11 July , 201610 July , 2016 - Sarah 9 Comments

Living Arrows 28/52 (2016)

This is going to be a very short post today – we are in the midst of house moving chaos and today is Toby’s third birthday! Here he is earlier in the week, actually doing a nice smile for the camera for once – he’s taken to either sticking his tongue out or doing a massive cheesy grin whenever I try and take his picture lately so this one makes a change.

And this week Gabe gave us cause to get another milestone card out…

He’s been saying ‘a-da’ for a week or two now but this week it definitely turned into ‘Da-da’. It’s still just a sound to him though – it’s not like he is actually referring to his daddy when he says it!

By next week’s Living Arrows post we will have moved out of our house in Scotland and will be temporarily living with my parents in Blackpool. All our stuff will be in storage until we get into our new house which is supposed to be happening a week later but that’s not looking to likely at the moment. Hopefully my already somewhat erratic blogging will not be too disrupted!

4 July , 2016 - Sarah 3 Comments

Living Arrows 27/52 (2016)

I’m so tired at the moment (when will Gabe realise that the day does not start at 4:30 am?) that I’m struggling to remember what we’ve been up to since last week. Barry has finished work now in readiness for our move so having him to share the early mornings is helping, but I still just feel permanently knackered.

Last week my mum and dad came up for a flying visit and took a trailer and car full of our stuff back to their house so we’ve got a bit of space in our garage to try and sort out more of our stuff. Before they left we went out for lunch and Toby was very pleased to be back at the cafe with the dragon…

Gabe has been struggling with his teeth again this week but one of the next bottom ones has finally cut through and hopefully the other side isn’t far behind. He’s still managed the odd smile though…

4 July , 201621 December , 2017 - Sarah 1 Comment

Me & Mine // A Family Portrait (June 2016)

I’m late again with our latest Me & Mine post. June has been a busy month for us; it started with Gabe recovering from chicken pox and both I and Barry have had weekends away. Oh, and we bought a house!

We sold our house in May, just nine days after putting it on the market and we’d seen a house we wanted to buy. Unfortunately we were too late putting in an offer and someone else beat us to it. So facing the prospect of having nowhere to live quite soon Barry did a one day trip down to Lancashire, looked at six houses and we decided to buy one of them….which I haven’t seen yet. It’ll be fine though I’m sure!

With the busy-ness of organising a house move, weekends away, and Gabe’s sleep being even more rubbish than usual we haven’t really had the time, or the energy to do anything exciting as a family this month. It has mostly been about getting through the days! We did have a lovely day at the Novotel Super Heroes day at the start of the month and there’s been plenty of trips to local cafe’s for coffee and cake but not much else of note. Gabe turned 10 months old in June and has started pulling himself up and cruising round the furniture so we now need to be watching him constantly. I have a feeling he’ll be walking before we know it!

So with all that we didn’t manage to take a family photo anywhere interesting in June – this one was grabbed after we’d finished dinner last night. I do like how we can all sit round the table together for our meals now so I guess it’s a good a moment as any to capture and record.

July is going to be massively busy and stressful for us. We move out of our house next week and will be moving in with my parents for a week (and hopefully no more) before we can move into our new house. It’s also Toby’s birthday next week – I can’t believe he’s going to be three!! So the next month is going to be pretty crazy but hopefully by the time I write July’s Me & Mine update we will be all moved and starting to get settled in our new home.

29 June , 2016 - Sarah 2 Comments

Living Arrows 26/52 (2016)

I can’t believe we are half way through the year already! I’m late again with my Living Arrows post this week – must try harder!

At the weekend I was down in London for #BML16 and I had a brilliant time. Barry, it would be fair to say, didn’t enjoy my time away so much as Gabe went into full on teething monster mode on Sunday. His teeth still aren’t through but he’s calmed down a bit now at least. He just wants to be constantly on the move at the moment. I was trying to take a few pictures of him the other day but he just kept crawling right up to the camera. I love this shot I managed to get though… (you can see one of his chicken pox scars right in the middle of his forehead – poor bear!)

