But first, here are the monthly comparisons (this time with friends, in case you were wondering how Hedgehog, White Mouse and Black Mouse were getting along):
Finn's life is full of semi-rituals; things that have to happen, or have to happen in particular ways. Woe betide you should you sit in the wrong chair, or if you don't line up his cars in the right order, or don't brush your teeth in the right way etc. He eventually forgets some of these rituals, which is great, but he also adopts new ones without any prior warning, which is annoying. There are now a small cluster of them around his arrival at nursery:
- Climb along the fence from the bike racks to the front door (which is impressively coordinated for Finn, but which is also painfully slow!)
- Pressing the doorbell button himself (even if that means letting someone else go in ahead of us and waiting patiently for the door to close behind them).
- Taking off his high-vis, coat and helmet etc. as he sprawls across the sofa in the nursery reception (this is generally done by a groaning Dee-Dah).
- Crawling backwards along the L-shaped sofa, back towards the door, before sliding off and announcing "Look! I did it!" (generally done with intermittent "Look, Dee-Dah, Look!" and the responses of "Yes, you're crawling, I see. Come on, come on!")
- Finn positioning my feet very precisely over the threshold to the corridor from the reception, before warning me to "Wait your turn," and then running to the door to the nursery itself, whereupon he shouts that its then my turn, at which point I go and help him open the door.
- Having been smiling and laughing in the lead-up, once one yard inside the door, Finn will turn and grip my legs and sulkily not speak to anyone. I will then have to lope him across to his peg as he continues to grip my leg.
- Slowly being coaxed away from my leg to sit at the table where he will then happily slurp a carton of milk and effectively ignore me as I say goodbye ad leave.
It's a very laborious set of ritual steps to go through each morning, but at least we know it's coming. As evidence, here's a picture of the first step:
A new addition to the "ritual" rota of the weekly post-nursery entertainments is going to the newly-christened "Train Park" (to distinguish it from what is now referred to as the "Train Park With Three Castles", so named (by Finn, obviously) because of the climbing frame there which has three pointy roofs on it). Following the Thursday trip to a Stay-and-Play session at the children's centre round the corner from the nursery, Finn is now used to going to the Train Park, where he knows his friends from nursery will join him.
We've not really been in the habit of spending time with friends from nursery, especially since most of his friends finish at 5pm, not 3.30pm like Finn, and also since we've moved further away to where we now live. But Cori stumbled across Finn's good friend, Conrad, making his accompanied way to the Train Park on Thursday once and they went along to join a mob of them who have all informally come to all go to the one park of an afternoon. Finn loves it and is giddy with excitement at getting to hang out with up to six of his great friends from nursery. It is also great for us to get to see him hang out with these friends of his who we know he plays with all day, but which we normally only see for a minute or two at the start or end of the day. It's also great to actually get to sit down and chat to the other parents, and Finn love its too, especially on the odd occasion when the other parents included Finn in the treats they get for their own children, such as ice creams!
This is actually a cheat here, since this picture is, clearly, from the park at Highbury Fields (as I'm sure everyone spotted!), but you get the idea - one rather disgusting-looking chocolate-obsessed Finn is pretty much the same as another.
As this picture, with its ice cream and sun-hat, should show, the weather has come good over the last month. This means that we've really started to go to a lot of parks again. There are now about about six parks nearby which are visited often enough to have been christened by Finn according to some feature or decoration. These grand titles include: Train Park, Train Park with Three Castles, Dragon Park, Station-Train-Boat Park, Taxi Park, and Car Park. (We particularly like the last of these - mainly because it sounds like he's asking to go to a car park, which is kind of funny!)
All of these parks are pretty much the local, which we go to with Finn in order to get out of the house, but when we're going to make a trip of it, we will go further afield, such as we did recently to the ever-popular Coram's Fields with the ever-brilliant Lily (who unfortunately is sometimes known as "Other Lily" when we're speaking to Finn!):
No idea what the praying was about in that first picture - neither of them are at all pious, even if they can at least photograph as being slightly angelic at times...
But, to return to the order/ritual thing again, this trait of Finn's does mean that he can have fits of frustration at times. This has recently meant that it's been very hard to have Finn's friends around, as they will, quite understandably, touch stuff, which will send Finn into a spiral of upset tears. This is worst at home, where he knows things to be generally ordered (in his own odd way), but at least it's not (quite) so bad when we're off out at other people's places, such as at Lily's...
