Well, a lot of them were really late and a couple I doubled up two weeks in one, but I’ve made it to the final week of Living Arrows for this year. Apart from a distinct lack of sleep for Barry and I we enjoyed a lovely Christmas visiting both mine and Barry’s parents. Toby still hasn’t entirely got what Christmas is all about but he definitely enjoyed opening all his presents this year, and he got plenty of them!

Both of this week’s photos were taken on Christmas morning. Toby loved this shopping basket of plastic food that he got off my mum…

And I think it was all a bit much for Gabe…

As it’s the end of the year I always think it’s nice to look back and see what the first picture of the year was. I’m so glad I’ve been taking part in Living Arrows over the last two years and I have such a fantastic record of how Toby has changed. Of course at the start of this year there was no Gabe, other than as a tiny something in my tummy, but it’s going to be so lovely looking back of all the pictures of him too. Children change so much in the first few years of their lives and it’s fantastic to have these weekly pictures to remind us of just how much.

This is the first ever Living Arrows photo I took, back in January 2014. Toby was almost six months old here and although you can clearly tell they are brothers if you compare photos of him and Gabe they don’t look any where near as similar as they did when they were born.

And then this is the first Living Arrows picture of 2015 – Toby really did love that hat!

I’ve not quite decided if I’m going to carry on with the Living Arrows in 2016 (or indeed if it is continuing). My Living Arrows posts had veered away from the photography posts they were supposed to be and instead had become more of a weekly round up post of what we had been up to so I think that is how I am going to carry on with them. I just need to think of a name for them….any ideas?

It’s only been a few days since my last Living Arrows post so I’m not going to say much this time! We are all slowly recovering from our various coughs and colds, and the boys are sleeping a little better for now too. I’m hoping we are all fully better for Christmas and our visits to all the grandparents.

Toby is going through another phase of mummy having to do everything which is frustrating for both me and Barry. He’s been quite clingy this week too, with lots of ‘my cuddle mummy’, ‘my sit on mummy’, ‘mummy do it’… which is lovely at times but quite annoying when I have Gabe to look after too and other things that need doing, and especially because Barry is now at home for the Christmas holidays and he is perfectly capable and willing to provide cuddles and a knee to sit on!

On the whole though Toby is really lovely to be around and he’s very funny these days. He had us all giggling the other day when he proclaimed ‘just a minute daddy, I have an idea!’ We never did find out what his idea was though… Or yesterday, he was playing with his flashcards and we had them all on the floor asking him to find different things. He found loads of them with no trouble; a fish, a dragon, cheese, an apple, bread, jam….and then I said ‘now can you find the milk’, at which he immediately got up, walked into the kitchen and produced the bottle of milk from the fridge! Well, you can’t fault his logic.

This week’s photo tickled me – I love how toddlers see absolutely nothing wrong with sitting eating their lunch whilst wearing a bobble hat.

Gabe is still being a little superstar really. Apart from a few early mornings (which luckily for me Barry got up for), and a bit of shouting around bedtime on a couple of nights, he’s pretty chilled out most of the time. He’s been loving his play mat this week and has gone from seemingly not being able to reach the toys to grabbing on for dear life and not letting go! He’s getting really close to rolling over too – another couple of inches and he’ll be there.

Thanks to Donna at What the Redhead Said for hosting Living Arrows this week, and for featuring one of my pictures.

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything for ten days now, missing two Living Arrows posts in the process. This has been because the last two weeks have been clouded in a fog of illness in the Toby Goes Bananas house.

Toby was first to succumb; he had an awful cough, a snotty nose, temperatures of nearly 40° and pretty much stopped eating for three days. He was also waking up a lot in the night leading to lots of broken sleep for me too. I was, perhaps inevitably, the next to fall and although I avoided the temperatures I still felt rotten. We were really hoping Gabe had managed to avoid it as he seemed to still be well after a week but no such luck, and then finally Barry also lost his fight against the germs.

On top of that we’ve had to deal with the Forth Road Bridge being shut which has added an extra two hours to Barry’s working day. With that and looking after poorly boys, while trying to look after myself there hasn’t been a lot of time for blogging, hence this double Living Arrows post.

This photo of Gabe was just taken at home last week. It’s terrible trying to take pictures inside at the moment, it’s just so dark all the time, and what with all the illness we’ve not really been out of the house much. Gabe is four months old today (update post on the way when I get a chance!) and he’s really turning into a proper little boy now, there’s nothing of the newborn left in him. He’s so interested in everything that’s going on and sits watching his brother with fascination every day. I can’t wait for the next few months for him to start sitting up and hopefully then he’ll be able to interact with Toby a bit more too.

Toby’s picture was taken in the garden at the weekend. We actually had what felt like a proper winter’s day; cold and frosty, rather than the miserable wetness we’ve had almost every other day for the last few months. Barry took the chance to do a little bit of tidying up in the garden and Toby wanted to go out an join him. I think he looks ridiculously cute in his big bobble hat!

And lastly I wanted to include this picture of me with the boys, even though it’s not that clear. We only managed to get the Christmas decorations down out of the loft this weekend, and we decided this year not to put our big tree up, mostly due to lack of space but also so we wouldn’t have to spend a month telling Toby to leave it alone! Instead we’ve just got this little fibre optic tree. Both boys love the lights and for this year it’s good enough…

We are all now on the mend but none of us are entirely well yet. I’m just hoping we’re fully recovered for Christmas and that we’ve seen the last of the germs for this year!

I’m back to my old habits of being super-late with my Living Arrows post again – I’m just going to sneak this one in before the next one is due tomorrow!

There has been a general lack of blogging this week; at first it was because I was giving the blog a bit of a design overhaul (What do you think by the way? I really love it!), and then my computer decided it was going to have a go slow for the rest of the week. It’s been having trouble since I upgraded to Windows 10 last month, Barry did his best to try and sort it out last night but it’s still not working brilliantly. I might just have to ask Father Christmas for a new one!

I’ve been up a lot with both boys too – lots of early starts and not a huge amount of sleep have made for rather a lack of blogging motivation.

Anyway, here’s a couple of pictures of the boys this week and hopefully next week I’ll be back on my blogging game!

This picture of Toby is just a quick snap I took the other day when we were having a Teddy Bears’ picnic for lunch. Toby has been getting a bit fussy about his food recently so I thought I’d try something to make lunch time a bit more fun. Toby certainly enjoyed it but I think he ate even less than he usually does!

I can’t believe Gabe is heading towards four months now – he’s at that great age where they really start paying attention to everything that is going on around them, you can really see his personality starting to come out now and I love his expression in this picture, looking right into the camera.

And lastly I have to include this Instagram picture – Toby hasn’t really been too bothered about Gabe so far. He mostly tolerates him but he generally doesn’t seem that impressed by him. This week though I think he has started to realise that his little brother might actually be quite interesting, and he asked if Gabe could sit on his knee. I’m not sure that Gabe was convinced but it was too cute not to take a picture!

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…