The last week was fairly quiet (once again), Toby goes to nursery on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons and most of our mornings were spent at home as I continue trying to encourage Gabe to nap in his crib for longer than twenty minutes! I have found a way to get him to have a longer nap, without having to put him in the sling, and that is just to take a nap with him, so we managed a few of those this week too!

On Tuesday afternoon I walked up to our new drive through Starbucks, which does also have an actual inside bit too before you have visions of me pushing the pram through the drive through! It’s the first time Gabe has really slept in the carry cot of the pram too, so that’s progress too.

On Thursday afternoon I met up with some of the other mums from the pregnancy yoga class I went to before the summer. Our babies are all roughly the same age so it’s nice to meet up and compare notes, and just to have a bit of adult conversation! We’ve been trying to meet every week and it means we’re finding some new places for coffee and cake too, although as we discovered a few weeks ago, it’s not always easy to find somewhere that can accommodate eight buggies!

On Wednesday took both kids round to my friend Claire’s house in the morning – it was lovely to see Toby actually starting to play with her twins (they have loads of cool car toys so Toby loves playing at their house). They all go to the same nursery now and the twins are just about to move up into the toddler room where Toby is so it will be interesting to see if they start to really remember one another outside of nursery too. In the afternoon Toby and I made chocolate biscuits. Toby enjoyed himself I think but I found the whole experience very stressful! It didn’t help that Gabe woke up half way through and I had to do it with him in the sling, but I think I’m just a bit too controlling! Toby was cutting out the biscuits after I’d helped him roll out the dough but he was just putting the cutter willy nilly all over the dough so we had to keep re-rolling it – perfectly normal behaviour for a two year old but it was driving me bonkers! It was lovely to do something with him that wasn’t watching CBeebies though so we’ll definitely try again soon.

When I write it all down, perhaps the week wasn’t so quiet after all!

The weekend started with Claire coming round to our house for Chinese take away and a much needed catch up. We see each other most weeks but we’re usually trying to manage toddlers at the same so it was nice to have time for a proper chat. I had about half a bottle of wine, which is probably more than I’ve drunk for a year, although still not exactly a huge amount. I got a pretty decent night’s sleep as Barry got up with Gabe in the night but I spent all of Saturday feeling terrible, I don’t know if it was the wine or the Chinese but I felt sick all day. Barry’s parents were up visiting this weekend too, which was actually great because it meant on Saturday they were here to entertain Toby while I had a couple of naps with Gabe. Saturday night wasn’t great though, Gabe was up twice but unsettled for a lot of the night, Toby woke up crying (I think he was feeling a bit poorly after having his flu vaccination) so I ended up sleeping on his floor for an hour before dealing with Gabe’s second wake up… it was a long night!

On Sunday we’d planned a nice morning out at Deep Sea World – an aquarium near to where we live. I was feeling much better at least but Toby still seemed a bit under the weather and then he did something to his foot running about in the living room so was limping as well. When we got there he perked up a bit and so he went to have a look around with Barry and his grandparents while I fed Gabe in the cafe. Five minutes later Barry and Toby appeared again – Barry had put his back out and could barely walk! He’d done the same thing earlier in the year and had had a few twinges since but it had gone completely again. He spent the next hour or so sitting in the cafe trying to get comfortable while we had a look around but I think Toby just wasn’t really feeling up for it which was a bit of a shame. Barry was really suffering in the afternoon so I had to put both kids to bed and we got a relatively early night.

Gabe woke up about 2:30 and I got up to feed him. I’ve been bringing him downstairs in the night so we don’t disturb anyone and I could hear Barry moving about in bed upstairs. I then got a text from me saying his painkillers had worn off, he couldn’t get out of bed and he needed a wee! I got him some more painkillers but he could barely move and still couldn’t get out of bed. We managed something so he could relieve himself (I leave that one to your imagination!) but it wasn’t getting any better. We were just about to try and get some more sleep when his back went in to total spasm, it was really scary, he was shaking with the pain and could barely catch his breath. We didn’t really know what to do and ended up calling 999 as it seemed like an ambulance to hospital was going to be our only option. Apparently though it wasn’t enough of an emergency so we had to wait for a call back from NHS 24, and then nearly another hour for a call from one of the nurses. Thankfully the spasm did ease off after a while but it was really horrible to see him suffering so much and not being to do anything to help. Gabe had woken up as well so I was trying to keep him quiet and make sure he didn’t wake Toby too.

His back has been a little bit better today, as long has he stays dosed up on painkillers and he’s got an appointment with a physio tomorrow so hopefully they’ll be able to help too. I hope for everyone’s sake it does. Of course it’s horrible for Barry to be in pain, but also Toby doesn’t really understand why daddy can’t play with him or cuddle him like he usually does, he can’t really help with Gabe, I’ve had to do bedtime for both boys again… it really makes me realise how much I rely on his help normally.

Anyway, this has turned into a bit of an epic mind dump about what’s been going on this week when really I’m supposed to be sharing photos of the boys…. Here’s one more though – Toby has shown a bit more interest in Gabe this week and I even managed to get him to give him a cuddle. He wasn’t that convinced though and just after I took this photo he moved his arm away and said ‘I don’t like it’. I’m sure he’ll get to like it one day though!