Tobias Davis...

There are sooooo many cool things to play with at Opa's and Oma's place... Like the trumpet. Of course this is not a toy but fun to play with anyway... Of course it is quite a joke when Daddy tries to play something on it, so Tobias probably thought it better to try himself. No sound came out, but it was fun and resulted in this cute picture. I admit, I should stick to piano and guitar (and maybe some singing), but Tobias should stick to his own toy trumpet... 

Pay Me My Money Down

As I told you before we stayed at my parent's house for a while. Well, that time is over now. We are (almost) fully settled in our new house, even though some things still remain to be done. It is very nice and comfortable and we have been living her for about 3 weeks now. Recently our internet connection was hooked back up so I am now fully equipped to start blogging again.

Before I go on to pictures in the new house there are still some I would like to post from the time we were living at my parent's place. Even though it was not the nicest reason to stay there, we had a good time staying there and so did Tobias as you can see here.

I love this picture because both Tobias and I were so into the moment... My dad has the new Bruce Springsteen CD: "We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions". The Boss plays Pete Seeger songs one of which is "Pay Me My Money Down" and Tobias and I love that song. This picture was taken when we were playing and singing the song really loud! Tobias is shaking his maracas and singing and smiling all at the same time. Great! We played that song a lot while staying there. I have a feeling I will associate that song with the transition from one house to another from now on... 

Staying at Oma and Opa's

We have been moving for about 3 weeks now... A few posts back I talked about us redoing our new house and everything. Well, that we did and it still is not finished, even though we had to be out of our old house two weeks ago... and we have been out of there for a little over two weeks now.

We have not yet moved into our new house... Well, our furniture has, but not us. The contractor was not finished yet and is still working on it. We now plan to move in this wednesday.

As a consequence we have not had a descent internet connection for the past couple of weeks so I have not been able to post any new photo's, much to the dismay of some of my most loyal readers... So, this morning at work I put posting a message on top of my todo list... :-).

Another consequence is that Tobias has been playing with all sorts of new stuff at my parent's house. For instance, Oma's hat... It was hanging on the coat rack when he spotted it and I couldn't resist putting it on his head. He had to laugh and was running around with it. Of course it is way to big so it would fall over his eyes as he was playing with the ball. A pretty funny sight, and, as you can see in this picture, pretty cute too, right? 

Peek-a-Boo -> Hello

Tobias has always loved playing peek-a-boo. We have been playing it for a long time. Recently the words of the game have changed though and now it is "Hello" in various pronounciations, ranging from Dutch to American, but his (and my) favorite one it probably the very overdone Queen's English.

Most of the times we play his on our armchair. He loves that game and he sometimes has to laugh so hard that it hurts...

On my daddy-days I often go into town. Behind the city hall of Gouda, which is situated on the town square, there is a sort of a balcony supported by some pillars (one of which is in this picture...). About a month ago when we were walking there I remember playing peek-a-boo with him by hiding and walking around the pillars. Last wednesday we did the same thing and as you can imaging now the game was not "Peek-a-boo", but it was "Hello", and he loved it! Here I captured him in one of the "Hello"-moments... 

Tobias Dylan...

We actually celebrated Tobias' birthday twice this year. Once on the day itself, as I wrote about in my previous post, and one two days later, on a saturday. We invited some of Tobias' "friends" meaning, some people we know that have children in a similar age range. Well, we ended up with quite a house full of people.

Tobias got spoiled like crazy with all the gifts he got, but one of his favorites (and mine too) was this nice red guitar. Ok, I agree, his technique needs some work, but boy, was I the proud daddy when he sat down with it and "sang": "How many woads must man walk down, fore call him a man". That's my boy!

The party was nice. Lisa made a cake this time which everybody loved. There was a nice mixture of Dutch speaking and English speaking people. I still can't believe it's already over.... I have a two year old son.... and I LOVE HIM! 

Tobias 2 Years!!!

Happy Birthday Tobias!! Tobias turned 2 last week! Unbelievable, time seems to fly. What is also unbelievable is that I have been doing this blog for two years now, and I have no intention to quit anytime soon... Because there still is something interesting to tell just about every day!

For his birthday we bought him a tricycle. We tried it out in the store and there he already loved it. Of course he was totally oblivious as to why he got to try out so many tricycles, but well, he had fun doing it anyway. As a matter of fact, while trying them our he ran into a dollhouse that then fell over an caused him to catch everybody's attention...

Anyway, on the morning I had high hopes for a big smile.... and boy did I get one when he saw his tricycle.... but the big question is, was it because of his tricycle or because of something else.... Well, it turned out to be more about the baloons, or aboons as he calls them. He was running around his gift and sitting on it going: "This is yewwow aboon, this is een aboon!"

Ah well, since then he did get on his tricycle a couple of times, but I am sure once we put it outside (we are now keeping it inside until we have moved) he will love it...

On his birthday we had a small party. I baked an apple pie, we had a nice dinner and Tobias got even more gifts. Since his birthday was on a thursday this year my parents got to babysit him during the day. They had fun doing that, even though they had to stay inside because of the heavy storms we had that day (I was having a meeting at a beach restaurant, from which we had a first hand view of the storm... beautiful!!!). So, it was a day to remember in more ways than one... 

My New House.... (what a mess!)

As you may or may not know, we bought a new house. The house is great, but needed some work. Actually, it needed a lot of work.... well, actually, we stripped the entire place and are redoing everything..... Well, we're having it done, but it is stripped all the same.

Today we went by to see how it is going. It is going a little slow. We hope to move in the beginning of february, but we are afraid we won't be able to... This picture shows you why... (this is our new living room).

At first whenever we would go into the house, for some reason Tobias would cry, or be sad or something. Recently he has become more accustomed to the mess I guess because as you can see in this picture, he is enjoying the mess...

More pictures of the house are at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/cgdepee/pietretiefstraat6/