April - 6 months old and 43 months old

On the 29th of April, Orry turned 6 months old! and one the 2nd of May, Finn turned 43 months old!
Here are their pictures side by side:

5 months old

6 months old

42 months old (3 years and 6 months)

43 months old (3 years 7 months)

April has seen some great things, but they have been rather over-shadowed on our parenting map by the advent of The Tantrum. We had been skirting around it for a month or two, and we thought that we had already met Finn's tantrums, but it transpired that he still had more to offer, and he had been showing it over the past few weeks.

But it might be best to lead into that with some positive things, such as Orry being cute!

Or, slightly more seriously, Orry's teeth:

It seems that we have babies who have teeth early. Finn had his teeth early, and Orry seems fit to continue the tradition. He had two teeth on the bottom by the start of the month, and two on his top followed swiftly after, with two more on the top just under the surface!

This has meant a lot of drooling, and so we have had to buy more bibs. But even this doesn't stop us having to wash clothes constantly as we are always running out of bibs and having to resort to using bibs-for-eating, which are rubbish at drool absorption and are all much too large. We can go through five-to-ten bibs on one trip somewhere - especially if we change them over when we should!

Orry's teeth were in at the start of the month when Easter came around, with Finn's first ever Easter Egg Hunt. He was very excited, and very into the whole hunting out eggs thing:

I rather mis-judged the amount of chocolate that Finn was getting out of it and so at the end when he settled down to devour everything we were amazed when he left half of his gingerbread Easter Bunny. Finn never leaves treats! But at least he knows his limits, even for things he enjoys.

As per last year, we were delighted to get a visit from Finn's Manx cousins, who swooped down on us for a cup of tea and a picnic on the mat lain out in our own living room (we learnt our lesson from getting too cold in the park last year!). Sadly we didn't take any pictures, but we did get this nice one of Thomase trying on Finn's dragon costume and glasses. Just out of shot is Finn in his butterfly wings leaping about:

Unfortunately, the cousins were unable to stay very long, but at least it gave us an excuse to go with them on the bus to the tube station and to go to Highbury Fields park where we rarely make the effort to get to. It has some great things in and so was perfect to take Finn's mind off the heartache of leaving his cousins:

Finn is a lot more daring with his rides and use of play areas these days. This includes having me cycle him as fast as I am literally able on the children's round-about-cycle-thingy:

It gets me incredibly dizzy, but Finn seems ok.

He also amazed me in how daring and good he was at climbing up the climbing frame. He is still not the most coordinated child in his class, so it is easy to forget that at things like climbing he is actually physically very good. It was great to watch him go - it's just a shame that there isn't a picture to show for it.

It was on the way back from the park that a tantrum broke out (a little "t" tantrum); he refused to leave, and so we had to drag pull him out and he dragged his feet until he dropped down to sit on the ground just outside the park. Cori and I chatted for 15 minutes or so with our backs as good as turned to Finn, and then had wandered over, apologised, and we got on with our day. - We had it easy back then!

Tantrums at this time were more clearly related to how Finn had slept, and so it was sometimes very obvious that one was brewing. For instance, one Dad's Club morning Finn had been cretchy since his waking up. So, by the time it was coming to our needing to leave, he was being deliberately contrary, going slow or getting distracted the more we pressed him to get ready. This got until the point when he was all ready on the doorstep and he stopped. "Go on, Finn," silence from Finn, "Go, on," I say giving him a little shove and he stands back against the wall with his arms folded. We try to reason with him and he started to cry. This drags on for five or so minutes before I go with just Orry.

It was strange to go without Finn, because it is very much Finn and my thing; so going with Orry alone was very much like restarting the Dad's Club journey with the new one. A strange experience. I suddenly found that I was unable to join in with my normal friends but, of course, had to go over to the baby area and hang out with the others sat around there. It ended up being really nice in the end. I met some nice people, but I was also in conversations focussed not on Finn, but on Orry. This was unusual for me, as I don't think that I've been out with just Orry before, and it was nice to be led to really appreciate him independently of Finn. I came away feeling much more proud and appreciative of Orry than when I'd gone in.

