Play-Doh

Here is the drill's current biggest competitor: The Play-Doh!

Every single day Tobias wants to "Pway Pway-Doh"... Loads of fun for both Tobias and us! He makes shapes, rolls balls, rolls saucages, makes spaghetti, makes whipped cream, uses his press as a vacuum cleaner, uses his press as a drill. In short, there's lots of things to do with Play-Doh. We even caught him eating some of it for real, which we immediately turned into a big game: making a play-doh cake and then fake-eating it. Of course mom and dad also have to have a fake-bite :-).

Not only can you play with play-doh, you can also learn a lot from play-doh: for example colors (but Tobias is already very familiar with naming lots of different colors), shapes (but Tobias is also quite fluent in that department), etc. But today he explicitly realized or at least pronounced that mom and dad say things differently. He was playing with his press and using it as a drill (of all things... :-)). Anyway, I said: "No, Tobias, that's not a drill, it's a press.". I said this in Dutch where "press" is "pers" (the e is pronounces similar to the e-sound in press). Tobias replied by saying "Papa says pers, mommy says press.". 

He has been speaking two languages ever since he has been speaking. He has been switching languages between me and Lisa, but he never so explicitly pronounced the distinction before, even in the absence of (in this case) mommy... Fascinating!!!

The Constant Gardener...

Tobias could very well become the constant gardener... In my previous post I talked about watering the plants, this one is about mowing the grass. Here he is mowing the grass at our friends house in Paris. We visited them two weeks ago and had a good time. As you can see Tobias had a good time too.

He walked around with that mower pretty much all day! Sometimes it is good to play with some other toys than your own. Other things of Valentine's (our friends' little girl) he liked were a shopping cart, a baby stroller, in short, everything with wheels that can be pushed around the room or the grass :-).

We only stayed two days, but I think we should be looking into buying him a mower too because here he is mowing the grass with his golfbag...

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!