Last week, and over the weekend, we have been visiting my parents down in Blackpool. This was mostly in order to try and further our relocation plans and hopefully there might be some exciting news to share with you on that front soon.

It was lovely to see Toby with his Grandma and Granddad though – as I’ve mentioned before he doesn’t see any of his grandparents very often but at least now he remember them and we don’t have to go through the ‘settling in’ period every time we do see them. Toby doesn’t always cope well with being out of his routine but he was great while we were away (and so was Gabe actually) – he even slept in a ‘big boy’ bed for the first time without any issues which has made us realise we really should get round to moving him out of his cot at home soon too.

We’ve all had horrible colds and coughs over the last few weeks too, apart from Gabe who miraculously seems to have escaped with little more than a slightly snotty nose. Barry and I are still struggling with coughs but it’s Toby who seems to be suffering the most; he’s still coughing and hasn’t been eating very well either, which isn’t like him at all. In fact, it has just occurred to me that the cold might be causing a reflux flare which could explain why he hasn’t been eating very much.

Anyway, here’s hoping we are all fully recovered by next week. With Christmas not very far away now the last thing we need is everyone being ill!

With being away I didn’t have much chance to get the big camera out so this week’s photo of Toby is a slight cheat in that it was actually taken the weekend before when we were baking. I love how serious he looks here; baking obviously takes a lot of concentration!

This photo of Gabe I just took today – Toby was at nursery so I actually got a chance to just spend a bit of time playing with Gabe, and taking photos! This one just made me smile because even at three months he looks like he’s already perfected his ‘enough with the camera in my face mum’ expression.

And lastly just a quick thank you to Donna at What the Redhead Said for hosting Living Arrows this week, and for featuring one of my pictures too.

Another quiet week here. We’ve been recovering from our colds, the weather has been pretty miserable so we haven’t been out much, and generally it’s just been another uneventful week.

Gabe is now 13 weeks old and has slept through the night for the last few nights. I don’t want to jinx things but I’m hoping this is the start of things to come! I’ll be doing a full update for him as he reaches three months old tomorrow! I can’t believe how fast he’s growing…

Toby is still just our wonderful, slightly bonkers toddler. His speech continues to develop every day and he’s turned into a real parrot – he copies everything we say so we really have to be careful these days! I attempted baking with him again on Saturday – we made some fairy cakes and it was a lot less stressful than when we made biscuits a few weeks ago. Toby really seemed to enjoy it (and we all enjoyed eating them!) so I’m going to try and keep it up and bake or cook with him every week. His imagination is really developing now too – you can see it in his play, it’s so fun watching him come up with his own little worlds.

It’s been a bit of a wet and miserable week since my last post. We’ve all got colds and everyone is generally feeling a bit grotty. Gabe in particular is suffering with the snot and isn’t sleeping very well as a result, so neither am I….basically we’re all just feeling a bit sorry for ourselves. I just hope we all recover in time for our trip to England next week.

On Sunday we decided we just needed to get out of the house and took advantage of a brief break in the rain to head to our local loch. Toby was in a grump about going but when we got there and he had his wellies and his ‘pompom hat’ on he was loving running off and exploring. I always think he’s so big (and he is for a two year old) but when he’s off in the distance like that he still looks so tiny…

And as for Gabe, he turned 12 weeks old this week and is starting to show a bit more personality now. He has also found his hand and is starting to favour sucking it over a dummy. I’m quite happy about it to be honest – I’m not the biggest fan of dummies but they definitely serve a purpose. Toby did the same thing at about the same age – he’d had a dummy but then found his thumb and that was that. He still sucks his thumb now and arguably it will be harder to stop him that it would be a dummy – you can’t take a thumb away after all, but I’m still glad we don’t have to go through the process of trying to take a dummy off him. It looks like Gabe might be heading the same way…

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!

We’ve not been up to much the last week…I’m trying not to do anything to out of the ordinary so that Toby has a chance to get used to his new routine with his new nursery and his new little brother. We try to get out most mornings, even if it’s only to the shop, and then he has nursery four afternoons a week. We’re still having lots of tears on drop off but he does seem to be having fun while he’s there so hopefully things will keep improving.

This week has also seen Gabe turn two months old and we’ve had the joy of his first proper smiles too. I know I am very biased but I reckon we do make very pretty children! He still looks like Toby did as a baby but he’s really starting to get his own personality now too.

