A bit of a cheat this week as I didn’t take this photo – it was taken by Barry using the new lens we got for our DSLR. Toby has pretty much stopped napping completely now but still has a bit of a mid-afternoon slump when he gets tired and grumpy so at the weekends if we’ve not gone out anywhere we quite often have a bit of quiet time watching whatever film happens to be on the Sky Movies Disney or Family channels. So this was taken last weekend…quiet time and mummy cuddles…
It’s been another quiet week of waiting for a baby to arrive – still no sign yet though!
This week’s Living Arrows photo is a bit different – although a very common one whenever I’m trying to take a photo of Toby these days. He’s really interested in the camera now, and has perfected his ‘cheese’ face but a lot of the time just reaches out to try and get hold of the camera himself, and we end up with pictures like this one. I quite like it though, you can really see the cheekiness in his eye…
This month saw Toby turn two, and we had visits from all his grandparents to celebrate which was lovely. I was planning on getting a photo of the whole extended family but some how it didn’t happen! Other than the birthday weekend we haven’t really done anything very exciting. I’ve been struggling with my hips and pelvis the last few weeks so I’ve not really been up for any big trips or even a walk to the park some days. Most weekends have managed to include a trip somewhere for coffee and cake though which has helped!
I wasn’t sure if we would even make it to the end of July as a family of three but I’m still pregnant and so it looks like August is going to be the month that our three become four…for now we are three and a very big bump! (Excuse my weird smile – I was getting Toby to say cheese, which also gets him to look at the camera.)
Another quiet week of just getting through the days and waiting for a baby to arrive.
Toby has been settling in well to his new room at nursery with all the other 2 and 3 year olds. I think he’s still getting used to being the youngest though after being one of the big kids in the baby room for quiet a while now. We’ve had a couple of incidents of him biting other kids this week which isn’t ideal. It seems to be when someone wants to share whatever he is playing with at the time – he’s not quite got the hang of sharing yet, and because his language is still developing too he just gives the other child a bite instead. Nursery are taking him away and explaining that he shouldn’t do it, and we are trying to speak to him about it at home too but mostly I think we just need to hope he stops doing it as his speech develops. His language is coming on really quickly now though. He has been building his vocabulary over the last couple of months and is now trying to put words together more often, He even said ‘my milk’s all gone’ the other night which I think is the longest coherent sentence we’ve had out of him yet! My only real worry is that things are disrupted too much for him by the arrival of the new baby. I’m hoping that keeping him at nursery for now will help give him a routine and sense of normality when the chaos descends at home!
Anyway, to this week’s Living Arrows picture… This one is only an iPhone snap, Toby really wanted to carry his own bag into nursery this morning, even though it’s really heavy with all his nappies for the day. I reckon he looks super-cute though!
Another Living Arrows post – it seems like this is all I do on the blog lately but I do like the (sort of) weekly updates that it gives me the chance to write. This week we got out the play dough after nursery for a quiet activity that Toby could do whilst winding down towards bedtime. I bought him a big variety pack of play dough for his birthday but I think for the moment we are just going to get out a couple of colours at a time, play with them until they’ve had it and then get out a couple more colours, because they’re inevitably going to end up all mixd together anyway!
Toby loves his ‘day dough’, as he calls it and will happily sit and play with it for much longer than he concentrates on anything else. The only trouble we have is that he doesn’t want to put it away, and also starts asking for it as soon as we come down stairs in the morning!
I love the concentration on his face in this week’s picture…
With my second Living Arrows post this week we are back on track (although still a few days behind) and I don’t have much to say. After the excitement of his birthday at the weekend Toby has spent this week full of a cold, although miraculously still sleeping well. He seems to have pretty much dropped his nap all together now, which is a bit sad for us but over all is much better. Instead of bedtime lasting up to two hours and involving me sitting on Toby’s bedroom floor for ages to avoid him screaming his head off, he is now going to bed without too much trouble. I’ve still been sitting outside his door for 10 minutes or so just to make sure he’s settled but I’m leaving before he’s fully asleep and most nights he is sleeping from between 7 and 7:30 pm until about 8:30 am or even after 9 am on some days! And to be honest, if that’s what we get with no nap then I’ll give up my couple of hours in the afternoon (which only affects us at the weekend anyway because he’s still at nursery during the week) and take that as a win! Of course we’ll still let him have a nap if he needs it – on Tuesday he woke up at 6 am with his cold so he had a two hour nap at nursery in the afternoon, he was still fine at bedtime though. I think being up early and a bit poorly just meant he needed some extra sleep.
Anyway, this week’s photos are another couple from Toby’s birthday on Saturday. I couldn’t choose between his happy face on the slide or that cake picture so we’ve having both…
I’m so late with this latest Living Arrows post that it’s not even in the right week any more but I didn’t want to miss a week so here it is anyway! The picture was taken in the right week at least so it’s not too bad.
I had the camera out the other day because Toby was sitting at the table concentrating on a puzzle and I really wanted to catch the expression on his face. Of course as soon as I got the camera out he got down from the table and came to have a look! He was enjoying posing so I asked him to say cheese – we’ve never done that before so I can only guess he has learnt it at nursery because straight away he was giving me his ‘cheeeeese’ face!
Oh dear, late again! We really need to get our act together to take a family picture earlier in the month! I had every intention of doing it when we went to a vintage car rally a few weeks ago but then Toby had a meltdown before we had chance, and then I was going to do it last weekend but we didn’t really do anything…and so finally we’ve ended up with a late iPhone selfie taken in the garden today! Next weekend is Toby’s birthday and we’ve got all the grandparents coming so I’m going to make sure I get a picture of all of us together and July can be an extended family Me & Mine. It will also be the last month of Me & Mine as a family of three (unless this baby is very late!) which is pretty exciting! Of course there’s always a chance that we won’t even make it to the end of July as a family of three – that’s actually quite a scary thought… I might have a baby this month!
Anyway, we didn’t really get up to much in June. It was my last month of work and it was a struggle just to get through the days sometimes so the weekends were mostly just chores, trips to the park, and catching up on sleep! So for now here’s June’s picture…
Not too much to say this week. I’ve been enjoying not having to go to work and catching up on some much needed sleep. Toby is still taking ages to get to sleep at night but barring a 3:30 am wake up on Thursday night has slept through every night. All in all, not much to report…
Wow! Half way through the year already, how did that happen?
Today sees my last day at work, school finishes for the summer today (there are some advantages to living in Scotland!) and it couldn’t have come soon enough for me. Especially as Toby has treated us to another couple of nights of 3 am wake ups (complete with screaming tantrums) for the last few nights. I really have no idea how we are going to cope if he is still like this in six weeks or so when the baby is here!
This week’s Living Arrows picture is just Toby at home doing a bit of colouring – as you can see he’s not really decided if he prefers his left or right hand yet! I don’t very much arts and crafts or messy play at home (well none really!), colouring is about as adventurous as it gets in our house. I tell me it’s because Toby does plenty of that kind of thing during the week at nursery but mostly it’s just because I can’t stand the thought of the mess! I guess that might have to change in the autumn when he isn’t going to nursery every day but for now I think we’re all happy carrying on as we are…
