If you read my Living Arrows post last week you’ll know we had a lot of tears on the first day back at school and nursery last week. Fortunately it was short-lived and Toby and Gabe were both OK for the rest of the week. Toby went in every day with a big smile on his face and Gabe, despite moaning about not wanting to go to nursery, was absolutely fine when he got there and didn’t even cry when I left him!

We carved a pumpkin for Halloween on Wednesday (a first for me!) but didn’t take the boys out trick or treating this year. We’ve said they can go next year if they want to. Toby was quite upset on Thursday morning because he didn’t know Halloween was only one day. He’s OK now though and has already started talking about Christmas!

We were hoping to a bonfire and fireworks display on Saturday night but it was raining on and off, and in the end we decided it was on a bit too late for Gabe, especially if we were likely to get wet! We really did want to get out of the house this weekend though, so yesterday we headed up to Beacon Fell with a packed lunch and went for a walk up the hill.

Beacon Fell isn’t that far from where we live and it’s somewhere I remember walking a lot when I was young. We took the boys there two years and a month ago (blogging is great for reminding you when you did things) and my pictures from week 40 of Living Arrows in 2016 were taken there.  Gabe has changed a bit since then hasn’t he?

And this is this week…

You might be able to see a bit of a graze on his face – he had a bit of a fight with the playground when we were picking Toby up from school on Friday!

On the whole both boys had a good afternoon walking in the woods, except Toby was really struggling with all the dogs that were there. He was doing a lot better with his fear of dogs for a while and although he didn’t like them he would manage to stay quite calm while we walked past them. Nothing really happened but now we are back to screaming and complete panic again. It’s really hard to support him, and not get frustrated especially when he’s screaming about a tiny dog that is miles away and on a lead. We do our best though and can only hope that if we keep encouraging him to stay calm, and reassure him that the dogs aren’t going to hurt him then eventually it will get better.

Anyway, this was him, at a moment when there weren’t any dogs around…