Toby, by all accounts, was an absolute superstar while I was away. He can be a bit of a pain sometimes when I’m around and is always whining for me to do everything for him. ‘No, mummy do it’ is a very familiar refrain in our house, but he was really good and didn’t complain about only having daddy for the weekend at all.

He was certainly pleased with some of the treats that came home in my goody bag anyway! Here he is ready for bed with his flower garland and Mim Mim toy – and of course his outfit wouldn’t be complete without his four muslins and his sunglasses!

21 June , 2016 - Sarah 4 Comments

Living Arrows 25/52 (2016)

It’s been a busy week of house moving stress and you’d think for once the universe would give us a break…but no.

I don’t think Gabe is actually ill this week but he’s possible teething again and we’ve had a weekend of hourly wake ups through the night and then getting up for the day before 5 am. I seriously hope he improves before I go away to Britmums Live next weekend or poor Barry is really going to suffer! Toby has stopped waking up crying for me in the night at least – I have no idea what that was about but I’m glad it’s stopped.

The one bonus of this week is that both both boys have been having some extra time at nursery so I can get house moving admin done and I can’t lie, it’s been bliss to have a few hours peace and quiet!

Gabe is all about the standing up nowadays, the trouble is he’s not worked out how to sit back down again yet (safely at least) so after standing for a while he just starts shouting until someone comes to rescue him…and then immediately just pulls himself up again! He was very proud of himself for standing up under the table the other day though.

Toby is at such a brilliant age at the moment – he’s really starting to get into imaginative play and he’s finally embraced the super hero cape and mask I got him for Christmas (which he refused to wear at the time). He loves to put it on and zoom around the house shouting ‘Super T – to the rescue’! This picture isn’t quite in focus but I love it anyway…

15 June , 201614 June , 2016 - Sarah 5 Comments

Siblings // Toby and Gabe in June

This is going to be a very short post this month. If I’m really honest, with the chicken pox and everything else we’ve been dealing with in the month since my last Siblings project post there hasn’t been a huge amount of sibling love going on in our house. It’s been more about sibling competition for mummy’s attention and I think a bit of jealousy creeping in from Toby because I’ve had to spend so much time looking after poorly Gabe.

I haven’t even got any proper (well, posed) photos of Toby and Gabe together this month but I didn’t want to miss a post, and I thought this was a chance to record what my boys’ sibling relationship is really like at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been some moments of affection. Like in this picture when Toby was trying to help Gabe get out from under the chair (I think!) even though he was perfectly capable of doing it by himself.

Toby is quite tolerant of Gabe for the most part – even when he insists on grabbing Toby’s hair….still! I’m really hoping he’s going to grow out of this grabby phase soon.

And Gabe just wants to be wherever Toby is, doing whatever he’s doing, which of course isn’t always possible at the moment. Yesterday, Toby even resorted to shutting himself in Gabe’s playpen so he could get away from him. Actually, maybe I should try that one more often….

13 June , 2016 - Sarah 4 Comments

Living Arrows 24/52 (2016)

I think you people are going to start thinking I’m making things up but Gabe was ill again this week! This time it was a stomach bug (I think) – he had a bit of a temperature so I was giving him some Nurofen after his tea, he choked on it and threw up all over himself. The night was OK and I thought that was the end of it but the next day he was sick five more times! He was very sleepy and snuggly all day too which isn’t really like him either. Anyway, by bedtime he wouldn’t go to sleep without a bottle so we risked it. He kept it down, and the ones overnight and by the next day he seemed fully recovered. So I don’t now what it was but at least it was over quickly and he’s actually been pretty cheery since then.

Barry was away this weekend, visiting friends down in Manchester so I had both boys by myself overnight for the first time. It actually didn’t go to badly apart from that by Sunday afternoon I was going a bit insane after being constantly climbed on and sat on for pretty much 48 hours solid!

On Saturday we went out to a cafe for a bit of a break (and so I could get Gabe to have a car nap). This cafe has a little play area with some toys and colouring things. There were a few other kids playing too and for once Toby didn’t do too badly with sharing – there’s this big dragon toy which is basically the only thing most of the kids want to play with but Toby did well to let another little boy have a turn without too much of a fuss. I may have distracted him with chocolate cake, but whatever works right?

