Watering the Plants

We have had quite some nice weather in the Netherlands a while back. Recently we have had a sufficient amount of rain though, but that didn't keep Tobias from watering the plants! He loves doing it and he wants to do it sometimes more than once a day... Here he is working on it. He can only carry half a watering can of water at a time because otherwise it is too heavy.

It is so cute to watch him do it and hear him comment on it as the water seeps away into the dirt: "I'm watewing the pwants!", "He dwinking!", "Slurp!" (drinking sounds). For me it is quite convenient because he actually waters all the plants... he doesn't skip a single one, which leaves me with only the grass to water. 

With the current amount of rainfal we're experiencing none of the watering is quite necessary so I hope the plants won't drown... :-)

The Drill

Like I said in one of my previous posts I got Tobias a drill (or the Bzzzzt as he sometimes calls it :-)). That is by far his favorite toy (although play-doh is now tough competition :-)). Tobias drills just about anything with his drill: the floor, the table, the chair, the bookshelve, the glass, and if we're not careful even himself! Good for us it's plastic...

Since we moved into our new house so many people have been doing work involving a drill and Tobias sort of got obsessed with drills. He knows the color of everyone's drill:

- Papa has a red drill

- Opa has a black drill

- Geo (the contractor) has a yellow drill

- Rocco (the electrician) has a green drill

- The kitchenman has a yellow drill

He also knows that nobody has a purple drill :-)

Anyway, he loves his drill and it is fun to watch him use it (although is does require quite some batteries :-)).

Workbench

During Nonny's visit, Tobias got spoiled. I guess that is something grandparents are supposed to do, or genetically inclined to do, or have an uncontrollable urge to do. Anyway, Tobias got spoiled in many ways. He got loads and loads of attention of course, he got to eat candy, chocolate, cookies and stuff, but he also got some toys!

In the previous post I talked about a stuffed animal from the Zoo, but he also got a workbench! He loves that thing. From the first time it came out of the box, until pretty much last weekend (that is when I bought him a drill, which might actually be on my next post :-)) he played with it non-stop! He especially loves hammering the nails, and he is quite good at it too... He holds the nail at first and hits it very gently and then he lets go of it and hits it harder, just like a real carpenter I guess... Is also had a wrench, a screwdriver, and a vise.

Anyway, this was a very good gift and Nonny got to see Tobias enjoy it quite a bit!

Nonny's Visit

Nonny came over for a visit. We all enjoyed that very much! Tobias still talks about her all the time, like "this is Nonny's chair" or "Nonny's on the airplane" and such. Nonny, Opa and Oma took Tobias out to the Zoo one day. This picture is taken there. They all had a great day and Tobias got to pick a stuffed animal... He picked a green snake!

Nonny was here for a little over two weeks and her intention is to be back in August, together with Granddaddy. We are all looking forward to that.

Grass in our Yard

One of the purposes for moving was to have a bigger back yard (so that Tobias has room to play. Well, we do and we recently put some grass in there. Also we had some very nice weeks, weatherwise, so we, and especially Tobias (and the cats for that matter), have put our new grass to some good use!

Tobias played soccer, golf, and as you can see in this picture, the harmonica on the grass. Very nice. It is our intention to put a swingset on there as well, but we haven't gotten that far yet. I hope we will be able to have one this summer though. We are also going to expand our yard this fall and perhaps we will add a sandbox then too. After all, like I said, we bought this house and this yard for Tobias to play in...!

Fortunately, so far he has been loving it!

One in a Million

This is one of those one in a million type pictures. It is so hard to capture just that giggle, laugh, face, cry, shout, step, jump or whatever on CCD, but every once in a while you get lucky. This time Oma got lucky because she took this one.

This one was taken in her back yard where Tobias was playing with this garage. He had just discovered that you can jam the lift up and the car will jump up in the air. He had to laugh so hard every time that happened... as you can see in this picture. The car is still airborne and Tobias just burst out laughing!

Easter Egg Hunt

Easter has already come and gone! Time flies when you're having fun.... in your back-yard. Like our entire house, the yard needed quite some work too. The day before Easter we did a lot of work and my parents helped us a lot. In return we made them a big dinner and had them spend the night in our new house, so we could give them a big Easter brunch too. That was loads of fun, and Tobias got an Easter bunny and a lot of Easter chocolate. But, in all this activity we totally forgot about the Easter Egg Hunt!

Fortunately we have two Easter days in the Netherlands, so we had an Easter Egg hunt on the second Easter day instead... Tobias was so surprised to find all these eggs in the yard! That was funny. In this picture we are opening up the harvest...

This Easter was pretty much Tobias' first encounter with chocolate... All this Easter chocolate may very well have turned Tobias into a chocolate addict because he is asking for chocolate eggs pretty much every day now!