On Saturday it was such a lovely sunny day that we decided to head to some woods near where we live for a walk, and to give Toby a chance to have a run about. I’m going to share some more of the photos in a separate post but I love this one of Toby having a rest and concentrating on his raisins. I can’t take credit for this picture though – Barry was in charge of the camera for this one…

Not much to report this week… Toby is settling in well to his new nursery, apart from rather dramatic wailing on being dropped off. He’s always had a good day by the time he comes home though so I’m hoping the drop offs get a bit easier this week. He’s got a cold as well at the moment and has generally being a bit clingy. I know he’s just a bit put out because he’s not getting all of my attention any more. I try and give him as much attention as I can but juggling the two boys isn’t easy. I have no idea how people manage with three or even more kids! Toby is getting so big, and he’s so clever that I think sometimes we forget that he’s still just a baby himself really and he’s struggling to make sense of all the changes that have been going on in his life lately. Everyone always thinks he’s older than he is and you can see why in this week’s photo…he’s wearing age 3 trousers and an age 3-4 t-shirt and he was only two three months ago!

Gabe has been doing OK this week. He’s still sleeping reasonably well – he’s going to bed at the same time as Toby (about 7pm) and usually only waking up once in the night. We’ve had a few nights this week though when that one wake up has lasted two hours which isn’t the most fun! He seems to be struggling with trapped wind a lot at the moment, every feed seems to end in screaming while we fight to get a burp up. I feel so sorry for him. We are getting into something of a routine during the day now at least. He’s usually going about three hours between feeds. If we’re lucky he has a morning nap in his crib and then his other sleeps in the baby carrier on me. Having to wear him all the time isn’t ideal but at least it means I can get things done, I have both my hands free, and the carrier is honestly like magic – Gabe nearly always falls asleep within five minutes of being put in it! The other Gabe news this week is that we have finally been treated to some gorgeous smiles! I’ve not managed to catch one on camera yet though so this week’s picture is this lovely contented sleepy face instead.

It’s been a fairly quiet week here, we’re slowly settling into some sort of routine. We’ve started putting Gabe to bed at the same time as Toby now which means we’re getting our evenings back and that couple of hours makes all the difference. Gabe is still sleeping really well at night too, although he’s not a huge fan of the daytime nap. I remember Toby was the same though – I spent a lot of time taking him for walks to get him to sleep in the first few months but from about three months his daytime sleep improved and he started napping in his cot without any trouble. I’m just hoping Gabe follows in his brother’s footsteps!

Speaking of Toby, he has moved to a new nursery this week. After a short settling in session on Thursday he went for a full afternoon on Friday and apart from a few tears when I dropped him off on Friday he was an absolute superstar. I hope he’s still so settled when we go back again tomorrow.

I managed a successful trip to toddler group with both boys this week too. I put Gabe in the carrier and he slept the whole time, and I had both hands free to play with Toby so it was much less stressful than the week before when I’d just been holding Gabe (after optimistically assuming I would be able to leave him in the pram!).

I had another outing on my own with both boys on Friday too. We went to the cafe in the big park in our town to meet up with two of the girls from our original NCT class. They both have toddlers the same age as Toby, and they’re both pregnant too. I wouldn’t say it was entirely stress-free – Toby was being a bit clingy and didn’t want to go into the little soft play that’s there, and then he was being a bit picky about the food I’d got him for lunch, and Gabe was crying while I tried to sort Toby’s lunch out because he wanted feeding, and Toby knocked a whole pot of yoghurt all over the table…but do you know what? We all survived, we went out, I did manage to talk to my friends a bit, everyone got fed and no one was hurt so I’m chalking that one up as a victory. Every time I go out with both boys on my own, whether it’s to toddler group, or a cafe or the supermarket, I think of ways I can make it easier for next time so things can only get better from here!

Anyway, to this week’s Living Arrows pictures…the first is Toby – today we went to one of those ceramic painting places near where we live. We didn’t do any painting but it’s got a nice little cafe and a small soft play area that is free and that Toby can just go and play in on his own. He was having so much fun in there and seeing him off playing on his own gives me a little lump in my throat – it really shows me how much my baby boy is growing up.

Of course my new baby boy is still very much a baby. He still looks really like Toby did when he was the same age, especially when he’s wearing Toby’s hand me downs. This sleepsuit was Toby’s before going to my friend’s twins, and now back to Gabe again. I reckon Gabe is even longer than Toby was though, his feet are at the bottom of this sleepsuit already and it’s 0-3 months! I wonder if he’s going to end up even taller than his brother?