Archive for the ‘Toby’s first year’ Category

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Toby is 1!


21 Dec

Posted in Development, Toby's first year | 2 Comments »

I wasn’t always sure he would make it to his first birthday due to his big brother’s inability to be gentle at times. Toby was sat on, held in an upright position by the head and then dropped, squeezed around the neck (Nathan’s version of cuddles) and I’m sure the list goes on, I just can’t think of all the “Nathan STOP” heart-in-the-throat-type moments of Toby’s early days.

Now Toby walks, though he still crawls a lot and his walking is a bit on the wobbly side, is a bit of an explorer and is quite happy to roam quite a distance from Mummy or Daddy. He totally adores his brother and tries to follow him everywhere and giggles his head off at Nathan’s antics. He hates the shower but loves the bath and simply playing in any water he can find. He loves eating melon of any kind and gets very excited when he sees any, but he’ll have a go at any food.

Toby had six teeth for a very long time. I kept checking his mouth, wondering when the next one was going to come through. It seems that many of them decided to come through almost at once. About 3 weeks ago I noticed that he was getting two more teeth to make it four on both top and bottom, then a week later and just as the 8th tooth was coming through I saw that one of his molars was starting to come through the gum, then before it was through three more molars made an appearance, and they aren’t all through yet and it looks like his eye teeth are about to crack through the gum. There is certainly a lot of activity happening in Toby’s gums at the moment.

EC is certainly going a bit more slowly this time round, mostly due to not having enough time to focus on it as much as we did when Nathan was a baby, but it is still going well. The majority of poos end up in the potty, we catch several wees every day, and we are getting lots of dry nappies at night.

And finally, just so I can remember if I ever want to for some reason, Toby generally wakes around 6 am, has a nap around 9 and another one at around 2 pm, and goes to bed at 7:30ish pm. The times are all a bit rubbery depending on how well he sleeps both at night and during the day, but there is definitely a bit of a routine thing happening.

Happy birthday little man, your Daddy and I love you.

Snow


20 Dec

Posted in Nathan's third year, NSW, Toby's first year, Travel, Weather | No Comments »

All night we could hear rain on the tent, and this morning the peaks of the hills around the camp site were covered in snow. We made our second trip to Charlottes Pass in two days, but today we found ankle-deep snow, mid-calf deep in places, and more snow falling. Nathan had a ball. It was hard to get him back into the car and out of the cold. For Toby it was very serious business which became unbearable for him when the wind blew, even though he was warm in many layers of clothes and snuggled in the mei tei on Mummy’s front.

Camping holiday: rain, hail and sleet


19 Dec

Posted in Nathan's third year, NSW, Toby's first year, Travel, Weather | No Comments »

Before deciding to head to the mountains for our camping holiday, we did check the 28 day forecast and there was a low possibility of rain for yesterday and a medium possibility for today. Unfortunately the reality of the current weather and short term forecasts is that it is looking more like we may have 3 dry days out of the 8 we are in the mountains. It’s just a good thing that Andrew and I quite enjoy camping in the rain…at least now that we have the ‘taj mahal’ of tents….but two small kids are challenging in inclement weather. Still, it’s all good as long as we can keep Nathan from (literally) bouncing off the walls of the tent, waking Toby when asleep, keep him from playing with the torches so much that the batteries go flat, stop him from squirting sunscreen or toothpaste or lip balm all over himself and everything else in the tent (we just found that the tent has high pockets so that will help keep small things out of reach) amongst other things, then all is good. The only problem we have with Toby is that he doesn’t have a rain coat, so with the wind and cold it is hard to keep him warm outside the tent.

Eh, the weather could be better but it is still nice here.

Camping

The orange shovel


17 Dec

Posted in Toby's first year | No Comments »

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About a month ago, when we were setting up our veggie garden, we had one and a half cubic metres of soil delivered and dumped in the drive-way just outside our back gate. The two boys thought it was fantastic…it made a magnificent pile to play in and on. Nathan started helping me to move the soil by filling up buckets and dumping them into the veggie garden, but he soon lost interest and climbed to the top of the pile where he played for ages. Most of the time he moved soil into his bucket using his black gardening trowel. Toby also loved playing in the dirt and climbed up to the top. He used Nathan’s trowel to help fill up the bucket, but Nathan wanted it back and wouldn’t let Toby play with it any more.

I was busy moving soil but I did notice that Toby climbed down the dirt pile and took off crawling towards the house. A few minutes later I wondered what he was up to, so I went to the back door and found Toby on his way back out of the house. In his hand he held the orange shovel from the toys the boys have for playing in the sand.

I was amazed. I just didn’t know that an 11-month-old baby was able to determine that he wanted a trowel, realize that he knew where to find one and then set off on his own to get it. We all now refer to it as ‘Toby’s orange shovel’.

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Pegs


07 Dec

Posted in Funny things, Nathan's third year, Toby's first year | No Comments »

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Pegs are such a great toy. They get sucked on, counted, given to Mummy when she hangs up washing, collected off the ground when Mummy drops them, and the list probably goes on. I seem to constantly find pegs all around the house, inside and outside.

