Happy Birthday!

Last Sunday was Tobias' 4th birthday!!! Like I said in my previous post: quite the milestone because school starts... Well, I am writing this while my boy is in school. I took him this morning... his third official schoolday. I went in to take him on his first one too, last monday. I think he is going to like it. He comes back with great enthusiasm every day so far, including his "trial runs" last week. But, enough about that, I was going to write about his birthday, which you may have noticed is so intertwined with this milestone, because it kind of started last friday. He had a celebration at the daycare. It was a going away party and birthday party combined. Generally speaking they don't want parents at such occasions, but since this was his last day there we were invited. It was nice. They sang for him, he handed out a treat and a toy and he even got a gift. Well, two gifts technically, because they had made a scrapbook of all the art-project-type-things he made over the years, including some pictures and some stories about him. That is very nice, especially for us I guess. Good thing they also got him a real toy... a marble game.

Then of course his real birthday was last Sunday. We had two celebrations, one with children and one without. The one with children was in the morning from 11am to 2pm and boy was that enough! We had a total of 10 children in the house, and quite a number of parents as well... He was overloaded with gifts, but still, his favorite one was ours (or so he claims :-)). We gave him a hockey (field-hockey that is) stick, a ball, shinguards and hockey-socks. He LOVES it! But then his second favorite is bound to be Opa and Oma's gift which is a big tractor that he can ride on. One of his friends has one of those and he loves that thing, so now he has one of his own.... maybe they'll race each other. He also got lots of other gifts like a race track, playmobil, some books, some chef stuff including a coffee maker, and many many more nice things!

He likes to play chef and recently Lisa had gotten him an apron so whenever we cook we have to put our apron on.... and now he has more stuff to play chef with in his own kitchen.... The other day I came home and he was walking around with a notepad and a pencil. I just sat down without realizing what it was that he was doing, but he was taking Lisa's order of coffee and cookies! Yes, he likes to play waiter too...

Anyway, at his party I made silver dollar pancakes for the children and after that we had THE ELMO CAKE!!! Lisa had made that one the day before and it turned out beautiful (as you can see in the picture). Tobias was soooo excited about it (of course he played chef and helped Lisa make it). So was one of his friend, because Elmo was close to being destroyed before being consumed as one of Tobias' guests (Berend-Jan, 2.5 years old) picked up the cake box and walked to his dad to show him the Elmo cake.... Elmo was rescued just in time... and enjoyed! (although Tobias didn't like the icing as much because "it has too much sugar, papa...".

Later that day my parents, my brother and uncle Yuri came over and we had a nice time (and Tobias got even more presents...). That evening Tobias said he had a really nice birthday party, but it was a little too loud so his ears hurt..... he also told me his favorite present was his hockey stick, so that's how I know ours was his favorite :-).

My little boy is 4!


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle