Another quiet week of just getting through the days and waiting for a baby to arrive.

Toby has been settling in well to his new room at nursery with all the other 2 and 3 year olds. I think he’s still getting used to being the youngest though after being one of the big kids in the baby room for quiet a while now. We’ve had a couple of incidents of him biting other kids this week which isn’t ideal. It seems to be when someone wants to share whatever he is playing with at the time – he’s not quite got the hang of sharing yet, and because his language is still developing too he just gives the other child a bite instead. Nursery are taking him away and explaining that he shouldn’t do it, and we are trying to speak to him about it at home too but mostly I think we just need to hope he stops doing it as his speech develops. His language is coming on really quickly now though. He has been building his vocabulary over the last couple of months and is now trying to put words together more often, He even said ‘my milk’s all gone’ the other night which I think is the longest coherent sentence we’ve had out of him yet! My only real worry is that things are disrupted too much for him by the arrival of the new baby. I’m hoping that keeping him at nursery for now will help give him a routine and sense of normality when the chaos descends at home!

Anyway, to this week’s Living Arrows picture… This one is only an iPhone snap, Toby really wanted to carry his own bag into nursery this morning, even though it’s really heavy with all his nappies for the day. I reckon he looks super-cute though!

Another Living Arrows post – it seems like this is all I do on the blog lately but I do like the (sort of) weekly updates that it gives me the chance to write. This week we got out the play dough after nursery for a quiet activity that Toby could do whilst winding down towards bedtime. I bought him a big variety pack of play dough for his birthday but I think for the moment we are just going to get out a couple of colours at a time, play with them until they’ve had it and then get out a couple more colours, because they’re inevitably going to end up all mixd together anyway!

Toby loves his ‘day dough’, as he calls it and will happily sit and play with it for much longer than he concentrates on anything else. The only trouble we have is that he doesn’t want to put it away, and also starts asking for it as soon as we come down stairs in the morning!

I love the concentration on his face in this week’s picture…

With my second Living Arrows post this week we are back on track (although still a few days behind) and I don’t have much to say. After the excitement of his birthday at the weekend Toby has spent this week full of a cold, although miraculously still sleeping well. He seems to have pretty much dropped his nap all together now, which is a bit sad for us but over all is much better. Instead of bedtime lasting up to two hours and involving me sitting on Toby’s bedroom floor for ages to avoid him screaming his head off, he is now going to bed without too much trouble. I’ve still been sitting outside his door for 10 minutes or so just to make sure he’s settled but I’m leaving before he’s fully asleep and most nights he is sleeping from between 7 and 7:30 pm until about 8:30 am or even after 9 am on some days! And to be honest, if that’s what we get with no nap then I’ll give up my couple of hours in the afternoon (which only affects us at the weekend anyway because he’s still at nursery during the week) and take that as a win! Of course we’ll still let him have a nap if he needs it – on Tuesday he woke up at 6 am with his cold so he had a two hour nap at nursery in the afternoon, he was still fine at bedtime though. I think being up early and a bit poorly just meant he needed some extra sleep.

Anyway, this week’s photos are another couple from Toby’s birthday on Saturday. I couldn’t choose between his happy face on the slide or that cake picture so we’ve having both…

I’m so late with this latest Living Arrows post that it’s not even in the right week any more but I didn’t want to miss a week so here it is anyway! The picture was taken in the right week at least so it’s not too bad.

I had the camera out the other day because Toby was sitting at the table concentrating on a puzzle and I really wanted to catch the expression on his face. Of course as soon as I got the camera out he got down from the table and came to have a look! He was enjoying posing so I asked him to say cheese – we’ve never done that before so I can only guess he has learnt it at nursery because straight away he was giving me his ‘cheeeeese’ face!

Not too much to say this week. I’ve been enjoying not having to go to work and catching up on some much needed sleep. Toby is still taking ages to get to sleep at night but barring a 3:30 am wake up on Thursday night has slept through every night. All in all, not much to report…

Wow! Half way through the year already, how did that happen?

Today sees my last day at work, school finishes for the summer today (there are some advantages to living in Scotland!) and it couldn’t have come soon enough for me. Especially as Toby has treated us to another couple of nights of 3 am wake ups (complete with screaming tantrums) for the last few nights. I really have no idea how we are going to cope if he is still like this in six weeks or so when the baby is here!

This week’s Living Arrows picture is just Toby at home doing a bit of colouring – as you can see he’s not really decided if he prefers his left or right hand yet! I don’t very much arts and crafts or messy play at home (well none really!), colouring is about as adventurous as it gets in our house. I tell me it’s because Toby does plenty of that kind of thing during the week at nursery but mostly it’s just because I can’t stand the thought of the mess! I guess that might have to change in the autumn when he isn’t going to nursery every day but for now I think we’re all happy carrying on as we are…

Not very much to tell this week, we’re still just plodding on. I’m counting down the days until I finish work – only 5 work days to go!

After my confident statement last week about Toby’s sleep being much improved we’ve had a bit of a set back again this week. He has still slept through most nights (there was one night where he was awake at 2 am for about an hour) but he is back to taking an hour to settle down and go to sleep. And I’ve been having to sit on the floor in his room until he drops off otherwise he just screams and screams. This may well be because we have stopped giving him his bedtime bottle but as long as he is still sleeping all night we’re going to try and stick with it and hope he gets used to the idea quickly!

This week’s photo is just one I took at home. Toby loves sitting up at our dining table and was playing with his Duplo while I got the tea ready. He still likes his hats too – especially this one of mine which I think he looks super cute in…

I’m super late with this week’s Living Arrows again – it seems to be happening more often than not these days! I still haven’t missed one this year though, so I’m still winning as far as I’m concerned!

Although I’ve been having a rubbish time work-wise for the last week we did have a lovely weekend last weekend. My parents were up visiting (mostly because I’d roped my mum into helping me do a second-hand baby market with me) and they took the opportunity to try out their new caravan on a campsite in Callander which is about an hour away from where we live. We went out to see them on Sunday morning and Toby loved running around with his ball and looking at all the sheep with my dad. He loves balls at the moment – whenever he sees on he always says ‘a ball’. He’s not that bothered about playing, although he is pretty good at throwing and kicking, he mostly just likes to carry it around!

I don’t think Toby has seen a sheep in real life since he was about 10 months old but he knew what they were as soon as he saw them, and immediately started pointing and saying ‘sheeps!’ He’s learnt so many new words lately, in just the last week we’ve had bus, outside, garden, nappy, dirty, zip, burst, oh and Giggle for Iggle Piggle and Kaka for Makka Pakka on In The Night Garden, and probably some others too! He’s not putting words together much yet  – we do get ‘in there’ and ‘on there’ and he has said ‘where daddy?’ before too. I’m sure it won’t be long though before he starts properly talking and we can have a proper conversation with him (well, as much of a conversation as you can have with an almost two year old anyway).

In another breakthrough, despite another cold, Toby has slept all night all this week! He was up early last Sunday and then I think he woke once on Sunday or Monday night but every other night he has slept from about 7pm right through to the next morning. All his teeth are through now so I’m sure that’s helped but I really hope we’ve turned a corner and we’re all going to get a lot more sleep from now on!

I’ve got a few photos I wanted to share this week. This first one was taken at home while I was out at the market on Saturday morning, just look at that grin!

The next one was on Sunday, running around with his ball…

And lastly showing his grandad the plants (and momentarily giving up his ball!)