This is probably as good a time as any to show the video of Orry doing his face-feeling which he loves; just staring at Cori or I and reaching out to touch and hold onto our faces:

Despite the beard-pulling, it is very flattering and pleasant to have Orry adore you so and be so intensely interested in just your face. I had felt a lesser part of Orry's life, not being around him as much as Cori or Finn, but it's things like this that make it clear that he really does have a special attraction to me. It is very flattering, and very heart-warming.

But now to turn to the elephant in the April room; Finn's tantrums...

For some reason, just as I left for a weekend in the Isle of Man, leaving Cori with both of them for 48 hours, Finn unleashed top-drawer Tantrums. These looked like this:

And, in case you're unsure of what's gone on here, here is a close-up:

This is after Cori, with Orry strapped to her, suggested that they should leave the park after an hour or so of playing there. Finn threw off his shoes and laid down on the closest stoop of someone's house (luckily one being renovated and so not occupied). He learnt the lying down, because it means that anyone with Orry in the carrier is unable to get to him and it is the most effective place to form a protest.
We're told that what we're supposed to do in this situation is to stand our ground. Fine. But what if they're shouting at the top of their voice and not moving for over an hour!? (or more! one tantrum went on for 5 hours!!) Cori tried to wait it out, but then this happened:

So she claimed that Finn was going into Time Out in his push-chair (!), at which point she had to fight him, kicking, punching and screaming, into the pushchair. He soon falls asleep as she began to push him, but then that only made things worse when she woke him up ten or so minutes later when they got home. Lying-down screaming, kicking, trashing his room, refusing to stay put in punishment etc. - In short, uncontrollable. And especially so with Orry around.
This continued even when I returned, with slight things setting him off into completely uncontrollable and violent. Even when we could get him into Time Out, where he might fall asleep, we would go back in and find the room wrecked thanks to his throwing things around and pushing things over:

This developed into 24-hour tantrums, with him being put to bed screaming and then waking up at 5am and demanding that we bring him the yoghurt he didn't get the night before, whereupon he starts screaming and crying when I don't do it. This continues to the nursery door, where he's handed over still screaming, and when he's collected he's screaming again within 30 seconds when he's asked if he's tired at all. Etc.
It is hard to deal with someone who never stops behaving in a way that should put him in Time Out. It would effectively mean our leaving him in his room and not going in to see him all day. As attractive as this sounded at times, it wasn't a goer, so Cori started reading books and blogs and other places to find some HELP - and discovered a method of super affection as the way to bring tantrum-crazies back into the fold. It was hard though to try and show him affection when he was more interested in kicking you! But it did begin to work.
But the worst was when he started refusing to speak to us, including not telling us when he needed the toilet. And so we ended up having to strip him down and shower poo off him as he was still in the midst of a tantrum. - It's hard to care for someone who is actively trying to make your life a misery.
The tantrums went through a number of phases though, which showed promise that there could be an end in sight: firstly the all-out horrors or violence and aggression; then the silent treatment, where he would not at all speak to us, simply jabbing at things with his finger if he wanted them (and refusing to acknowledge his requests only endangered bring back the screaming violence); and then an reversion to "being a baby."
This last was by far the most irritating. It meant that he didn't ever speak any words but would whine continuously and cling to us constantly. To get an idea of what this was like, watch this video, constantly for twelve hours:

Things were really unmanageable. They were awful. But we powered through, knowing that he was ok around friends and fun things, although he would break into it again when we left, but that it was the getting out and about that was needed to allow him to get over it all.
We eventually had a day without a tantrum, and then another. And now, two weeks later, we seem to be effectively free of the tantrums, and back to the old Finn.
One after-effect is that he has regressed and so now wets the bed every night consistently, even when now wearing nappies. But he isn't meaning to and we hope that this will fade as well in a week of so (at least to give the washer a rest!). (updated to add - it has! No more wetting the bed!)
It is incredibly odd that this just broke over him for a fortnight and then faded away. At the end of it he had an enormous appetite, which usually shows a growth spurt, which might explain things, what with a toxic mix of hormones to kick that off. But we don't really know for sure.
It was horrible though. Let's hope that we never have to go through that again. Or Finn for that matter, who seemed genuinely upset throughout it all and who was often clearly terribly sad and lonely and full of anger. Sad.