... What? ...Oh, Finn's outfit? - Yeah, a bit weird that. We were round the corner in the park near Lily's and Finn got too soaked from the damp grass etc. So we borrowed some of Lily's clothes when we went back to her's for lunch. We had a good laugh at him in it (without him taking the slightest notice, of course), but it was also very disturbing to see him as a girl; it messed with our vision of him a little. We might have to get used to it though, as he refused to take off his Lily Shirt and Lily Trousers when we came home...
Finn's orderly oddness has also combined with his silliness in a new twist of Finnism: he now insists that he is not "Finn," but "Baby Turtle." And, by 'insists' here, we mean that he really insists; so much so that it is very rare that he will allow us to get away with calling him Finn at all these days. Whether we are telling him to eat his cereals, or to get his bag, or to choose some books, or saying goodnight, or pretty much anything, he will stop us if we refer to him as Finn, saying "No Finn, my just Baby Turtle," to which the response is something like, "Oh, yes. Sorry, Baby Turtle. Can you come and get your shoes on, please, Baby Turtle?" etc.
Like with so many of Finn's whims, we humoured him on it, thinking that it was harmless, that it didn't matter and that it would pass away in a day or two. But it has now been a month and it is growing more pressing for him. We are now "Dee-Dah Turtle" and "Mama Turtle", and our friends who visit are immediately Christened "Anna Turtle" or "Thomas Turtle", and his friends have become "Conrad Turtle" and "Lily Turtle." It has even made its way into the nursery, as we find the nursery staff asking us what this whole Baby Turtle thing is about. To which we say "No idea!"
We do indeed have no idea where he got the Baby Turtle thing from. The only Baby Turtles we know are from Finding Nemo (better known in our house as "Finn Fish Called Nemo"), but it's not that, as Finn doesn't care at all about the turtles there. He also hasn't really cared to see turtles in the few trips to aquariums that we've taken. He also has never asked to see or watch baby turtles on the computer at all. And it's not come from nursery, as they're as baffled as we are about it. It's seemingly just come from nowhere. And we could be in for the long haul, if the lesson of Finn's Key Worker at nursery is anything to go by: her daughter decided out of the blue that she too was a turtle, and from about the age of four insisted that she was a turtle and that everyone had to refer to her as Turtle. It lasted for years, apparently!
I'm afraid that there are no pictures of Finn being Baby Turtle, since every picture here is of Finn, who is Baby Turtle - so there is nothing that Baby Turtle can do to be like a Baby Turtle, because he is one... but we can at least show you a picture of Baby Turtle being something else, such as a pirate!
He also took on the persona of Super Duck for a Dad's Club Saturday morning at the start of the month. To give you the background, Super Duck is a (rather annoying) character from a book, which looks like this:
We picked up a Get-Kids-Reading initiative thing free book from the nursery, which came with a cut-out mask to recreate the Duck's mask. Finn's not one for dressing up normally, but having read the book when we got up one Saturday morning, I suggested that Finn wear the mask, which he did, and then didn't take it off, even when we left for Dad's Club. He insisted on keeping the mask on throughout the entirely of the two-hours of Dad's Club - on the slides, in the train, playing with cars, reading books, eating our brunch etc. Very odd. The other dads were humoured by it, but then just baffled by Finn when he reacted to their questions by very seriously and earnestly informing them that he was not a Superhero but was in fact Baby Turtle...!
As the Super Duck story suggests, Finn still loves books. Lots of books. Generally a "Tower" or books, or else "All of Them" - both of which is quite a lot to ask of tired parents at bedtime! Sometimes it's ok though, like when we go to the library specifically to read books, when it can be quite lovely to have a book-loving child:
June has also seen the development of Finn's independence, meaning, the first signs of rebellion. We were shocked to hear him petulantly shout "No" at us not long ago. It completely took us by surprise and we all just stopped. It was quiet of a sudden and Finn looked very sheepish and exposed. We asked him why he said it and he immediately capitulated and said sorry. It worked out ok that time, but it was a scary thing to see, and probably a warning sign of what's to be tested more over the coming months. Indeed, he has actually pushed "No," a few times since then, but never very seriously or convincingly. We're quite good at explaining things to him, including why we're doing things or why he can or cannot do certain things, so a flat "no" is a rare thing in this household, so clearly even for Finn it's a rather uncomfortable thing to say in that way. Let's hope that it can stay that way...
