Toby is just getting to an age when he is starting to play with other children, rather than just next to them. I’m sure being at nursery since he was 13 months old has helped him develop this skill. Having said that he’s still got a way to go before he can really play with other children happily by himself.

Yesterday we went to visit my friend Claire and her twins Thomas and Edward who have featured in some of my previous My Wild Ones posts. Being three months younger than Toby all three boys have spent a lot of time together since they were tiny. In this picture I think Toby is about 8 months and the twins are 5 months.

Recently they have started asking to see one another which is very sweet. The other day when we were on the way to take Toby to nursery he was saying, ‘not nursery, see Thomas and Edward in the park’. I tried explaining that Thomas and Edward were at nursery too (they go to the same one as Toby but are in a different room at the moment), but he wasn’t having any of it.

Anyway, yesterday Toby was very excited to go to Thomas and Edward’s house and the twins had been waiting for Toby so he could help decorate some cakes they had made in the morning.

Obviously having been dealing with her boys since they were born Claire is very used to policing them and trying to get them to share and take turns, and they’ve had to do this since they were born too. Toby isn’t always so keen on the idea though and although we had a few moments of playing together we had quite a lot of crying too. How is it that in a room full of toys toddlers will always want to play with the same thing?

Actually on advice from Claire I now always get the boys exactly the same thing for Christmas and birthdays – if you know someone with twins I would definitely recommend it. You might think that getting them two similar but slightly different things is a good idea but invariably they will both want to play the same one – and having two identical toys can help solve the problem (although sometimes even that doesn’t mean they won’t both want the same one!).

Despite the tears and moaning Toby didn’t want to leave and had a lovely time playing with Thomas and Edward. I just realised last week though that even though he’s known them all his life, and they aren’t identical, Toby doesn’t actually know who is Thomas and who is Edward. I suppose we always just refer to them as ‘Thomas and Edward’ so it might be quite tricky to work out. Toby has solved the problem though by just calling them both Thomas!

I think I’m going to have a very sad little boy on my hands at the end of the month when his friends move away back to England. And I’ll be sad too – I’ll miss having a friend round the corner who I know I can always call on for a cuppa and a moan…I can see a lot of FaceTime happening in our future!