...Sigh...

Here's a picture of Finn being lovely, just to remind ourselves that he's not really like he was in his Tantrums:

Note the Thomas The Tank Engine pants - they are a favourite!
And two more of me and Finn on a trip into space (obviously!)

April saw lots of outings, such as...
... to HMS Belfast, the great big War Ship sat on the Southbank:

Finn took his binoculars. They were very useful for seeing things, sort of.

This was the engine room. Finn liked the engine room. It had an engine in, and it also has lots of pipes and wheels and dials etc.
Finn loved that, but he did not love the art work they had commissioned to reinvent the manikins of the ship:

Finn was not alone in being too scared to go into new rooms in case there were any scary people in them; the staff had seen so many children thus scared that they were actively encouraging parents to write and complain about it. Understandable.

The London Transport Museum (aka: the bus museum) (AGAIN)

Another outing was to the park at Stratford created with the Olympics stuff. Apparently that was a lot of fun, though they were cheating by walking ages across to the "Music Activity Area" marked on the park map, only to discover that it hadn't been built yet. Finn had fun in the sand anyway:

We also managed to make good of our long-standing intention to get back to the Horniman Museum in South London. This is a great little museum with an odd assortment of things in it: aquarium, African culture, musical instruments, taxidermy etc. It also, importantly, has an enormous amount of grounds, with animals and flowers etc. It was a lovely place to visit, especially at the daffodil point of the year:

The middle picture there - of Finn communing with his canine brethren - demonstrates the unruly nature of Finn's hair. He has a double whorl, which means that the hair at the back sticks up. He also strangely has two types of hair: usual thick hair, and, on a different part of his head, some thinner waxy sort of hair which is incredibly difficult to chop. These two types of hair, and his fringe which refuses to grow (his visible fringe is actually just the hair from further back growing over the stubbies on the front), make his hair quite rubbish; it's inevitable that it gets bulky at the back without affecting the front at all. A quite awful look, if you ask me. Cori, mysteriously, doesn't seem to mind it too much, but she had recognised that it needed to get a cut. She had apparently been waiting for it to grow sufficiently long so as to be able to take him into a barbers, but when he came in as I was trimming my beard and asked to have a go I thought it was a good idea. This is the rather stylish output:

Cori, again mysteriously, was less than delighted. She claims that it's terrible and that she'll have to wait months before its grow out enough such that she won't have to feel ashamed in front of the barbers. Admittedly, there are a few clumps of extreme shortness (when Finn was leaping around), but they don't look that bad.

I've not said much of Orry in a while... His skin continues to be awful. Cori has been back repeatedly to the doctor's who each time recommend some other cream or ointment, which again doesn't work and Cori and Orry must traipse back for another stab at a solution. Not great. This is especially not great when Orry is really suffering for it, which he is when he has skin as terrible as this:

Obviously this skin is terribly irritating to him and he will scratch and scratch at it - on his head, his face, his belly, his legs etc. - keeping himself miserable through the day and night (and Cori too!). It even gets so back that his nipples has at times become like scabs through the crusty skin, the itching and the weeping sores. This is the stains on one of his shirts after we had taken it off him:

But this situation was resolved, in a less-than-ideal way, once he began to eat solids:

Ok, there isn't actually any food in front of (or on or in) Orry in these pictures - it transpires that we don't really have any pictures from April of him eating... But we do have a video (including a very tired Finn!):