I was a bit confused, a couple of days ago, when Nathan ran up to me and excitedly told me that “we ‘ave begs on our ed”

Then he turned around and showed me his head and there was a peg attached to his hair, looking for all the world like a hair clip. Where does my boy get ideas like this? Has he seen someone with hair clips in when we’ve been out? Or does it just seem like a logical thing to do with pegs? Anyway, I laughed and went outside in search of Toby, and sure enough the 2-year-old hair stylist had been at him as well.

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Christmas Tree


04 Dec

Posted in Nathan's third year, Toby's first year | No Comments »

Ooohh, what is this??

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Where does this go?

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Here are some more for the tree!

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Finally, the star

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and turn the lights on.

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The Christmas tree went up in 10 minutes!

Walking


01 Dec

Posted in Development, Toby's first year | No Comments »

Toby has been taking small, single steps for over a month now. He would take a small step with one foot and then sort of shuffle the other foot forward as well. That was about all he could manage for what seemed like a long time. Then he went for a week without us observing any steps at all. Then, suddenly, he started taking multiple steps. Each one is very careful and small, but he is now doing more and more walking every day. The following video was taken 4 days ago because he was taking multiple steps, and he has improved his walking a lot since then.

Well, the video isn’t working right now so I’ll have to try to fix it later. It can also be found here.

Sleep


17 Nov

Posted in Toby's first year | No Comments »

Getting my little boy to sleep has been almost as difficult as it was with my bigger boy when he was a baby. I spent a lot of time and effort on trying to get Nathan to sleep when he was a baby, and trying to get him to go to sleep without my assistance, or with only a little assistance. I couldn’t come at ‘sleep training’ though, so we just persevered with methods that seemed to work best at the time even though all methods were very hands-on.

I haven’t worried about Toby’s sleep anywhere near as much as I did with Nathan. This is partly because I wasn’t planning on going back to work when he was a baby, so I wasn’t constantly worried about how someone else (without milky boobs) would get him to sleep, and partly because Nathan needed to get out and run every day and we just got into the habit of Toby spending most of his day sleeps on my back.

So, it was with great surprise that Toby went to sleep on the floor about a week ago, with me just patting his back. Toby loves to put his head on a pillow and lie down for a few seconds, just like Nathan used to. But unlike Nathan, Toby seems to be able to relax enough without a breastfeed to go to sleep. He did the same thing last night…put his head on a cushion on the floor, so I lay down beside him and rubbed his back, and again he went to sleep!

I’m just hoping this ability to relax continues and sleep is something he learns to achieve relatively easily.

Collingwood Childrens Farm


19 Oct

Posted in Melbourne, Nathan's third year, Toby's first year | No Comments »

Today I took Nathan and Toby to the Collingwood Children’s Farm. On the drive there I was talking to Nathan about what we might see there.

Mummy: we will probably see cows, and sheep…
Nathan: and dinosaurs!
Mummy: we probably won’t see dinosaurs
Nathan: but if we look hard we will see them! Hooray!

We met Janis and Annabella there and spent a relaxing couple of hours wandering around while the kids enjoyed the animals.

It was a coincidence that we happened to plan this outing on a day when entry was free. There were a lot of people and kids there, and parking was difficult to come by.

There were sheep and goats in small paddocks that were tame and could be touched. Nathan, along with many other children, was really interested in the kids (baby goats, that is) drinking milk from their mothers. Nathan loved the chickens..he always seems to be fascinated by chickens. We also saw horses and ponies, a couple of cows, a pig and held a guinea pig.

We had a lovely day, the weather was perfect, and it was hard to believe that we were essentially in the city with all the green open space around. I don’t think, though, that it is a place that we will frequent, but we will go back again….hopefully when it isn’t quite as busy as it was today.

Tonight I overheard Nathan telling Andrew about his day. I laughed when I heard “but we didn’t see any dinosaurs”.

Phoenix Park


07 Oct

Posted in At the park, Melbourne, Nathan's third year, Toby's first year | No Comments »

Nathan and I are on a mission to find some great parks/playgrounds in our part of Melbourne.  Several people told  us that Phoenix Park was great, so we decided to check it out today.

I have to admit that it was pretty amazing.  It was like a wooden fortress, with swings, a flying fox-type-slidey thing, plastic slides and climbing spots scattered around the wooden structure that had steps and bridges galore.  As far as the practical things went, there was a fence around the entire place except at the entrance, so I guess it isn’t too hard to make sure that your child stays in the playground though it wasn’t easy to always keep an eye on what the more active child is up to.  Toilets were close and there was a cafe somewhere there as well (I saw the signs but didn’t track it down).

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating of it.  So what did Nathan and Toby think of it?  I think they both had a ball.  Nathan ran for nearly the entire time we were there…running up and down steps, across bridges, exploring what was around the next corner.  Toby seemed to have a lot of fun crawling from where I’d place him on a platform, up a few steps, and then coming down the slide.  He must have liked it because he went straight for the slide every time I put him up on the platform.

All in all, I’d say it is a pretty good playground.  It is very different to any that we have come across before, but I’d hate to be there when it was busy as I think it would be very easy to lose your child.

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