Should kids play video games?

Toby and Gabe playing on tablets

Toby is five years old and Gabe is three. They have both been playing video games since before they were two. They even got their own tablets for Christmas last year when they were just two and four. With a game developer dad and a blogger mum it was probably inevitable that they would be early gamers, but should kids play video games at all? Read more

Gabriel is two years old

Gabe and mummy blowing out the birthday candles

I’m not quite sure how it’s happened but my little baby, Gabey-goo is two years old! In a lot of ways the time has flown since he was born but at the same time we seem to have been waiting for a long time to well and truly put the baby days behind us. I love both my boys to pieces but it is safe to say I am not a big fan of little babies. Give me a walking, talking toddler any day! Read more

Gabriel is 18 months old

Well, OK, Gabe is actually 19 months old by the time I’m finally getting round to writing this, but hey, who’s counting?

So what can I tell you about Gabe at 18 months old? Well, I could start with his vital statistics, except I only know he’s about 83cm tall, and is wearing size 4 shoes. I have no idea how much he weighs! He is mostly wearing 18-24 month clothes (or 86 in European sizes) so he is definitely smaller than Toby was at this age – he was already moving into 2-3 clothes at 18 months, and had size 6 feet!

Gabe the cheeky chops is 18 months old

There are quite a few similarities between Toby and Gabe at 18 months though. At this age Toby could only say Dada, hiya, see saw, what’s that and shoe. Gabe’s vocabulary so far includes Read more

Living Arrows 1/52 (2017)

So this post is the first of my fourth year of taking part in the Living Arrows project. It really is fabulous to have a weekly record of the boys and see how much they grow and develop. And just to show you how much they’ve changed, here is Toby in the first ever Living Arrows picture I took…

And the picture from week one of 2015… Read more

Living Arrows 45/52 (2016)

I’m late again with my Living Arrows post this week. It’s been busy round these parts again – the kitchen is heading towards finished with a bit more painting to do, a new floor to go down and a new table and chairs to get. I’m really pleased with it and but I didn’t really enjoy spending a whole day unpacking all the boxes again and finding a place for everything!

Barry spent the weekend painting so on Saturday I took the boys for a walk into town to get them out of the way. It was really cold but we wrapped up warm and Toby had a lovely time collecting leaves and then running through all the dried leaves along the path.

Toby enjoying collecting autumn leaves

Gabe’s personality has really been coming out even more these last few weeks. His reflux mostly seems to be under control, we saw the paediatrician last week and she’s happy for him to continue on his meds and review things again in six months. The teeth that have been coming over the last few weeks have all finally cut now too – so that’s four molars and four canines in about three weeks! We’ve had quite a few grumpy days and nights but at least he should be over the worst of it now, and there are only four more molars to come before he has all his teeth! He’s coped remarkably well really, it must have been so painful for him – you can see the rash round his mouth on this week’s photo too, teething drool isn’t pleasant!

Gabe has been suffering with teething and has a rash round his mouth

His sleep has been slowly getting better too – a couple of nights recently he has made it until 3 am before his first wake up, which is a massive improvement on the 10 pm of a few weeks ago. There’s not much of a leap to make now before he’ll be sleeping all night….I hope! He has to sleep all night one of these days.

Gabe’s big news this week though is that he has started walking!! It was only two weekends ago that he started letting go when he was standing up, and managing to stand up without holding on to anything. He started trying to take a couple of steps last week but he’s really started to get the hang of it this week. So I’ll leave you with this….

Living Arrows

Gabriel is eleven months old

I only got round to writing Gabe’s 10 month update a couple of weeks ago so not much has happened since even though this update is slightly late too. Eleven months old seems to have come round very quickly – I can’t believe Gabe is going to be one next month!

Gabriel is eleven months old

We’re still waiting for tooth number eight to appear so there’s been quite a lot of whinging still, and for the about a week he’s being refusing to eat anything much apart from fruit pouches. The last day or two he has started eating again but still no tooth!

Of course the lack of appetite could also be a bit of a reaction to the total disruption to his routine and the heat – since last Thursday we’ve been living with my parents until hopefully we get the keys to our new house next week, so everything has been different for him the last few weeks.