It was a gradual affair, one carrot stick at a time, so we never really sat down and Starting Orry On Solids, which means that we seemingly missed the photographing of his first food. Sorry. But meal times are much more of a juggling act these days, with Orry and Finn to deal with, so gone is the possibility of the leisure of taking pictures like we did for Finn's first food. Sorry, again, and for all the many times this will be the excuse for missing your firsts, Orry!
Babies are supposed to start eating solids at six months, but a carrot or cucumber stick was a good way to keep him entertained at the dinner table and not launching around in tiredness and boredom and frustration. Then he very quickly wouldn't leave us alone and would get very upset if we were eating and he was not. This was great until the point when we allowed him to gnaw on a lump of cheese...
Orry lips started swelling up, as did his tongue. He wasn't too distressed but we were worried that if his throat started to swell up as well there could be very serious problems. We had some antihistamines on hand for when his skin gets too out-of-control itchy so Cori tried to get him to take some (though swallowing was a bit tricky with a swollen tongue) and we phoned 999 [Translation for American readers: "911"] and a paramedic on a motorbike arrived and looked him over. Although not distressed and with the swelling reduced, we were still advised to go to the hospital, which is where Cori and Orry headed off to once the ambulance arrived.
It was all very scary for a few minutes, but everything was ok. It transpires that Orry has a dairy allergy. This would even be the case when taken on through Cori. We were told that symptoms included dry and irritable skin, bad eczema, red cheeks, runny poos etc., as well as the swelling lips. This was a perfect fit for Orry's conditions over the past five months! The doctor was furious at Cori's story of the other doctors that Orry had been seeing and their failing to diagnose to such an extent that Orry had gone through months of misery and ended up in A&E (and we were rather annoyed too!).
But at least we have something to actively do to help Orry: Cori has given up all dairy. Soya milk it is from now on.
It is shocking how much milk appears in - even things like processed meat, cereals, bread etc. But at least Cori is able to eat Oreos, which is a little disturbing since they are supposed to be milk-chocolate biscuits with a cream filling!
She hasn't been on the no-diary diet for very long, but Orry is already looking a lot better.
But, to return to the Paramedic and the Ambulance etc., Finn was very excited about all of this, of course. He was able to let Orry go first, just about, but he was a very close second in telling the Paramedic that he too was ill and probably needed medicine of some description. The man very kindly listened to Finn's heart also, although that was made quite tricky by Finn not stopping speaking throughout. But, once he had shown the man all of his cars, and especially his motorbikes, Finn managed to recover through a bowl of raisin-medicine using the little dosage spoon. Which was just as well, as then we had to go out on the balcony to watch the ambulance leave with his brother inside!

Speaking of being out on the balcony, I had a very nice return from work a few weeks back, when I came into the estate and could hear the chatter of a toddler vaguely from one of the buildings. But when I looked up I saw Cori, Orry and Finn on the balcony high above. Finn then shouted down "Ah! Deedah! What you doin' down there?" And then proceeded to chatter at me across the distance of the four floors up at which we live. Odd, and very lovely. When I went in I celebrated it by joining them to survey our London on one of the nicest and warmest days that we had had at that point:

You can also see the sheets hanging out to dry - which Finn likes to look at from below and shout "oh no! Ghosties on our balcony!" :)

The nice weather has meant that we've been able to start going to parks seriously again... This is getting rather long, so I won't try and say anything about the pictures - just, here they are:

Yes, Finn has become someone who likes swings. After three years of hating them, it's amazing to have him shouting to go Higher! Higher!

