Are you sitting comfortably? Then let us begin!
Finn is now 28 months old. Here are his pictures side-by-side:
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| 27 months old |
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| 28 months old |
So! On to the January recap...
It was a rather quiet month. The most exciting thing that happened was that our boiler got fixed! The man who came to fix it was called Mereck. Finn decided that Mereck was the best friend he's ever had! He had a great big box full of tools. As soon as Finn saw them, he rushed off to get his own tools and spent the day in the kitchen 'helping.' Unfortunately I had to work, so I didn't get to see this intense friendship blossoming, but James assured me it was a brilliant thing to watch. Ever since then, when the door bell rings, James leaps to his feet and shouts "Mereck?!" He only met him once, but it was certainly a lasting impression :)
Other than that, we have had his friends round to play a couple times, which is always fun:
And we went to some museums. Including a brilliant trip to the Natural History Museum which we hadn't done before. We went there to see the dinosaurs which Finn did enjoy (though the lifesize roaring Tyrannosaurus Rex was a bit scary) but mostly he liked the animals. Which were really cool.
We also spent lots of fun time at home, hanging out. Finn really loves to draw. But more than that, he loves to tell us what to draw. He can be quite bossy at the best of times, but when drawing he often jumps straight in to "draw this, draw that" mode. I think it's because he gets frustrated that the things he's drawing don't look 'right.' One of the ways around that is that he likes to trace around things (or us to trace around things) so they look just right. Here's a great video of him doing it himself, and the wonderful drawing that results:
The other thing he really enjoys doing at home is cooking. He LOVES to help cook. As soon as we mention cooking, he pushes his chair over to the counter and asks for a bowl. Apparently that's what cooking is - stirring stuff in a bowl... If we're cooking something that doesn't need a bowl, then we give him one full of lentils and a spoon to stir them. But if we're cooking something that does need a bowl, then he helps out. He has quite an incredible amount of concentration for certain things, and cooking is one of them.
And, of course, there is always reading. Finn is a massively avid reader. He spends ages with books both here and at nursery. He loves being read to and he loves reading on his own. Sometimes we will notice that it's gone quiet and when we seek him out he's just hanging out quite happily in his reading corner.
It doesn't even have to be a book. Last month I mentioned that he loves looking though the train catalogue leaflet. A few weeks ago he found this - it's the thing listing all the movies on offer from our flight to Russia. It's actually quite good (hence why we kept it) but I was surprised at how much he was focused on it.
Speaking of reading. I mentioned the "toto" thing last time. Let me explain. Toto is a word that Finn uses that means something like "read." It started a while ago. We pointed out that Finn's Thomas train had the word "Thomas" written underneath. This was during a time that Finn couldn't say 'Thomas' and instead called him Toto. So he would often turn the train over, point to the word and say 'Toto.' Eventually he started to recognise letters as special shapes. And whenever he saw ANY letters, he would point and say 'Toto.' We would then say whatever it actually said. And then eventually he could say the word Thomas, but the word toto stuck around and he used it to ask us to read something. He points at words and says "toto." But he got it into his head that that is what you say when you read something. So even when he would 'read' things himself, or pretend to tell a story, it always starts with 'toto' as he runs his finger along the words (as you saw in last month's video of him doing the puzzle). And that's the story of 'Toto.' It's quite a lovely little bit of Finn that is nice to remember.
There are some other funny things that Finn does that it's nice to remember. A time capsule sort of - he's growing so fast, I don't want to forget these little things...
He likes to dip his food into things (mostly ketchup, everything goes in ketchup). And whenever he does he says 'dip' to himself. Every. single. time. It's hilarious. Some stuff isn't really a 'dip' though. Ketchup clearly is - but hummus is a good thing to have lots of. So when he eats hummus, he doesn't say 'dip'... he says 'scoop.' Every time! It's hilarious. And I like it.
He likes to choose things to take with him whenever he goes anywhere. He often spends a long time deciding. He does this quite a lot for nursery. But they aren't really meant to bring their own toys in (especially if they are at all unlikely to share them) so he has his own little bag that he takes with him. He can put his toys (or books or whatever his choice is that day) in the bag and it hangs on his hook until nursery is finished and he brings it back home again. Quite pointless, really, when you think about it - but it makes him happy! No one else is allowed to have his bag, either. Which proves a bit difficult as we take the bike to nursery... but he clings to his bag with both hands and has never ever dropped it (though we put a strap over the handlebar, just in case). It's very cute, and it makes me smile every morning.
And that's about all! But I wanted to stick a few more fun pictures in. First up we have Finn making his serious face. The first is because we were playing with the camera and Finn was concentrating on taking pictures and understanding how it all worked... and I don't know the story of the second! I was just looking through the pictures and found it... and it made me laugh :)
Speaking of Finn making me laugh, here are some of him in the new costumes he got for Christmas! Love it! He doesn't actually wear them too much. As with everything, he more just tries to make us wear them :) or the dragon which spent quite a long time as a toy instead of a costume - it had a pillow in it to fill it up and the 'crocodile' became one of his favourite friends. But when he does wear them he has a lot of fun pretending!
And I'll leave you with the final bit of 'dressing up.' James and I have a running joke about Finn without his shirt on looking like Vladimir Putin. (I'm sure Putin would love to hear that!) So getting ready for a bath has a lot of 'here comes Putin!' and 'it's Putin time!'
...It's a good thing James and I found each other - I'm not sure anyone else in the entire world would find us as hilarious as we find each other!So here is Finn, as Putin. Showing off his massive muscles - or at least that's what he was trying to do... I think the actual result is slightly less masculine muscley then Putin would wish :)
