Ice-cream

Tobias' first word, other than papa and mama, was probably "IJs"... That is Dutch for "Ice-cream"... Tobias is talking more and more now and he has been for the past couple of weeks. It is hard to say if his first word actually was "IJs", but it was the first time he spoke with intention. It was at my mom's birthday and we were having desert, ice-cream. He wanted some and he said "IJs" pointing at our ice cream. He had heard that word before and he actually had ice-cream before, but he had never said it before. Needless to say we were pretty surprised and needless to say that he had some ice-cream :-).

His vocabulary is increasing daily. He now says many words, like blue, green, yellow, bear, ball, bye, hi, wall, trash, red, and quite some more actually. I think it is hard to keep a list of his vocabulary because it is growing so rapidly! That is great to see and it is amazing how many words have been stored in his head and how well he can apply them. For example the colors that he uses, he applies them to other objects than the initial ones he identified first as being blue or yellow or green. They now apply to trees, balloons, cars, etc. He also knows a lot of letters. He has a letter toy that seems to work really well. Whenever he sees letters, like on a t-shirt or a store window or something, he will point to one and make its sound. He knows d, e, f, h, i, k, l, m, o, p, s, t, w, z. He knows some others as well, but he can't say them yet.

The most amazing thing with his language to me is the fact that not only does he know all these words, he knows some of them in both our languages!..... AND he will use the Dutch word when talking to me and the English one when talking to Lisa! AMAZING! To me it is anyway... The other night I was reading one book to him in Dutch and one in English. Both books feature a blue butterfly. While reading the Dutch book the butterfly was "blauw" (or "bauw" as he says it), while reading the English book the butterfly was "blue" (or "bue" as he says it). So he distinguishes between mommy and daddy as well as between daddy reading Dutch and daddy reading English! Once again: AMAZING!!!

Mama....

I believe this is my first post without a picture. I know that sometimes a picture says more than a thousand words, but this time words will have to do because
- first of all I did not have my camera at the time of the event I am about to describe
- second, I would have needed video in order to show what happened, and
- third, I had to laugh so hard that I would not have been able to capture the event anyway....

Ok, what happened? Well, let me begin by telling you that twe weeks ago Lisa bought Tobias a barn with barn animals. There are three kinds of animals: horses, sheep and cows. Each animal comes in a mother and a baby size. So, Tobias goes "mama, mama, beebee, beebee" when he is playing with them. Of course we ask questions like "Where is the baby horse?" and "Where is the mama cow?".

Another thing I should tell is that Tobias is very much into trashcans of all kinds. Whenever he sees one he point at it and says something like "da da". We are supposed to respond by saying "Trashcan!" and he will go "Ja.". He has proven to be a very good trashcan spotter. As we were biking this past weekend he would go "da da" pretty much every 5 minutes. A lot of times we didn't even see a trashcan, but at closer inspection there always was one, or just a tiny part of one visible somewhere...

Ok, here's the story... As you know we bought a new house. Currently we are looking for a new kitchen, bathroom, floor and such. So, the other day we were looking at bathroom stuff in a lowe's like place. As we were walking the various aisles we came across a tiny trashcan. The kind that has a footpedal operated lid and shines and everything. Well, needless to say it caught Tobias' attention. He walked towards it and started to thump on it an raising the lid, all the while going "da da". So, I responded "Trashcan!". Tobias went "Ja." and kept playing with it. At one point we wanted to go on so, I asked Tobias "Where is mama?" expecting him to go to mama so that we would be able to continue our tour through the store. Well, guess what happened.... he went to the bigger version of the trashcan, the "mama trashcan", instead!

I hope this story is as funny in writing as it was in the person, because I just couldn't stop laughing.... but then I guess a picture does say more than a thousand words sometimes. Well, I just know that as I re-read this in the future I will remember... and laugh...

Cleaning

Ok, I am back in order. I have decided to just skip some of the pictures I intended to put online when I took them. Due to vacation and other stuff I just got too far behind to catch up.... I don't think it would be appropriate to put a picture of Tobias with the Dutch flag painted on his face, because the Dutch soccer team was playing, online now, almost two months after the World Championships... :-) Other than that there were no super-milestones or anything like that, just some pictures taken on my daddy-days. I will try not to get that far behind again. For now I will continue after our vacation...

For some reason Tobias is into cleaning stuff. He loves taking a broom and a dust pan and walk around the house cleaning everything. He will clean the couch, the armchair, the desk, Jip, Janneke, the carpet and, as you can see in this picture, the floor. Quite funny to look at and hopefully he will still like it this much when he is older, although I guess I should not count on that too much....

He also likes brushing things, like his hair, daddy's hair, Jip, Janneke, the carpet, the bed and such. He also likes to stick mommy's make-up brushes in his ears.... a bit disturbing, but it makes for some great pictures (taken during our vacation...):

Eh... strange bird...?

