Lollipop

No, this is not a photo-shopped picture. Yes, Tobias' tongue is green here...

The day I took this picture was a daddy-day. When Tobias woke up and I went to get him he said that he wanted to go into town with me. He was even more specific than that, he wanted to go to the blue chairs, no, even more specific: the light-blue chairs....

At first I had no idea what he meant with that. It took me a while but then I realized he meant the bagel place on the market square, a place we have been to before. On most of my daddy-days I take him into town. Sometimes we will just walk around, sometimes we'll bike around, a lot of times we will stop at some place to have a drink or lunch or something. One of those places is the bagel place. I guessed he must have remembered from a previous time we were there.

After we parked the bike in town he walked right in the direction of the bagel place. He looked into some windows to see if they had light blue chairs and we eventually ended up in the bagel place. We had some drinks and lunch and then, when we were paying and leaving the place I finally realized why he had been wanting to go there..... a lollipop!!!

Unbelievable that he remembered that because it had been quite a while since Lisa or I had taken him there. He picked a green one, hence the color of his tongue... :-)

Elmo

During our vacation we tried to get Tobias potty trained. We did not succeed although he is dry pretty much troughout the day. He just doesn't want to do Nr. 2 on the toilet. He did one time, but that was it. Any way, that is not the point of this post. What we tried is give hime some candy as a reward. This worked that one time but not after that. What was so funny is that one day we saw him acting out the entire routine with Elmo! We burst out laughing, it was soooooo cute. I guess he really wants some candy. Well, we hope that it will work someday soon...

Ever since that Elmo episode he has been lugging Elmo around everywhere we go. Like today, we went into town on the bike and Elmo had to come with us. Of course he could not just be in my coat pocket, no, he had to ride in the back with Tobias. As you can see he is securely buckled up :-).

What about his hat, mittens and scarf (not visible) :-)? Cute huh? We bought that during fall break. Oma had to complete the set by finding the matching scarf that we could not find at first.

Vacation (Fall Break)

Two weeks ago we had fall break. Obviously Lisa had the week off, but I also took the week off. Initially, we thought about going somewhere, but we decided to stay home and enjoy our new house to the full extent. Well, that's exactly what we did and it was very nice.

We did go out a couple of times. We went to a big swimming pool with lots of big water slides. This was like heaven for Tobias. We also went somewhere for a walk. Well, actually we went somewhere to get a screen for our fire place and made the most of our day... but it was nice all the same. In this picture we are at the beach in Scheveningen. We first went to Sea World there and after that we took a little walk on the beach.

We also purchased two important new items for our house:
- A screen for the fire place
- A flat screen TV
And we used those items every day during our vacation. We watched quite some movies and we lit the fire place every single night. Lisa grew up with a fire place, but I didn't. We both really enjoyed it!

It was a very nice and cosy vacation during which the continuous dry and mild weather enabled us to take pictures like this one...

Goggles

A few weeks ago friends visited us and brought Tobias a gift, a new drill. He already had a drill, as you have seen from previous posts, but this one is much more powerfull! Not only that, it came with lots of other cool things. Especially cool are the goggles, as you can see in this picture. Like his first drill, he didn't play with much else the first week or two... I think if it were up to him he would wear his goggles to bed!

Anyway, it was a really nice gift and he likes it a lot. We also got a gift, a birdhouse and some winter bird food to hang on the trees (or, in our case, the rose bushes). Tobias was also rather fascinated by that. We hung the house last weekend and we also put out the winter food. He looks out the window a lot to check if the birds are eating. I haven't seen very many yet, but I hope there will be a nest in our house. That would be so nice... Well, we'll see.

The Photographer

Today, yes, another daddy-day, the photographer came to the daycare. Of course Tobias wasn't going today but you could bring your children to have their picture taken. I did that too. Of course I dressed him in a cute outfit (that Lisa had just recently bought, in part for this occasion, in part because he has outgrown quite some clothes...).

Since he was so cute I thought I'd try to take some nice pictures myself. Equiped with my Canon Digital Ixus i I went to work. Well, that is not so hard, but not easy either. The main problem is, my camera is too slow... Whenever I had him where I wanted and would try to take a picture he would already move around, lean over, look down, have his eyes closed, or whatever.

But, I ended up taking quite a few nice shots. This one is my favorite. He was sort of dancing for me and then he tipped over. He had to laugh so hard. I took this one as he was getting up again.

My conclusions?
- I need new equipment, a camera that can take a zillion shots a minute... :-)
- I took some very nice pictures...
- Tobias looked soooooo cute today
- I will probably scan the result of the photographer and post it here for comparison :-)

Still Webcamming

Since Nonny and Granddaddy live so far away we frequently webcam with them. I have written about this before but it is becoming more and more interactive these days because Tobias starts to realize that he can also converse with whoever is on the other side of the "line".

That results in funny moments like the one in this picure. He is talking to Nonny, but the funny thing is, Nonny just sees the top of his head because he kind of "crawls" into the screen and gets so close that:
1. The camera cannot capture his entire face anymore
2. He is not in front of the camera because he talks to the screen (i.e. Nonny), not to the camera...

It gets even funnier when he tries to show Nonny something, like here where he tries to show her something he made at the daycare. What he does is, regardless of the camera position (a lot of times I am holding it so I can follow him around as he plays), he walks up to the computer and puts the object he wants to show right in front of the screen (i.e. right in Nonny's face...). He will do the same when showing his new slippers or shoes, or his rake or whatever object he tries to show... I wonder when he will make the connection between the camera and what Nonny sees...

That reminds me, he now also talks on the phone more than he used to. In fact when I call Lisa on my way home from work a lot of times I will hear him shouting "I want to talk to Pappy!". Well, it is now actually possible to converse with him over the phone. But what happens when he wants to show me something? Well, he just says: "Look Pappy, like this." or "See, here, this one.". So, I also wonder when he realizes I cannot see what's on the other end of the phone line :-).

A Promise Well Kept...

July 27th 2006, Italy: I received a phone call from the realtor that we had a deal to buy our new house. We were at the side of the pool in our vacation park in Italy enjoying the sun, the pool, our vacation and Tobias. That was quite a thrill.

July 27th 2006, Italy, 2 minutes later: After letting the first thrill settle in and jumping in the air a few times, I promised Tobias I would get him a swing in our new yard.

February 28th 2007, Gouda: Moving in to our new house

Easter 2007, Gouda: Groundwork for the swing: grass (we emptied out the yard and put grass down...)

July 30th 2007, Gouda: The Swing: a promise well kept!

And Tobias loves it. He wants to swing every single day of the week! On this picture he is already in his pajamas. That was the night we built it (my Dad and I). (Of course) it took a lot longer than we anticipated resulting in Tobias looking out the window waiting and waiting until it was done. It almost came to the point where he would not be able to try it before he went to bed, but when we were almost finished he was able to do a little swinging before bedtime. After that he was good to go, he pretty much fell asleep right after that...

We finished the job that night and well, we enjoy the hard work pretty much on a daily basis!