I’m sure a lot of people are having the same trouble, but this dismal weather we’ve been having has meant we haven’t got out much, and so haven’t taken any outdoor photos, and the light inside is awful too making any kind of photography difficult.

So having said that I’m quite pleased with how this week’s Living Arrows pictures have turned out.

This one of Toby is actually just an iPhone picture. I am genuinely scared of balloons, not when they are just harmlessly hanging around but when people are touching them, particularly when little kids are squeezing and biting them. I hate it! I don’t want Toby to feel my fear, or be deprived though so he occasionally gets a balloon to play with. I had been blowing this one up and then letting it go so it blew itself around the room. I’d been doing it for ages though and needed a break so Toby was trying to blow the balloon up himself. It’s certainly a skill he hadn’t mastered yet though – he mostly just ended up covered in drool!

This one of Gabe I managed to grab one morning when he was having a bit of tummy time and there was actually a half decent amount of light. He’s so inquisitive now, I just love his little face!
And lastly how could I not include this one of both my boys? When Toby saw me taking pictures of Gabe he went and laid down next to him – I didn’t even have to ask! I love how they’re looking at each other. Gabe is so interested in everything his big brother does now, and Toby seems to be realising that maybe Gabe isn’t that boring after all.

So here we are, entering into the third year of Living Arrows. I mentioned in my last Living Arrows post of 2015 that I didn’t know if I was going to carry on this year. As you can probably tell from the very existence of this post I am going to continue but I’m going to try and return to the spirit of this project as it was first begun. The name Living Arrows comes from the poem ‘On Children’ by Kahil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

As Hayley over at Shutterflies who hosts Living Arrows mentioned this week, it is a project about ‘celebrating motherhood and childhood and capturing those moments you want to preserve forever.’ And so for 2016 I am going to aim to use these posts to showcase my favourite pictures of Toby and Gabe from the week but not, as I have been doing, to also use it as a generally diary post. I’ll probably still do that but as a separate post under a different name.

So here we are…week 1 of 52 in 2016

(I should include here in the interests of full disclosure that I didn’t take this picture of Toby, it was my sister-in-law – thanks Becca!)

And this happened today so how could I not include it?

Well, a lot of them were really late and a couple I doubled up two weeks in one, but I’ve made it to the final week of Living Arrows for this year. Apart from a distinct lack of sleep for Barry and I we enjoyed a lovely Christmas visiting both mine and Barry’s parents. Toby still hasn’t entirely got what Christmas is all about but he definitely enjoyed opening all his presents this year, and he got plenty of them!

Both of this week’s photos were taken on Christmas morning. Toby loved this shopping basket of plastic food that he got off my mum…

And I think it was all a bit much for Gabe…

As it’s the end of the year I always think it’s nice to look back and see what the first picture of the year was. I’m so glad I’ve been taking part in Living Arrows over the last two years and I have such a fantastic record of how Toby has changed. Of course at the start of this year there was no Gabe, other than as a tiny something in my tummy, but it’s going to be so lovely looking back of all the pictures of him too. Children change so much in the first few years of their lives and it’s fantastic to have these weekly pictures to remind us of just how much.

This is the first ever Living Arrows photo I took, back in January 2014. Toby was almost six months old here and although you can clearly tell they are brothers if you compare photos of him and Gabe they don’t look any where near as similar as they did when they were born.

And then this is the first Living Arrows picture of 2015 – Toby really did love that hat!

I’ve not quite decided if I’m going to carry on with the Living Arrows in 2016 (or indeed if it is continuing). My Living Arrows posts had veered away from the photography posts they were supposed to be and instead had become more of a weekly round up post of what we had been up to so I think that is how I am going to carry on with them. I just need to think of a name for them….any ideas?

It’s only been a few days since my last Living Arrows post so I’m not going to say much this time! We are all slowly recovering from our various coughs and colds, and the boys are sleeping a little better for now too. I’m hoping we are all fully better for Christmas and our visits to all the grandparents.

Toby is going through another phase of mummy having to do everything which is frustrating for both me and Barry. He’s been quite clingy this week too, with lots of ‘my cuddle mummy’, ‘my sit on mummy’, ‘mummy do it’… which is lovely at times but quite annoying when I have Gabe to look after too and other things that need doing, and especially because Barry is now at home for the Christmas holidays and he is perfectly capable and willing to provide cuddles and a knee to sit on!