The order got a little messed up here because I wanted to post pictures from our vacation first. Well, I did and now we're back to the week before our vacation. We bought a baby toilet seat in the shape of a bird and put Tobias on it... without much, although a little bit of, success.

At first he was not at all happy to be sitting on it, but as soon as we started reading to him his smile returned. As you can see in this picture he is still somewhat hesitant... Of course I can agree with him on the weirdness of sitting on a bird... especially when mom and dad are telling you to take a dump on it...

Well... we put him on that thing somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes at a time and read to him. He has done a poo and a wee (combined) two times now... Of course we have not been too good at putting him on there, but I guess we have to start somewhere. Hopefully it won't take him too long to get used to it... :-) 

One more from Italy...

Well, actually this picture was taken in Monaco, so I guess the title should be more like "One more from the vacation". Just because it is such a cool picture. Of course we have loads of cool picture from our vacation, but I chose this one because I remember so well how much fun we had sitting out there, despite the unbelievable heat. Tobias was laughing, looking around and kind of goofing off, as were we. It was a very nice day out there. I guess Tobias is flagging a waiter here because he wants more juice of some kind (who wouldn't with 100 degree weather!?).

Well, like I said, that was it for our vacation.... 

Look at me in Italy!

For some reason or other it is difficult to keep up my blogging frequency.... I can name a few.

1. We have been on a vacation to Italy. This picture is taken in Genoa and as you can see Tobias is having a good time.... he says "hi" :-) We had a good time too. We went for two weeks and stayed in what they called a bungalow but what was really a shack. This, although a slight shock at first, did not matter too much because we were outside most of the time. Also, the shack was next to the pool at which we spent a lot of time too. Tobias loved the pool. He would jump in and climb out of it, throw balls in it, splash his feet in it and so on. We had some great fun at the pool!

We did not spend as much time as we might have sight-seeing, but I guess that is to be expected when travelling with a young child. We did go to Genoa, Savona, Torino, Monaco and Albenga and we also spent time driving around the area. But, however beautiful and nice that was, being with my boy full-time for two weeks in itself was the highlight of my vacation!

Two weeks went by way too fast and now we have already been back for two weeks which have gone by very fast as well....! which brings me to the second reason.....

2. We bought a new house! (It is nice to be able to say "We bought a house in Italy!".... :-)). We were already looking into a house close to where we live now when we left for our vacation, in fact, we were already negotiating the price and the negotiations just went on into our vacation. On the last day of our vacation we reached an agreement, so, now we have a new house! This has taken up a lot of my spare time since we have been back because a lot of stuff needs to be arranged... for example... money.

We need a mortgage, but Dutch banks do not like to provide mortgages to people with a temporary residency permit, which Lisa still has due to a major screw-up at the immigration office. Rectifying this screw-up basically means reapplying which will take about 6 months! Too much time for us, so we had to look for a bank that doesn't make such a big deal out of that. We did find a bank, but it took quite some effort. We hope to sign all the papers this week. The transfer of the house is set for October 2nd. Then we are facing a lot of re-doing, which is another thing we put time and effort into (we are having it done, but we had to find a contractor). Finally, we need to sell our own house. This should not be too much of a problem, but again, it takes time and effort (for example, some cosmetic touch-ups and such...). We are absolutely excited about the house though. All the re-doing enables us to make exactly the way we like from the inside, and the style of the outside of the house is what we have been wanting for a long time! So, exciting but busy times...

3. We have been trying to catch up with a lot of people since we came back from our vacation. Friends had babies, bought new houses and so on. So, our weekends were spent doing that.

4. I am very busy at work. Just before my vacation I was asked if I were interested in a very interesting position on a very interesting project. Needless to say I said yes to that one. That is starting now. Also, I am working on some other ongoing projects. On top of all that, two colleagues are leaving the company and I am taking over some of their workload as well. So, busy busy busy there as well.

If you add it all up I have nothing to complain about because these are all very exciting things going on. It is just a bit busy and that is why I hadn't taken the time to post to my blog. I have a lot more pictures that I wanted to post even before the vacation. I will probably post some of those later, but for now here is another one that kind of sums up our vacation in Italy...... I LOVED it!

Balls and Bubbles

Tobias loves playing with balls. He will pick them up and play with them one way or another. The bigger the ball the harder it gets of course. Usually he will just pick up the ball and throw it on the floor, then walk after it and repeat the process. The other day he had a tennis ball in each hand and he would bang them together before throwing them both on the floor at the same time and then going after them while laughing like crazy....

Tobias also loves bubbles, or "baba's" as he calls them. We have a bubble blow thing which we use inside the house. Of course it is lots of fun to try to get a bubble and then see it disappear... Tobias also got a bubble machine as a gift. We do not use it in the house, just outside... Recently the weather has been really nice so we have been outside a lot.... and we have used the bubble machine, much to Tobias' delight.

What is even better than balls OR bubbles is balls AND bubbles!!!