Thursday, February 18, 2010

Car Car...

Tobias is such a good big brother to Lorelei (most of the times...). He'll play with her, hug her, kiss her, cuddle with her and everything. Sometimes, when she's crying, he'll get her a toy or make a joke and in doing so, calm her down and even make her laugh. Sure, Lorelei laughs a lot, and she laughs a lot at her Papa and Mama, but she laughs the most and the hardest at Tobias! I am pretty sure she likes her big brother :-).

Two weeks ago when my parents were baby-sitting (which they do on fridays) I came home to this picture. My dad had put them in a box and he was pushing them around the living room. Tobias told me it was their car, so, I guess he was taking his sister for "a-ridin' in his Car Car...".


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle
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Thursday, February 04, 2010

Flip de Beer

Last year in June we had a visitor called Raai de Kraai. This year the same principle, different character: Flip de Beer (Beer means Bear, he is a bear...). Flip is in the class and they learn things by telling stories centered around the adventures of Flip. Flip gets a sleep-over with every kid in the class, and, this past weekend it was our turn. The weather was not so nice, but we did have some snow, so we took Flip on the sled. Flip also went with us to a birthday party, we read books with Flip, watched a movie with Flip and, as you can see in this picture, we made and ate pancakes with Flip.

Tobias and Flip had a nice time, but unfortunately on Monday it was back to school for both Flip and Tobias.


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle
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School Play

Every month at Tobias' school one of the groups has a school play. They call this ritual "month-closing". Tobias and I attended one of these a little over a year ago, just before Tobias actually went to school. We were invited to the play of the group Tobias was about to join.
This time it was Tobias' turn and he enjoyed it. The theme was winter and the main character "Jeroentje" who woke up one morning discovering a wonderful white world of snow outside. His friends joined him in playing in the snow. Tobias was on stage for quite a while: the duration of three (of about ten) songs. In this one they were acting out that they were cold and trying to get warm by moving their arms around. He is on stage with (l to r) Jarne, Tobias, Tijs and Isabelle.

It was an extremely cute performance, I was glad I was there!


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle
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5 Years Old: Party #3

On Monday, his actual birthday, he had Party #3: the party at school. When it is your birthday you get to sit on the birthday chair, wear the birthday hat and hand out treats. You can see the chair in the background, the hat on his head and the treats in the container. The treats were cupcakes, iced to Tobias' specifications: blue icing for boys, pink icing for girls :-). He put the sprinkles on himself (matching the icing color...).

The kids sing songs for him and the parents can come and join the spectacle. It was a Monday, so I had to work, but Lisa was there (lucky duck!). She took this picture. Doesn't he look proud?

Now that he is 5 years old he is going to do lots of things differently:
- He is going to dress himself (he was already able to do that, but we had to help to speed up things a lot of times... now he actually does it himself)
- He is going to eat more vegetables, and much to our surprise, I cooked brocolli the day after his birthday and he told me I was a good cook and that brocolli was the best thing in the world (tied with poffertjes, pancakes and pasta pesto spekkies :-))
- He is going to eat more vegetables, and when we went shopping last weekend he picked apples and ate them too (he also had a few tangarines, but that takes him forever to eat!)
- He is going to play with friends at their house, and he has done that a few times now, as a matter of fact, he is going to Gijs' house this afternoon (before he would always have friends over to our place because he did not want to go to theirs
- He is going to bike to school, but of course, as you may have read before, he was already doing that anyway, and in fact we haven't done that this year because of icy streets and sidewalks...

Tobias usually keeps promises like this and so fas he has kept these promises too (more or less... :-)). He is such a big boy!


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle
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5 Years Old: Party #2

On Sunday we had party #2 for Tobias' birthday. This time we had invited Opa and Oma, Uncle Ferdinand, Uncle Yuri and some friends. As you can see in the picture Tobias had another cake in the Cars theme! Lisa and Tobias made it together and it was very good! We had a houseful of people, quite some children and an another abundant amount of gifts! Tobias got some DVD's including Ice Age 1-3 and Buurman & Buurman. We gave him a tool-kit with "real" tools. So, Tobias can now help me "sloop" (Dutch for demolish) things, as he said himself. The his of the day was Action Man! Everybody loved Action Man. I had never heard of him. Currently he is sitting under Tobias' bed, and he hasn't been playing with it as much, but on his party he hardly did anything but play with Action Man.

Of course gift giving is a central theme on a kid's birthday party, so we took a lot of pictures of that proces :-). I like this one the best:




For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle
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5 Years Old: Party #1


It's about time I blog about Tobias' birthday. And what a birthday it was. Of course 5 is quite a respectable age for a 5 year old :-). So, a respectable party would be in place, right? Well, Tobias had 3 parties this year! The first one was with his school friends on Saturday. That was quite the deal. We had a theme... guess what it was.... CARS! Tobias had sent Cars invitations to 5 boys from his class. Of course no girls were invited, because Cars is for boys, pricesses are for girls :-). Anyway, we had invited them to come over around 11 and had them picked up at 14:00. Well, somebody with more experience in this area told us that would be kind of long, and she turned out to be right, although it was quite nice as it was.

We started with gift-giving. Tobias got some nice stuff that most of the boys had hand-picked themselves. He got some cars stuff (what else?), a cowboy hat, some other cars, a flash-light... and then some... After that they played with the gifts for a bit before our first activity: drawing a racetrack on the table. I had put paper all over the tabletop and I sat them around the table so they could each draw a section of the track. Then they drew start and finish, some flags and lines on the road etc. When they were done they each picked one of Tobias' Cars figures and started racing on the track, i.e. running around the table with a car in their hand :-). That was fun to watch. We had gotten each of them a Cars shooter, which is a little Lightning McQueen figure that you can pop out of a thing. They played with that for a while. Then it was lunchtime. We made fries and meat-balls and served them on the table (no plates or anything...). They liked that :-). Dessert was: Lightning McQueen cake! It was a beautiful cake, but it was hell to make.....


After dessert two and a half hour had passed, and the party was pretty much over. Fortunately they were good kids so they played for a while before their parents picked them up. It was a great party!


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle
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