Eating a cookie

A few months ago Tobias made his first attempt to feed himself when he started holding his bottle and drinking it himself. He has mastered that skill by now, in fact he has even advanced to a "sippy cup" and juice. Of course we still feed him every day because if it wasn't for us the food stains would not be limited to his bib, but would probably be all over his face (and maybe even more than that). As you can see here there is something else he can eat all by himself though: a cookie. Ok, granted he tends to smear that all over himself at times, he is able to finish it without us interfering and he enjoys it too! Keep up the good work Tobias (and it would be nice if you'd stop throwing up all over us :-)).

Milestone: sitting up

I guess everyone experiences, what I would like to call, a "milestone" moment every once in a while. Of course with a child you have milestone moments pretty much every week, if not, every day! Their development is so rapid and something new happens quite often. Well, this past Saturday Tobias reached a milestone if you ask me...: He can sit on his own now and as you can see in this picture he is enjoying it thoroughly! As for me, I guess I experienced his milestone as if it were my own, because I had one of those gusts of ultimate parental pride.... Not only can he sit by himself now, only a few days before that he started sitting on "all fours" and rocking himself so, I guess he is getting ready to crawl. As difficult as it may be when he does, to keep him from going places and grabbing stuff he is not supposed to, I am looking forward to it. Currently his only means of individual mobility is rolling over or pushing himself backwards. I can tell that is starting to frustrate him, especially now that he is able to sit on his hands and knees and rock. It is only a matter of time before he starts crawling.... I wonder how much time :-).

Proud grandparents

I see my parents with Tobias pretty much every week. I find it great to see my parents with him. They are such proud grandparents.... One of the first pictures in this blog is of my parents and Tobias in a very similar "pose" to this picture. Tobias was a bit smaller at the time, but oh well, I did not say "same" but "similar", didn't I? Well, having my parents-in-law here and seeing them with Tobias is also great. And look how proud they are! Tobias really has wonderful grandparents. Ok, they experience him in different ways, at different times, at different locations, but they all love him and are very proud of him. So, I am really glad that Nonny and Granddad were able to come over for a visit last week!

Playing with Nonny

Tobias loves playing with Nonny. Here he is in his "gentleman's" outfit, a button down shirt and corduroy pants (well, you can't see those here, but he is wearing them...). I think they were playing the peek-a-boo game which Tobias loves. Sometimes he just can't stop laughing and giggling. That is so great to see, and Nonny loved it too so as you can imaging this made for plenty of "kodak moments", or maybe I should say "digital moments" nowadays.... Anyway, I thought it would be nice to put one of those moments in my blog.

Longhorns uniform

We spent Christmas of 2003 in the US, with Lisa's parents. We were there for 2 weeks and had an interesting experience: tailgating. For those of you in the US no explanation is required, but for anybody else: tailgating is a pre-American Football Game ritual where everybody parks their car in the parking lot of the Football stadium and opens their tail gate (this is the back "gate" of a pick-up truck). You may think who has a pick-up truck? Well, in Texas 33% of the population does and in the Football fan community about 90% :-). Anyway, everybody installs a BBQ on the tail gate and BBQs away. For some "just" a BBQ is not enough and they haul in an entire kitchen/living room including big screen TVs and everything. Why am I telling this? Well, the game we went to see was a Texas Texans game and in this picture Tobias is wearing their outfit that Nonny and Granddad gave him. Doesn't he look cool? Ready for the real tailgating experience I would say!

Erratum: I was confused because we saw a Texas Texans game in 2003, but this is not a Texas Texans uniform, but a University Of Texas At Austin Longhorns uniform... Longhorns is the general name for the University Of Texas athletic teams, including the football team. I don't know it for a fact, but I am sure they do tailgating as well :-).

Scheer family visits

As some of you may know Lisa took a trip to Europe during high school. This was in 1987 and she was travelling with high school band members from all over the east coast. During this trip she visited the Netherlands as well and there she stayed in Zuid-Beijerland (which is approximately 10 miles from where I grew up) with a host family, family Scheer. They have 3 boys one of them named Tobias. Lisa always thought that was such a nice name and that is one of the reasons we named Tobias Tobias. Tobias was 9 years old at the time. Now he is 27 years old and him and his mom, came to visit last week. So in this picture (l-to-r): Tobias Scheer, Lisa with Tobias on her lap and Narda Scheer.

Tobias' chair

Nonny and Granddad came to visit us last week. They were here for 9 days. Obviously, the main purpose was to see Tobias and they got to see lots of him. Another purpose was to see Tobias in his normal environment rather than in the hospital, where he was for most of the time during their previous visit... I was at work part of the time and Lisa also had to work because she had to prepare for the new schoolyear, so Nonny and Granddad had Tobias all to themselves for a couple of days. I think both them and Tobias enjoyed that a lot. They brought over a "booster seat" that will turn a normal chair into a high chair. This is quite convenient for us because generally speaking space is limited in the Netherlands and that is no different in our house... This way we don't need to put an additional high chair in our living room... As you can see in this picture not only did Tobias get to sit in his new chair, he also got to be fed by Nonny, a joy to both of them!