Despite my high hopes for Gabe’s new reflux medication it hasn’t quite been the wonder cure I thought it might be. He does seem marginally more comfortable at night he is still waking up at least a couple of times and often wants to get up around 5 am. Having said that, we have had a couple of nights where I’ve brought him into bed with me sometime in the early hours of the morning and he’s slept until nearly 7 am so maybe the tide is slowly changing…

Gabe standing at the TV

Gabe is the most active baby I’ve ever seen though so I don’t know how he manages on so little sleep sometimes. He never sits still, he’s always crawling off or pulling himself up. If you try and hold him he’s super-wriggly and often will try and dive out of your arms onto the floor. He is cruising round the furniture like a pro now and doesn’t seem to need to hold on for balance quite as much any more. I don’t think it will be too long before we see him standing on his own and even walking.

Gabe sitting in the bath

He’s loving the bath now too – he’s always quite enjoyed it but up until the last week or too wouldn’t sit in the bath so he couldn’t really do much. He’s decided he’s happy to sit now though so he can play with all the toys and the bubbles. We might even brave trying to give Toby and Gabe a bath together soon.

Gabe is eleven months old

Apart from the teething and lack of appetite Gabe has actually been much cheerier for the last few weeks. It could have something to do with the fact that we have actually, for the first time in what feels like months, had a couple of weeks where he hasn’t been ill!

That’s about it for this month I think. Gabe is eleven months old and I still can’t believe that next month I’ll be writing that he is one! And hopefully we’ll be all settled in our new house and I’ll be telling you that he’s sleeping through the night…well I can dream right?

0-11 months

Toby is three years old

Toby is three years old today. Can you believe it? My little tiny 6lb 10oz baby, who was only three months old when I started writing this blog, is three!

Baby Toby

This is the first time that he’s really understood about birthdays and so the first year we’ve bothered having presents wrapped and waiting for him in the morning. Of course, his favourite thing was the balloon though!

Birthday balloon

We only gave Toby a few small things today because we’re moving out of our house this week and won’t be in our new house for at least a week so we didn’t want to give him presents that would just need to be put straight into storage.

Opening presents

So anyway, what is Toby like at three years old? He’s funny and cheeky, polite for the most part, prone to crying when he doesn’t get his own way but rarely has a tantrum. He can count to 20 (if you ignore the fact he goes from 13 straight to 16). He knows his full name and can recognise the letter T for Toby. He still loves his muslin blankets and has four on the go at any one time and he still loves to suck his thumb, although we’ve started trying to get him to only have it at bedtime.

Sucking his thumb in a cushion house

He can name all the planets and will tell you that Venus is ‘berry berry hot’, Jupiter has got a big red spot and Saturn has got rings. He knows the names of at least five different dinosaurs and could probably tell you every single character in every program on CBeebies – which perhaps I shouldn’t be quite as proud of! He learns new words every day and we rarely have trouble understanding him these days. I love how I can have a proper conversation with him now, and some of the things he comes out with are hilarious.

He loves anything chocolate and always wants to eat some of my cake, even if he’s got his own. He eats most things, as long as he’s got mayonnaise to dip them in (he may have picked that one up from me!) and we seem to have mostly got over the fussy phase that I mentioned in his last update. He eats a lot and was 102 cm tall at the last measure and wears age 3-4 clothes but he still only weighs 2st 5lb so he’s only put on 2lb in the last six months.

Imaginative play at three years old
He loves playing outside, especially making giant bubbles, and he’s really starting to get into imaginative play at the moment; building things and making up stories about them. But he also loves playing games on his ‘tiny telly’ (which is actually my Kindle Fire). He would probably play on it all day if he could but we try to limit his time and make sure all the games are at least vaguely educational.

He sleeps in a single bed, and usually sleeps all night. He likes to have three stories at bedtime and fall asleep on my lap. He sometimes wakes up early but always stays in bed until ‘Mr Sun’ comes out on his Groclock at 7:20. Sometimes he sleeps later, it usually depends whether Gabe is being noisy and wakes him up. He doesn’t nap, except sometimes in the car, but if he does it’s a nightmare to try and get him to sleep at night.

He still wears nappies (cloth ones of course) and although he knows when he is doing a wee or poo he has absolutely no interest in using the potty or the toilet. I’m hoping we might have a breakthrough over the summer, although with all the changes coming with moving house I’m not going to push him if he doesn’t want to.

Toby and Gabe - best of friends

He loves his little brother, and is still the one person who is pretty much guaranteed to be able to make Gabe laugh, but he gets annoyed with him all the time and is still not keen on sharing his toys. We are seeing more moments of affection though and Toby even seems to have started babbling nonsense back to Gabe – I have no idea what they think they are talking about but it’s very cute.

Fun with mummy
He winds me up every day, and then he melts my heart when he says ‘I ruv you mummy’. My Toby-Bear, my T-dog,my Super-T, my Toby-tobleroney, my baby.

Now you are three.