Not very much to tell this week, we’re still just plodding on. I’m counting down the days until I finish work – only 5 work days to go!

After my confident statement last week about Toby’s sleep being much improved we’ve had a bit of a set back again this week. He has still slept through most nights (there was one night where he was awake at 2 am for about an hour) but he is back to taking an hour to settle down and go to sleep. And I’ve been having to sit on the floor in his room until he drops off otherwise he just screams and screams. This may well be because we have stopped giving him his bedtime bottle but as long as he is still sleeping all night we’re going to try and stick with it and hope he gets used to the idea quickly!

This week’s photo is just one I took at home. Toby loves sitting up at our dining table and was playing with his Duplo while I got the tea ready. He still likes his hats too – especially this one of mine which I think he looks super cute in…

I’m super late with this week’s Living Arrows again – it seems to be happening more often than not these days! I still haven’t missed one this year though, so I’m still winning as far as I’m concerned!

Although I’ve been having a rubbish time work-wise for the last week we did have a lovely weekend last weekend. My parents were up visiting (mostly because I’d roped my mum into helping me do a second-hand baby market with me) and they took the opportunity to try out their new caravan on a campsite in Callander which is about an hour away from where we live. We went out to see them on Sunday morning and Toby loved running around with his ball and looking at all the sheep with my dad. He loves balls at the moment – whenever he sees on he always says ‘a ball’. He’s not that bothered about playing, although he is pretty good at throwing and kicking, he mostly just likes to carry it around!

I don’t think Toby has seen a sheep in real life since he was about 10 months old but he knew what they were as soon as he saw them, and immediately started pointing and saying ‘sheeps!’ He’s learnt so many new words lately, in just the last week we’ve had bus, outside, garden, nappy, dirty, zip, burst, oh and Giggle for Iggle Piggle and Kaka for Makka Pakka on In The Night Garden, and probably some others too! He’s not putting words together much yet  – we do get ‘in there’ and ‘on there’ and he has said ‘where daddy?’ before too. I’m sure it won’t be long though before he starts properly talking and we can have a proper conversation with him (well, as much of a conversation as you can have with an almost two year old anyway).

In another breakthrough, despite another cold, Toby has slept all night all this week! He was up early last Sunday and then I think he woke once on Sunday or Monday night but every other night he has slept from about 7pm right through to the next morning. All his teeth are through now so I’m sure that’s helped but I really hope we’ve turned a corner and we’re all going to get a lot more sleep from now on!

I’ve got a few photos I wanted to share this week. This first one was taken at home while I was out at the market on Saturday morning, just look at that grin!

The next one was on Sunday, running around with his ball…

And lastly showing his grandad the plants (and momentarily giving up his ball!)

It’s been another quiet week here in the Toby Goes Bananas house. It was my birthday on Thursday but with no babysitter and work the next day anyway we didn’t really do anything – I was suffering with a sore arm after having my whooping cough vaccine in the afternoon but we did have a chippy tea and sticky toffee pudding and ice cream for tea though!

We don’t really get much time together as a family during the week, by the time we’ve got home from work and picked Toby up from nursery we only see him for a couple of hours at most in the evenings. Weekends are always filled with chores like washing and shopping but we have been trying to make sure we get out and do something together every weekend. It’s easier now Toby only has a nap in the afternoon, as long as we are up and about early enough (although 5 am on Saturday was a bit too early thanks Toby!) there’s plenty of time to go somewhere or do something before lunch.

This week we decided to go and have a look at the Kelpies, two giant horses head statues in Falkirk which is not far from where we live. I had been before but Barry hadn’t so we drove over for a look. We managed to get our Me & Mine photo taken in front of the horses (before Toby decided he really didn’t want to be in the buggy any more) and then he had fun walking around whilst I tried to make sure he didn’t fall into any of the water surrounding the statues! There was a grassy hill where he was safe enough just to run around by himself and he was loving climbing up to the top then running back down to me for a big cuddle. He’s such a bundle of energy so our weekend adventures always try and include somewhere he can blow off some steam. How happy does he look here?

I don’t have much to say with this week’s Living Arrows photo seeing as it was only a few days since I posted the last one! This photo was taken on Saturday – we’d been round to my friend’s house in the afternoon and Toby had been playing in their garden so had his hat on. When we got home he didn’t want to take it off so wore it to eat his tea in. He’s getting really good at using his fork now; I love how wide he opens his mouth though to make sure he gets everything in!

I’m even later than usual this week – so late in fact it’s almost time for next week’s post!

Last weekend we attempted to go on holiday to a caravan park only about 45 minutes drive from home. We went after picking Toby up from nursery on Friday night thinking by the time we got there he could have an hour playing and getting used to the caravan and then go to bed. We were attempting to get him to sleep in a bed for the first time, which perhaps was a bad idea, and he was also still in the midst of teething with all four of his back molars. The upshot of all this was that he screamed whenever we took him near the bedroom and was still up running round the living area of the caravan until 10 pm when we finally managed to get him to calm down enough to go to sleep. He did then sleep without any trouble until he woke up at 4:40 am and refused to go back to sleep! For a boy who normally gets at least 11 hours sleep a night, 6 hours was definitely not enough! We made it through the morning and he had a nap in the buggy for about an hour, but the despite going out in the car in the afternoon in the hope he would have another nap that was the only sleep he got.

