Tobin's 4th Birthday

This is the 200th post on the Toblog, so it's only appropriate that it coincides with such an important day. On Tuesday, T turned 4. His mom and I repeated it out loud to ourselves a few times during the day, almost in disbelief. Has it really been 4 years since we brought a squirmy, fragile baby home?



I took the day off work so we could all be together. We enjoyed a morning of phone calls from family, breakfast, and the T's first hesitant ride on his big-boy bike. After Evan's morning nap, we made a trip to Raleigh's Museum of Natural Sciences. Lunch was Chick Fil-A (the second of three meals T chose for us on the day), then we came home to play all afternoon. The video below is an attempt to share the big parts of the rest of our day with you. (The birthday party he mentions will be on Saturday, so there's still more fun to look forward to here.)

Mobility, Sweet Mobility

After about a month of scooting backwards to move around the house, Evan made the leap into full mobility last Saturday. He was 10 months and 10 days old (just returned from a week in Florida) when he started crawling around the house. By the end of the day, he had explored thoroughly, pulling things down and reorganizing as he scooted along. His disposition has changed along with his new skill. Before, he would often grunt at us when he wanted something. Now, he just swings down into position and cruises along. His brother is excited for him, and has been crawling around with him a lot. During the week, I shot almost as much video of Tobin crawling and blocking Evan from the camera as I did video of Ev crawling. I still remember how much fun I had sharing video of Tobin crawling, so I decided to give Evan the same treatment. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

Ev's First Week Crawling from matt smith on Vimeo.

Mr. Conversation

I took Tobin to a baseball game tonight. We went to one on Monday night and sat with pretty much the same group of people, so he was familiar with the routine. His comfort level contributed to a high level of conversation with everyone around. Here are a few examples (fresh in my memory, and as close as I can get to exact quotes).

• To a former player of mine, who asked if T if he was in Kindergarten and if he knew his numbers to 100: "No, I just stay home. I know more than 100. But you write one-hundred 'one-zero-zero' or you can think of it as a ten with an extra zero."
• A friend of mine was there with his elementary-school aged daughters. One of the girls asked if T knew his alphabet and if he would say it: "A, B, C, D, E--you know what? It would take me like 26 seconds to say it, so no."
  
• Again to the girls, when the score was 8-0 (an obnoxious team from Raleigh winning): "This game is not close, so I don't call it a good game. If we were winning by 1, I would call it a good game, but I would be a little nervous."
• On the way home: "Those girls' dad is the basketball coach, but he likes baseball. That's why they were at the game--because he likes baseball. They said they would see me at the next game."
• Also on the way home, about the girls and our friend Mika: "Hey Dad, do you know what I like about those girls and Mika?" "No. What?" "They speak English. So I can talk to all of them."