Toby has been practicing his standing the last couple of weeks so much that he is now much steadier and wobbles less while standing. He reminds me of a little meerkat in the way he pops up and looks around, grinning because he is so pleased with himself.

Toby is loving his food as much as his brother did at the same age. He just loves it all, and gets really cranky if someone is eating something that he isn’t. He sits really well in the high-chair, and is dropping less food as time goes on. I guess more is going into his mouth.

Toby is now pointing at things and making a noise that sounds like he is saying “this”, though it sounds more like “dissss” with a bit of a lisp. He also sounds like he says ‘Nathan’ in the same way that Nathan would say his name when he was little…sort of a ‘neh nen’ sound.

Andrew has been spending more time with Toby which is great. Andrew had been saying that Toby didn’t like being with him, but now he is happy to be held and carried by Daddy. I guess that he is at the age when separation anxiety from Mummy is high.

Toby is just getting stronger and stronger at standing. He quite happily hangs onto his support with just one hand, and occasionally let’s go and balances for a second before either holding on again or sitting down. He is trying to take steps, and would love to climb. He tries to get his right leg up onto whatever he is holding onto, but so far all his supports are too high (couch, big plant pots, chairs, etc) to climb onto. He does love hanging onto the washing basket and pulling all the wet washing out of it, one piece at a time.   Toby also balances in a squat position, and tries to stand up. He always overbalances, because he does this without hanging onto anything.

Toby is very talkative and chats away happily to toys and us. Nathan desperately wants Toby to be able to play with him, and spends a lot of time tickling Toby to make him giggle. Unfortunately, though, Nathan isn’t always gentle with his play, and Toby often complains loudly/cries when Nathan sits on him, picks him up, drags him, rolls him over, or simply pushes him over while he is sitting. When sitting, Toby topples over like a skittle when pushed. Toby does quite a lot of biting these days, and now Nathan has decided that biting is fun and bites Toby on his fingers, head, back and front.

Toby seems to be starting to get interested in books. He still likes chewing on them, but he is starting to turn the pages on the board books. We haven’t spent anywhere near the amount of time reading to Toby as we did to Nathan, but hopefully he will still learn to love reading.

Finally, Toby loves getting outside, and the first thing he heads for is a couple of big tubs that have herbs plants in them. He picks the plants (not helped by Nathan pulling entire plants up by the roots) so that there aren’t many left alive, and so the potting mix is left to pay with and eat. Toby takes handfuls of the potting mix and either drops it onto the ground, or transfers it to a pot next to the tub. That is, of course, when he isn’t eating it. Nathan has been digging holes in the potting mix, and helping Toby to relocate it. We sooooooo need a sand pit!

Toby has become quite a proficient crawler, and perhaps he aspires to be a mountain climber.  He crawls over big bulky things like the vacuum cleaner and wicker baskets.  Sometimes he get’s stuck and makes it well known that he needs help, but mostly he manages just fine.  He loves standing and will use anything above ground level to hang onto during his standing practice.  The vacuum cleaner is useful for this too, though the couch is even more interesting, with a laptop computer to be often found there.  What is it with kids being attracted to technology?

Meal times are very messy.  Toby drops so much food on the floor…it drops into his lap and then goes through the leg holes and onto the floor.  I try to use towels to pad the holes but the food still manages to find a way down.  The unfortunate side effect of eating more and more food is that Toby has been having problems with his poo being too hard.  Nathan suffered from hard poos for along time after starting on solids, and it does look like Toby is having similar issues, though perhaps not quite to the same extent.

Toby now has three teeth, with the fourth looking like it is not far away.

EC is still going well, though at best we are part time with it.  Almost all poos go into the toilet (poos in the nappy are very very small, as if he starts and doesn’t like doing them in his nappy and stops until I notice and put him on the potty), and we do catch quite a few wees, though it’s always easier to catch the ones after naps than others throughout the day.  We aren’t doing much at night, and the dry nappies at night are now a thing long past.

Toby can sit on his own now.  It’s a funny, lopsided sort of position but he has both feet in front of him. His crawling is just getting stronger and faster every day, and he seemed very pleased with himself a few days ago when he reached the kitchen for the first time. He still finds every scrap of paper on the floor, but he also gravitates to shoes that are great for chewing on, or so he thinks. It’s funny how Toby is doing all the same things that Nathan did at around the same age, but I forget about them until Toby starts doing it. I’d forgotten that Nathan also had a shoe fetish.  🙂