We then went to the pub on site for our tea on the Saturday night where Toby refused to go in the highchair and even sat on my knee only ate about three chips and one piece of carrot. We gave him some cereal back at the caravan but when, for the second night it was after 9 pm, he was still screaming when we went near the bedroom and I was on the verge of a complete breakdown, we decided to give it all up as a bad job and come home!

Toby proceeded to fall asleep the second we put him in the car seat, slept all the way home and then until 9:30 the next morning! Although it felt like we were wasting money coming home it was definitely the right thing to do for everyone’s sanity.

We had a couple of disturbed nights during the week too, but having slept through for the last three nights I’m hoping the worst of the teething is now over. I just keep telling myself that at least these are the last baby teeth to come and it means we’ll avoid having two babies teething at the same time!

Anyway, this week’s Living Arrows photo was taken at about 6 am last Saturday when Toby had already been awake for an hour and a half and was happily colouring, whilst wearing his daddy’s hat.

It’s only been a few days since my last Living Arrows post but I thought I’d try (again!) to get back on track. This weekend we bought a new pushchair which was very exciting. Well, exciting for me at least…It’s an Uppababy Vista that can be used as a single or a tandem so we can start using it with Toby straight away but then we’re also all set for when the little one arrives in August. We then had a trip to the park and the farmer’s market. We took Toby’s Smart Trike to the park – we bought it for his birthday last year but if I’m honest he hasn’t really had much use of it so far. He was definitely enjoying it on Saturday too. We did have two tantrums on Saturday though – it seems if we try and get Toby to go somewhere he doesn’t want to go, or to leave somewhere before he’s ready then he’ll have a complete meltdown. The first one was when we were trying to leave the pram shop, they had a few toys on a little table by the till that Toby had been playing with so when it was time to leave he just started wailing and we had to manhandle him into the car, where he screamed all the way to the park, and then stopped as soon as we got there! It was a similar story when it came time to leave the park. I guess these toddler tantrums are just par for the course…better get used to them!

On Sunday it was chucking it down so we decided to try out one of the soft play places near us. I have a theory that if Toby doesn’t get out and burn off some energy during the day on Sunday then it can be one of the things that contributes to the multiple wake ups we often get on a Sunday night. Believe it or not we’ve only ever taken Toby to soft play once before and that was a while ago now so I was looking forward to seeing how he got on. The place we went was massive but it did have a dedicated small area for under 4s and Toby loved it! I did go in with him for a bit but mostly I just let his Dad chase round after him for an hour – I think he was more exhausted than Toby was! Anyway, he only woke up once on Sunday night so maybe it did help wear him out a bit.

I snapped this week’s Living Arrows picture on my iPhone but I really like it. You can certainly see how much fun Toby was having…

Another quiet week for us here – with us both working full time there isn’t really a lot of time to do much else. We do usually try and go somewhere at the weekends but sometimes we just need a quiet weekend at home. The weather was pretty rubbish this weekend too so we didn’t even manage to fit in a trip to the park.

Toby has been a superstar this last couple of weeks though. He has really struggled with most of his teeth, being very grumpy and with lots of disturbed nights. In the last few weeks though all four of his back molars have started to make an appearance. One is almost fully erupted and the other three have all got at least one corner through. And not only has he hardly been grumping at all, he has slept through almost every night, and he’s gone back to going to sleep by himself instead of screaming unless one of us sits with him until he is asleep. We did have a bad night on Sunday night but I swear that’s just because he knows it’s Sunday and we have to get up for work the next day! After my concerns a just few weeks ago that we were going to have to change something to get Toby to settle and sleep again, perhaps drop his nap or move him to a bed, we haven’t changed anything at all and he’s just sorted it out himself. Sometimes, there’s no fathoming toddlers!

I’m even later than usual with this week’s Living Arrows post, but I do have an excuse…sort of. It was always going to be a few days late but on Wednesday evening when we were having our tea there was suddenly a massive thunder clap and the brightest flash of lightening I have ever seen. We don’t know if it actually hit our house but it was pretty close – when we went outside we could smell it! Anyway, it also took out our phone line so we have had no phone or internet at home since. I’m writing this at work (not during a lesson I promise!) when really I should be marking and writing reports.

And so, this isn’t going to be a very long post. We’ve had an uneventful week really, Toby has slept through on quite a few nights, despite the fact he’s got a back molar coming, and we’ll just call Sunday night, when we were up with him every hour, a blip!

At the weekend we went to the Almond Valley Heritage Centre which isn’t very far from where we live. There were lots of animals to see – we saw a baby goat called Toby being bottle fed. I’m not sure our Toby was that impressed though! There were lots of things to play on too. I’ll do a full post all about it when I get chance but this week’s photo is Toby on one of the little tractors – he didn’t quite have the hang of steering, or peddling but I think he enjoyed it anyway.

And he had fun on a trampoline too until he decided to run off it, trip over the padding at the edge and fall flat on his face in the dirt. He was fine but had a few lovely grazes on his nose to show for it, I’m sure they won’t be the last grazes he gets though…he seems to have little concern for his own safety at the moment (as he proved when he decided to stand up on his rocking horse this weekend too. I think we’re raising a future stuntman!