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

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

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

Ice-Skating

What else can you do in a winter wonderland? I know: Ice-skating, which we did past sunday. Here is Tobias on his skate with Jelte on his boots. Tobias and I spent quite some time on this lake on our skates. It was nice. It took Tobias some time to get back into it, but eventually he even tried to skate without holding my hand a few times at his own request. That had never happened before.

Skating does wear one out, including Tobias, so every once in a while we had to stop for a short break. One of those times Tobias made snow-angels :-)




For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Americanization (continued)

When we got back from our trip to the US this past May, I wrote about Americanization. Well, we did some of that this time as well. Of course the whole Christmas celebration in the US is quite different and more elaborate than in the Netherlands. And then, we got to enjoy some real live American sports events! Well, on top of all that Nonny had bought Tobias a baseball bat and we played a lot of that. Tobias is quite proficient at hitting that ball all the way into the neighbors' yards (and making me or Lisa run after it :-)). So, another American game has been added to the list... Tobias really enjoyed it. So much even, that he mentioned that he wants to play baseball in the Netherlands. It so happens that Gouda does have a team and that one of Tobias' friends (who is a few years older) plays on it, so, who knows....

Also, Tobias got the sequel to Granddaddy's class on Fire Hydrants.... Granddaddy took him to the Dickinson Fire House. That was quite overwhelming with the big fire engines and the big helmets and the big guys. It was an exciting experience though in which Tobias got te wear his very own fireman helmet! I did not get to take too many pictures because I think Tobias was actually kind of impressed... he was staying quite close to me. He did get to see all the stuff though, including inside the fire engine, the helmets, the hoses, inside an ambulance, all the tools they use, etc....




For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Game On!

Granddaddy took Tobias (and me) to his first live sports game! We went to two events, a Houston Rockets basketball game and the Texas Bowl, a football game. The basketball game was quite the challenge because it was at night. We were worried that Tobias would fall asleep, but he did not. As a matter of fact he got quite into the game waving his foam finger everytime the Houston Rockets scored and pointing it down everytime the opponent (New Orleans Hornets) scored. I think he had a great time actually. As you can see he also has a Houston Rockets T-shirt....



The football game was in the afternoon and we had great seats, quite close to the field (thirds row) as you can see in the picture. The game of football apparently is not a clear as the game of basketball. Despite the better time of day it was harder to keep Tobias interested throughout the game. He did enjoy the experience, but we spent more time walking around (and to and from the restrooms...) than we did at the basketball game. Of course the football game is much longer too, which may have made a difference, and of course there is more time where there is no play going on...

Anyway, he got his first taste of a live sports event and I am quite convinced he enjoyed it a lot, as did I!


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Gifts Gifts Gifts

Christmas is an exciting time, especially for kids. In anticipation of Christmas the main questions Tobias had were:
1. Will I get everything that is on the list?
2. Will I get the most presents of us all?

In regards to question 1, Sinterklaas had disappointed him somewhat because he did not get a toy camera or a toy gun and those were on his list. Well, of course Sinterklaas and Santa are in close contact when it comes to synchronizing lists... So, that questions was sufficiently answered...

In regards to question 2 Tobias determined that him and me would get the most presents. Well, he was, quite obviously, wrong. Even though he insisted, even after the gifts were handed out that both him and me had the largest pile of presents, it wasn't even close to the actual situation. Tobias got soooooo many gifts, which, I guess, was to be expected. Pretty much everything in this picture is his. He did end up getting a toy camera, he did not get a toy gun... but that was OK, because Santa does not like guns.



It is funny how children can react. He was so excited about all his gifts, yet he was still disappointed that he did not get a robot that can vacuum the house for us.... (I have no idea where that came from, although apparently one of his friends has some kind of robot that can move around on it's own without touching anything...).

It was a busy day for Tobias because he also helped Lorelei unwrap her gifts...


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle