Toby turned four and a half last week, so I as my blog tradition dictates that means it’s time for another update. It might only have been six months since his 4th birthday, but it’s been a really big six months for my biggest boy with an awful lot of changes for him to cope with.

First up though I always start with the vital statistics – Toby is now  115cm tall (5cm taller than 6 months ago), and still mostly wearing age 5-6 clothes. He is still super skinny and weighs 2st 12lb (18.1kg) so has put on about  2lb  in the last 6 months. He’s got massive feet (takes after his dad there!), and is now wearing size 11 ½ or 12.

Of course the biggest change for Toby in the last six months has been starting school in September. He had a few wobbles for the first month or so but on the whole he’s settled in really well. He’s finally got used to wearing his uniform (and even gets dressed by himself most mornings now), and rarely complains about having to go to school every day.

His reading and writing have come on leaps and bounds since he started school, he gets homework once a week and loves doing it, and we’re just so proud of how well he’s doing. As much as I’m happy that he seems to be doing well academically I’m even more pleased that he enjoys going to school, he has made new friends, he is behaving well and generally he’s just being a little superstar!

His talking and vocabulary are brilliant but he still gets his tenses wrong quite a lot, and says anything that happened in the past happened yesterday. Oh, and he’s just started learning about ‘caterpul’ letters at school which he just can’t get right no matter how many times we break it down to ‘cap-i-tal’. I think it’s cute though, and it’s not going to last for ever!

Of course he still has his moments when he drives me. He whinges when he doesn’t get his own way, he fights with Gabe, he messes about at bed time every single night, he has to be asked five times before he eventually puts his shoes on, but most of the time he’s kind and funny and I couldn’t love him more.

He still loves the colour purple and sleeps with his purple blanket every night, he loves dinosaurs and can name more than I even knew existed. He has a new found love for LEGO and spent most of the holidays building a massive jungle set that he got for Christmas.

He eats most things, his favourite meal is Swedish meatballs. He doesn’t like bananas any more though, and still isn’t a fan of ‘messy food’, which really means anything with sauce – apparently chocolate ice cream and messy cake are fine! He’s definitely been having some growth spurts lately when he wants to eat everything in sight – he spends all day telling me he’s hungry!

At the moment he’s going through a bit of a superhero phase (mostly brought on by reading Supertato at school) – he loves PJ Masks, and most of his games have the good guys and the bad guys in them. He’s started to love colouring and drawing in the last few months too – I think he enjoys it more now he finds it a bit easier.

He loves jumping and running around at home, but gets scared if we go to the park or soft play. He’s scared of things now which he would happily do when he was three which can be frustrating but I’m sure he’ll get there eventually. He loves spending time outside though, and has been enjoying spotting birds and ticking them off in the book he got at Christmas.

He’s doing really well at his swimming lessons too – he doesn’t like putting his face in the water and is scared to jump in but he’s doing great at the actual swimming part.

I think that’s all for now. Toby is already talking about his ‘5 birthday’ and what kind of party he wants. And although it’s six months away I’m sure it will fly by and he’ll be 5 before we know it!