It’s been another fairly quiet week but a busy weekend. On Tuesday Barry and I did manage to go out for lunch on our own which is a pretty rare occurrence. I was working on Wednesday and then Thursday and Friday were quiet days pottering around at home. We had one of our usual walks to the shops and the park on Friday, and Toby has realised that the ice cream van is often near the park so we had a little treat too.

We’ve been using a reward chart with Toby for the last couple of weeks – he had started wetting himself nearly every day after being dry for months and it was just through sheer laziness. He had also got into the habit of getting up early and coming into our bed, which I don’t really mind too much but Gabe is usually in there too and he was waking him up as well.

So anyway, we made a chart which was ‘Toby’s race to the beach’ and he could move a space nearer to the beach for every day he had dry pants, for every morning he stayed in bed until the sun came out on his Gro-clock and extra spaces for being especially kind or helpful. We added in smaller rewards along the way -Toby is a bit obsessed with Kinder Eggs at the moment so they featured quite heavily, but we’d also put in a trip to soft play when he was getting towards the end of the chart.

Which meant we had to brave soft play on a rainy Saturday morning. It wasn’t an entirely successful trip. Toby is at that in between stage where the toddler bit is really too small but the big kids’ bit can be a bit too big and scary. So he didn’t seem to be having a great time, but has kept asking to go back ever since so who knows! Gabe enjoyed the baby section for a bit but then mostly just wanted to wander around in between all the tables.

Yesterday we headed up to the Lake District to collect my in-laws’ old car that we are buying for them. We had lunch then I got back in our car with the boys and Barry went to drive the new car home…but it wouldn’t start! So we came home minus our new car but we did fit in a quick stop in Cartmel on the way back.

We’ve never been to Cartmel before (the home of the famous Sticky Toffee Pudding if you’ve ever had it) and it was lovely. There are lots of little shops, cafes and pubs as well as the village shop where they make the famous pudding. We had an ice cream and grabbed a few pictures while we were there too. The one of Toby above was taken just after we had been looking at some lambs in a field and this one of Gabe in the church yard of the Priory…