommy and she reads to him.... some of the time.... but of course the controls to the bed are much more fun to play with! It goes up and down and up and down and..... Well, you get the picture... And he likes to watch TV with mommy's headset on, regardless of what is on :-).

But it is also obvious that he struggles with the situation that has arisen. Currently he is staying with my parents so I can go to work. On wednesday I have my daddy day, so I will be with him. Actually one of the parts we weren't done with is re-arranging and re-assigning the furniture. Tobias gets new stuff and the baby get Tobias' baby furniture. It will be fun because he gets to help.

The strange thing is that we just don't know what will happen or when. Generally speaking, as far as I can tell, the prognosis is good. Thursday Lisa will be 34 weeks pregnant and after that it should be just fine if the baby is born. From a rather basic internet search I found that statistically the baby will be born on wednesday (4,58 days after the water broke). Well, like I said, we'll see...

Tobias and Friends

Tobias has more and more friends, or, we have more and more friends with children...


This is Tobias with Valentine, his french girlfriend. She came and visited us with her parents last weekend (These are the friends we go and visit in Paris every once in a while). Tobias actually knows some french words now too. His favorite one is "Voiture" which means "Car". He pronounces it with a near perfect french pronounciation! Other words he knows are: Verre (glass), Lait (Milk), Eau (Water), Oui (Yes), Non(No) and some others as well...

This is Tobias with Dilano. Dilano is a friend from the daycare. Dilano came over to our house last wednesday to play with Tobias. He loves cars so they spent a lot of time playing with the race-track (and building it :-)). They had a fun time doing that and other things.... Dilano also liked playing the piano and we had some tea and cookies...

This is Tobias with Gijs. Gijs lives in our port (the alley behind our house where lots of children play). Gijs has a tractor and a skelter and Tobias loves both (of course)! The good thing is that Gijs lets him use them... and they have lots of fun... Gijs likes Tobias' bike and his soccer ball. There have actually been times that Tobias just went out into the port and played with Gijs without us having to be there... Gijs also goes to the same school as Tobias will attend starting January and they will be in the same class together!

Halloween...

I know, I know, Halloween is not quite the Dutch thing to do, but hey, Tobias is half American..... :-) So, I got out the funny hats and we acted "scary" and we were casting some spells.... (Frog in a bog, bat in a hat, snap crackle pop and fancy that! - from Meg & Mog)

And Tobias was a real tickle spider!!! (this was just after dinner, hence the pasta sauce cheeks...) Tickle spider, by the way, is something we play on a daily basis (well, almost daily...). We play it with our hands. A hand becomes a spider and the spider tickles something or someone... Lots of fun!

I even bought treats for Halloween, because there was a year where we had some children come by... Well, this time only Tobias had a treat.... Like I said, this is not a very Dutch holiday. But as you can see Tobias liked the treat... and... his hat!

Ball Pool

Mommy has a ball-pool at school. That is an irresistible toy for Tobias. Well, Tobias and I were in The Hague on my daddy day a few weeks ago and we decided to pick up mommy from school (I think this was in mommy's fall break but she went in for a few hours anyway...). Well, we took the opportunity to play for a bit and take some "in motion" pictures, like this one!

Look at his face, he is having a ball in the ball-pool :-). His favorite thing is to step on the edge and jump in. He actually covers quite some distance doing that... as a matter of fact he pretty much covers the width of the entire ball-pool!

There are other toys at school, like an entire gym filled with all sorts of kids (well, actually occupational therapist's) equipment.... but this ball-pool is by far his favorite!

iPodding

I have an iPod Touch. I recently updated it to the latest version of the software. This includes the possibility to download and install all sorts of applications and.... GAMES!!!

I don't know if I made a mistake by introducing this possibility to Tobias, but I do know that Tobias loves it! So much that it takes some effort to make him stop playing... Anyway, we have a bowling game, a baseball game, a golf game (the iPod has a motion sensor) and, a racing game which Tobias is playing in this picture. The motion sensor makes the iPod act as a steering wheel for the car.

Oh well, for now it is nice to see him play. It makes for a good part of the bedtime routine, which may include playing downstairs (a physical game), playing some Bert & Ernie skits on YouTube (iPod) or a few minutes of iPodding (playing a game on the iPod) :-)