On the whole though Toby is really lovely to be around and he’s very funny these days. He had us all giggling the other day when he proclaimed ‘just a minute daddy, I have an idea!’ We never did find out what his idea was though… Or yesterday, he was playing with his flashcards and we had them all on the floor asking him to find different things. He found loads of them with no trouble; a fish, a dragon, cheese, an apple, bread, jam….and then I said ‘now can you find the milk’, at which he immediately got up, walked into the kitchen and produced the bottle of milk from the fridge! Well, you can’t fault his logic.

This week’s photo tickled me – I love how toddlers see absolutely nothing wrong with sitting eating their lunch whilst wearing a bobble hat.

Gabe is still being a little superstar really. Apart from a few early mornings (which luckily for me Barry got up for), and a bit of shouting around bedtime on a couple of nights, he’s pretty chilled out most of the time. He’s been loving his play mat this week and has gone from seemingly not being able to reach the toys to grabbing on for dear life and not letting go! He’s getting really close to rolling over too – another couple of inches and he’ll be there.

Thanks to Donna at What the Redhead Said for hosting Living Arrows this week, and for featuring one of my pictures.

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything for ten days now, missing two Living Arrows posts in the process. This has been because the last two weeks have been clouded in a fog of illness in the Toby Goes Bananas house.

Toby was first to succumb; he had an awful cough, a snotty nose, temperatures of nearly 40° and pretty much stopped eating for three days. He was also waking up a lot in the night leading to lots of broken sleep for me too. I was, perhaps inevitably, the next to fall and although I avoided the temperatures I still felt rotten. We were really hoping Gabe had managed to avoid it as he seemed to still be well after a week but no such luck, and then finally Barry also lost his fight against the germs.

On top of that we’ve had to deal with the Forth Road Bridge being shut which has added an extra two hours to Barry’s working day. With that and looking after poorly boys, while trying to look after myself there hasn’t been a lot of time for blogging, hence this double Living Arrows post.

This photo of Gabe was just taken at home last week. It’s terrible trying to take pictures inside at the moment, it’s just so dark all the time, and what with all the illness we’ve not really been out of the house much. Gabe is four months old today (update post on the way when I get a chance!) and he’s really turning into a proper little boy now, there’s nothing of the newborn left in him. He’s so interested in everything that’s going on and sits watching his brother with fascination every day. I can’t wait for the next few months for him to start sitting up and hopefully then he’ll be able to interact with Toby a bit more too.

Toby’s picture was taken in the garden at the weekend. We actually had what felt like a proper winter’s day; cold and frosty, rather than the miserable wetness we’ve had almost every other day for the last few months. Barry took the chance to do a little bit of tidying up in the garden and Toby wanted to go out an join him. I think he looks ridiculously cute in his big bobble hat!

And lastly I wanted to include this picture of me with the boys, even though it’s not that clear. We only managed to get the Christmas decorations down out of the loft this weekend, and we decided this year not to put our big tree up, mostly due to lack of space but also so we wouldn’t have to spend a month telling Toby to leave it alone! Instead we’ve just got this little fibre optic tree. Both boys love the lights and for this year it’s good enough…

We are all now on the mend but none of us are entirely well yet. I’m just hoping we’re fully recovered for Christmas and that we’ve seen the last of the germs for this year!

I’m back to my old habits of being super-late with my Living Arrows post again – I’m just going to sneak this one in before the next one is due tomorrow!

There has been a general lack of blogging this week; at first it was because I was giving the blog a bit of a design overhaul (What do you think by the way? I really love it!), and then my computer decided it was going to have a go slow for the rest of the week. It’s been having trouble since I upgraded to Windows 10 last month, Barry did his best to try and sort it out last night but it’s still not working brilliantly. I might just have to ask Father Christmas for a new one!

I’ve been up a lot with both boys too – lots of early starts and not a huge amount of sleep have made for rather a lack of blogging motivation.

Anyway, here’s a couple of pictures of the boys this week and hopefully next week I’ll be back on my blogging game!

This picture of Toby is just a quick snap I took the other day when we were having a Teddy Bears’ picnic for lunch. Toby has been getting a bit fussy about his food recently so I thought I’d try something to make lunch time a bit more fun. Toby certainly enjoyed it but I think he ate even less than he usually does!

I can’t believe Gabe is heading towards four months now – he’s at that great age where they really start paying attention to everything that is going on around them, you can really see his personality starting to come out now and I love his expression in this picture, looking right into the camera.

And lastly I have to include this Instagram picture – Toby hasn’t really been too bothered about Gabe so far. He mostly tolerates him but he generally doesn’t seem that impressed by him. This week though I think he has started to realise that his little brother might actually be quite interesting, and he asked if Gabe could sit on his knee. I’m not sure that Gabe was convinced but it was too cute not to take a picture!