Following on from that rather nice picture of Orry with Finn in the background, here is a nice video of just the same scenario. This time it is Orry leaping into that music thing. This comes about 60 seconds after first having his hands on the tambourine, having been entertained in watching me play it with Finn for a few minutes. Orry had been watching avidly and as soon as I gave the thuing to him he immediately began swinging his arm as if to hit it. I was very impressed, and very proud of the little music-man:

Another thing to be mentioned is how Finn is gerting to see quite a lot of friends this month, mostly thanks to Cori's being able to hang out with other mothers who are in a similar situation with their own children. One of these includes Sophie (whose brother, Michael, is not much older than Orry and who we saw last time), who Finn has taken to claiming to be his sister. She is a year or two older than Finn but she loves playing with younger children, and Finn adores her and loves to be around her. So they have a great time, as you can see:

The second picture here is almost certainly them going on holiday.

Another great friend these days is someone who Finn shares his class in nursery with; Gabor. Since they live relatively close to nursery, Finn has been able to go to the park often with them and to go round for a cup of tea often. But one of their outings was to "the dinosaur park." This is Crystal Palace Park in South London, which was created in Victorian times when dinosaurs were a new discovery and all the rage. So there are a heap of dreadful interpretations of what they would have looked like there as statues in the park. Great fun to go on "an adventure" to see them through binoculars (and also to ruckus about generally in a park with a friend):

And we can't forget Orry's good friend Brin! (who is over a year in this picture, and clearly smaller than giant Orry. Also worth noting in this picture is that Finn is showing attention and affection! This doesn't happen very often, though is starting to happen more and more...)

One thing I've forgotten was Finn's Emergency Vehicles, or "Emergencies", which he keeps in a bag separately from the rest of his toy vehicles. This was initially because they were both received for Christmas and the bag need something in it, but it is also nice to have something special to get out. Over the past month it has also developed into being very useful as a punishment for bad behaviour, as he is terribly reminded of his behaviour and culpability for it throughout the whole next day when he is not allowed to play with the Emergencies. But it is especially good the next day when he is truly delighted to be allowed to play with them - it is a joy to behold. It also means that he is liable to play by himself for 10 or so minutes, which is phenomenal for Finn/us. When we find him like this, quietly playing with his Emergencies in the "tent" we create every now and again with a sheet and a couple of expandable poles in the corridor, we do not interrupt. Instead we quietly tip-toe past and go and find somewhere to sit down very quietly and relax for a minute!

One of the games that I was very proud of playing with Finn in April was creating train stencils and making a large drawing with them. The whole thing took nearly 20 minutes, which is an incredibly long time for a creative activity with Finn, and he was incredibly proud of it at the end:

You will note that he had me label everything, from the identity of everyone riding on the train through to the storm up above and the ogre lurking below the bridge!

Whilst we're on Finn, here are two silly pictures: one of him being very proud of the horrifically messy room after a hard day's playing; the other of the day when he discovered the swords that Cori had brought home from her work and so we all had to be pirates, which apparently meant cutting up each others' peas:

Orry's not to be outdone though - here he is sporting a rather silly hat:

A new thing for Orry in April was mastering rolling over. Hurray! Or, rather, rolling over from his back to his front, one way only. He can't roll onto his back though, and he doesn't especially like being on his front, so it's not actually that great! It is impressive though:

When he first started it, it created real problems in the night, when he spent most of the time just flipping. Whenever we left him asleep, we returned to find him in a position completely different to how we left him, such as this:

Finn has taken to beginning his evening's sleep in our bed. This came about when I was at work and Cori had to get them both to sleep; the easiest way was to have them both fall asleep there in the bed, and then to shift Finn later on. This is now one of my tasks - the shifting of Finn from our bed to his own.
It is a rather nice job, and reminds me of being carried by my own parents when I was a child. It feels like the full circles and it is very lovely to carry him like that... though he is very heavy.

Orry continues to be an awful sleeper. It means that I will try and take them both in the morning for at least an hour. This is often quite daunting, especially when faced with this at 6am:

Things are getting easier though. Orry is getting older (and bigger!). Time goes quickly.

Here are two final pictures of Orry, in probably one of the final times he will be in that seat, which he's now to corpulent to get into:

A smiling picture of Orry is probably a good place to leave it on.
Until next month!