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!

Tobias' first Haircut

It is unbelievable but true: Tobias had his first haircut, from Oma. She used to be a hairdresser, so it was a professional job, and fun because Oma was playing with him and enjoying every minute of it. Of course we saved a couple of hairs....

I think I had my haircut when I was just over one year old and judging from the pictures I had a lot more hair by that time. I was a blonde too, but Tobias' hair is so light that it seems that he still doesn't have a whole lot of hair. But, after his haircut it did look a lot better :-).

He is growing into a little boy so incredibly fast!

Riding My Bike!

For his birthday we gave Tobias a tricycle. In the old house we stored it in the attick, but in our new house we keep it in the garage. That makes it easier for us to take it out, so we have been using it quite a few times recently...

This picture was taken the first time we took Tobias out on it. He loved it and so did we of course. Recently the weather has been really nice out here so we have been taking him out a lot. Tobias is not yet able to paddle it all by himself, but he is gradually getting there. I am sure he'll get the hang of it soon.

Obviously we will be taking him out on his tricycle a lot!

Tobias Woods

Ever since Tobias started using them he has had pretty good fine motor skills for his age (as far as I can tell... based on what I see in his peers...). He can be so incredibly gentle when he picks something up or when he tries to put something away or when he pets our cats or anything else basically. It is adorable to see him use his little fingers and hands to do stuff.

Also his hand-eye coordination seems to be quite OK. We have this fishing game he got as a gift for his second birthday. We has a feeling it would be tough for him to pick up the fish using his fishing rod, but he has been able to do it just fine picking up exactly the fish he says he will pick up or we ask him to pick up.

Because we moved we got a good look at all the stuff we have. One of the things we found is a toy golf set that I got as a bachelor party joke... Well, now it is being used pretty much every day by Tobias... And again Tobias shows his excellent hand-eye coordination because he can hit those balls pretty darn good... He can hit a long drive all the way across the living room, but when I tell him to hit it gently so that it will go in the hole he can do that as well. Ok, it does not usually go in the hole, since that is virtually impossible, but it does reach and "hit" the hole.

Anyway, I am impressed.... (yes, and biased too :-)). 

Boxes and Cookies

When you talk about moving and small children are involved you always hear these stories of how traumatized kids can be when they move. I don't know if it is because Tobias is too young for that, or if we did something right, or because he is just a layed back kid, but Tobias seems to really like our new house and his new room and everthing.

What we did is involve him every step of the way (except the day we moved all our stuff). We involved him in decorating his room, putting his furniture back together, hanging his curtains, unpacking boxes, everything. And he enjoyed everything. He was lugging his toy-tools around and "helping" us with everything we did. He also helped vacuuming and cleaning and stuff like that. Anyway, from day one he has talked about "Tobias' new room" and loved it. He has not been waking up or screeming or any of the other things you hear about small children moving.... So, we are happy about that.

Here he is on the first day we stayed at our new place. Like I told you our stuff was already here. That day we did a lot of cleaning and rearranging so that we could actually live here... Tobias found all those boxes quite interesting although I think at this particular moment his attention was more with the cookies he is holding and eating... :-). 

Gwasses On

Like I said, many many cool things to play with... He found Oma's glasses (or gwasses) as he calls them... Of course he has seen glasses before and has had them on. He has a pair of sunglasses himself. I never took a picture of him wearing glasses (other than his own sunglasses). He looks so intelligent, doesn't he? I just thought it was a cute picture. We were just goofing off a little bit when I took this one.

Well, that's all from my parent's place for now. The next pictures will be in or around our new house (or anywhere else we take interesting pictures which might even include my parent's house, just not taken during the three weeks we stayed there... :-)). 

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...