I don’t know where the time has gone. I mean, I know I have a nearly five month old baby as well but how on earth did my little baby boy end up as a walking, talking, two and a half year old boy?!
And Toby really is a little boy now. He’s heading for being a metre tall (98cm at the last measuring) and he’s wearing mostly age 3-4 clothes! He’s still super skinny though – he weighs 2st 3lb having only put on 3lb in the last year. Sometimes I worry about how thin he is – you can see every rib and feel every bump in his spine. But he eats plenty (although has become quite fussy recently – more on that later) and has lots of energy so I’m assured it’s nothing to be concerned about.
Toby’s speech has come on loads in the last couple of months. He now mostly speaks in sentences, although not necessarily with all the words in the right order. He knows so many words now and manages to surprise us almost every day with what he knows. A couple of weeks ago I downloaded an app onto my phone for him to play with which has all sorts of different animals and different activities. One of them is about what animals eat and a picture of a squirrel came up. I asked Toby if he knew what squirrels eat and he came out with ‘squirrels eat acorns’ – I have no idea where he got that from! He really understands emotions now as well and will quite often say ‘my sad’ (although usually if he’s not getting his own way rather than if he’s actually sad). It’s quite likely that moments later he’ll follow it up with ‘I’m so happy now’. For the first time yesterday he actually said ‘I love my mummy’ – I tell Toby I love him all the time but he has never said it to me before. I was so surprised I had to get him to repeat it!
Toby still wants to do everything for himself – ‘Toby do it’ or ‘my do it’ is still heard several times a day. This is mostly great and we do try and encourage him to do things for himself, but it can be occasionally frustrating when it means everything takes three times as long! He really can do lots of things though, his motor skills are great for his age and he has no trouble doing things like unscrewing lids. He still struggles with putting shoes and coats on but he’s trying and getting better all the time. He loves climbing and jumping too, although he can take his time to get used to things like soft play before he’s confident enough to go off exploring on his own. He’s quite happy to go running off up a hill if we’re out for a walk somewhere though!
The main big change since I wrote Toby’s 27 month update is that he has now moved into his big boy bed. The cot he had isn’t one that converts to a bed (and we’ll be needing it for Gabe soon anyway) so we decided just to move him straight into a single bed. And on the whole it has been a resounding success. We let Toby ‘help’ when we dismantled the cot and built the bed so he would know exactly what was going on, and I’d got him some space themed bedding to go with the rest of his room. We have a Lindam bed guard to stop him falling out of bed and so far at least he hasn’t got out of bed at all once he is put in at night. Even when he wakes up in the morning he just sits there waiting on the bed until one of us goes to get him up. We still have one wake up a night most nights and I usually end up getting in bed with him to get him back to sleep. Although he hasn’t woken up for the last two nights so fingers crossed that continues.
Toby is still going to nursery four afternoons a week and things have settled down since he started his new nursery back in October. He still cries every day when I drop him off but they tell me he calms down within a few minutes and then he’s absolutely fine. We were getting concerned that he was refusing to eat his tea at nursery but that seems to be improving since he went back after the Christmas break.
Food generally can be a bit frustrating – from weaning up until about six months ago Toby would eat anything you put in front of him but in the last few months he has become increasingly fussy. He’ll like something one day then refuse it the next, or he’ll ask for something then refuse to eat it. I was starting to get stressed at meal times and we were all getting wound up with Barry and me trying to encourage Toby to eat, and then getting annoyed when he didn’t, then he would get upset and totally refuse to eat anything. Then I read something a couple of weeks ago (I’d link to it but I can’t remember where I read it!) which basically said just live by the six words ‘you don’t have to eat it’. Provide a variety of different foods and try and include at least one thing at every meal that you think they are likely to eat and then leave them to it. And do you know what? It’s actually working. I’m less stressed and therefore so it Toby, meaning he’s probably eating more anyway.
We’ve also realised that by letting Toby help prepare food, even if it’s just getting the cereal off the shelf or putting potatoes in the pan, he is much more likely to sit at the table without any fuss. I’ve been doing quite a lot of baking with Toby lately too – we’ve made gingerbread biscuits (or ginner man biggits as Toby calls them), chocolate cake and banana bread. Even though he can’t really do much at the moment he enjoys standing on a chair in the kitchen with an apron on and putting things in bowls or stirring. I even got him washing up after making the banana bread yesterday. Start as we mean to go on eh?
Even though he has got more fussy about food, he’s just like his mum in that he never says no to cake or chocolate! He doesn’t have loads of sweet foods but he certainly enjoys them. I’m doing my best not to use sweet things as ‘treats’ or rewards. I have such a terrible relationship with food and my weight and I really don’t want to pass that on to Toby so we’re trying to just see sweet things as foods we eat sometimes, just like everything else. Although to be honest at the moment I’m just happy to get some extra calories into him in the hope of trying to put on at least a little bit of weight!
On the whole Toby is just a lovely little boy and we couldn’t be more proud of him. I know every parent says that but he really is amazing…most of the time! Several people have commented on how polite he is, and he does say please and thank you, mostly without prompting. He’s starting to become a really lovely big brother too. I think now Gabe is smiling and a bit more responsive he’s getting a bit more interesting for Toby. He likes to show him toys and will pull his bib down for him when Gabe’s managed to cover his face for the tenth time that morning! I actually can’t wait for the next few months when hopefully we’ll see a real relationship start to develop between them.
I could probably keep writing about Toby all day, and I’m sure there were things I wanted to say that I’ve forgotten (oh yeah, potty training – that’s still nowhere near happening!) but I think this post is probably long enough already! I can’t believe the next update I’ll be writing about Toby will be when he’s three. He certainly isn’t a baby any more.
Linking up with Lauren at Belle Du Brighton for #WhatMyKidDid