Gabe was reasonably well behaved too – although I did have to take him out of the highchair after a few minutes has he was rivalling Houdini with his bid to escape! He enjoyed playing with this bead toy for a bit though. He is actually starting to play with toys now and so it’s getting a bit easier to distract him, for a few minutes at least…

6 June , 2016 - Sarah 3 Comments

Living Arrows 23/52 (2016)

It’s been a fairly quiet week for us by all accounts. Gabe is mostly recovered from his chicken pox (although his sleep is still all over the place) and Toby has been, well, a toddler.

Gabe is really a pro-crawler now, he is literally getting everywhere and into everything. This week he has also started pulling himself up on the furniture. He’s pretty confident with kneeling up but has also managed to pull himself onto his feet a few times too. I’m really hoping that as he can move more and be more independent he will start being a bit more content to explore by himself and entertain himself. At the moment if you are holding him he is desperate to get down and sometimes even almost dives out of your arms, but if you put him down he starts crying again after a few minutes. And quite frankly it’s driving me bonkers!

Toby has been spending a lot of time outside, both at home and at nursery, in this lovely sunshine we’ve been having. Mostly he’s been loving it but it seems to be totally exhausting for him so we’ve had a few tired meltdowns this last week too. Generally though he’s still just his usual cheery self…

31 May , 201621 December , 2017 - Sarah 1 Comment

Me & Mine // A Family Portrait (May 2016)

It’s a bit late in the day but I am at least managing to publish this month’s Me & Mine post on the last day of the month. It’s been another month of ups and downs for us. There has been even more illness with Barry and the boys all having a stomach bug, and then Toby and Gabe have both had chicken pox too. There have been quite a lot of tears (a lot of them from me!) and not a lot of sleep. But amongst all the illness we also had a lovely holiday at Center Parcs, and sold our house!

That last one is a very exciting bit of news – after 13 years in Scotland, 5 of them living in this house with Barry, we are moving back to the north west of England to live nearer both sets of parents. It’s all very exciting, but also very stressful. Although we’ve sold our house and our buyers want to move in at the end of the first week of July we haven’t bought anywhere yet! It looks like we might be moving in with my mum and dad for a few weeks this summer! Fingers crossed it will all work out one way or another.

Anyway, this month’s photos were taken during our holiday at Center Parcs. We got a few funny looks from people walking past as we balanced the camera on a bin and Barry dashed back to get in the shot before the timer went off. I do like this month’s picture though – we’re even all looking at the camera!

And I just wanted to include this one too – because although we’re not all looking at the camera on this one I love our happy faces…

31 May , 201631 May , 2016 - Sarah 5 Comments

Living Arrows 22/52 (2016)

If you read Gabe’s nine month update you’ll know he had got the chicken pox last week but only had a few spots. I was hoping it was going to be a mild case but by Friday he was covered and we had a couple of really bad days, and nights with him where Barry did lots of pushing him round the houses in the buggy and nobody got very much sleep.

Thankfully his spots seem to be all crusted over now and although he looks a mess he’s feeling much better. Last night he even managed to sleep from 6:30pm to 7am and only woke up once for milk at midnight then went straight back to sleep. Fingers crossed his scabs heal quickly and don’t cause him too much trouble…

And Toby is still just being Toby. He’s been really good when we’ve had to spend all our time looking after Gabe and hasn’t really complained at all.

His hair had been getting really long again the last few weeks and had got to the point where he could hardly see! I usually cut it while he’s stood in the bath but he’s always distracted by toys and getting him to stand still is a nightmare…leading to some very wonky haircuts! I decided I would try and actually cut it properly this time, I even got a hairdressing cape and some of those clips that hairdressers use to keep some sections out of the way.

Toby was really good and just sat still watching the Octonauts on my Kindle while I did it. I actually cut quite a lot off the back this time because it was getting a bit ridiculous (and always full of knots). The front still isn’t quite even but overall I’m pretty pleased with my efforts this time. And I might be biased but I reckon Toby looks awesome with his new haircut!

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