Finn also enjoyed the World Cup when it was on, catching a lot of the 5pm games for the Group Stages. This would often mean his playing on the floor beside us near the computer, eating cheese sandwiches or some other such easy meal on the picnic rug on the floor in the lounge, and occasionally even bathing with the football on the computer nearby (which Finn found very funny!). He was even more excited about it knowing that he'd get to watch "One train and one bus" at the end of it - a YouTube video of the Wheels on the Bus song, and an irritating train video he saw and demanded one time! But we still felt very proud of him for his football-watching ways, it's just a shame that he was only able to support one of his teams into the knock-out stages... But they probably only made it that far because of having such great supporters as Finn!
But, if you were worried that Finn was looking too heavily over the Atlantic for his roots, fret not! We're counteracting the American (god forbid!) with a good dose of the Manx, such as through some rather impressive singing in Manx Gaelic, as you do:
(And, if there you happen to speak Gaelg, apologies for killing the pronunciation there!)
Having already mentioned a lot of things, it's probably worth mentioning two other traits of Finn's that he's picked up recently: using 'probably' inappropriately often, and listing things on his fingers. The first means that he will tells us that we're probably on a bike (when we're riding to nursery), or that we're probably going to eat dinner now (as we're putting the plates on the table), or that it's probably raining (as we're looking out at the rain lashing against the window) etc. The second means that he will be very easy to set onto a task by simply listing the things that we need to accomplish on our fingers. So we get him out of the house by telling him that we're going to, first, put on our High-Vis, second, put on our helmet, third get on the bike, fourth, cycle to nursery, fifth (because the list, according to Finn, always has to have five items), get to nursery and go into nursery and say goodbye to Dee-Dah. This works really well, as long as you're willing to wait for one or so additional minutes as Finn repeats back to you laboriously and painfully everything that you've just said, counting them up very questionably on his fingers. Here is a picture of Finn mid-list (although he has one finger extended, don't think that that necessarily means that he's on the first item (that's part of the excitement of a Finn list!)):
(Note that Finn is here still in his Lily Trousers and Lily Shirt, even when back home - he really did not want to take them off!)
So, at last and very-almost-finally, there is the Big Story of June, which revolved around Finn's tongue, or, rather, through it almost... Cori was phoned by nursery to be told that he had bit his tongue but that he was now calm and seemingly ok. Cori's reaction (in her head, at least) was "Why are you phoning me up to tell me this?!" But then when she went to collect him she was first spotted by the other kids who leapt around her shouting over each other to tell her that Finn had bit his tongue and that it had been bleeding. They were very excited to be telling her about it. Then Finn toddled out, in his usual happy way, but then he stuck out his tongue so that Cori, and everyone else, could see it (it was obviously something that he was now very proud of and which he was very used to doing since that morning). What was revealed was something like this... (look away all you squeamish!)...
This is, as you will immediately see, more than just a bit tongue! We shudder to think how much it was bleeding when he did it - it must have been terrifying to see. No wonder the other kids were so excited about it all!
Apparently he did it by falling near to the table and hitting his chin on the edge of it, and seemingly very nearly biting through his tongue completely. But, we discover, the tongue is not something which you can stitch up; mainly because it heals itself so very quickly. This picture is from our brushing his teeth, at the end of the day, at which point it was visibly a lot less gaping than it had been earlier on. By the next day it was merely a large cut, and by the day after it was almost healed over.
But it didn't really effect him (by the time we saw him, at least!). He was quite happy to eat his dinner and drink happily enough, even if a little gingerly. There is something of a line there on his tongue still, but we don't know if that will be a permanent scar or not. It would be a good story to tell if he did get to have a scar - especially since he doesn't seem to have been at all adversely affected by it!
But in case you are feeling sorry for the lost purity of Finn's tongue, here is a rather nice picture that we took before the Great Tongue Disaster (which I feel slightly ashamed of having ravaged rather in Pixlr...)
The only thing left to show now is a few pictures from a family photo session that we did, in a weak attempt at trying to recreate something of the regular and extensive photo sessions that we did when we were expecting Finn. Things were, understandably, a little more silly this time round...
