October (besides the birthdays!)

Having written a blog post for Finn's birthday at the start of October, and one for Orry at the end, I realise that there are a few things in the middle which need to get recorded somewhere, such as in this post...
Such as the monthly side-by-sides:

11 months old

12 months old (1 year!!)

48 months old (4 years old)

49 months old (4 years and 1 month old)

One of the things that we were very excited about in October was Orry getting large enough to fit into "The Mega Coat" - so named because of its colour:

Although he does look rather good on his own, together he and Finn are unstoppable (even with a rather gawky-looking father!):

The presentation of The Mega Coat came shortly before one of the most exciting and magical things we've done of late: go to a puppet theatre performance.
We've always known about the puppet theatre, as it is very close to our old flat near Upper Street in Angel, but it is never something that we've ever felt inclined to go to. We didn't really see the point. But we've been hearing about the activities that one of Finn's friends' older sibling is involved in there (puppet-making classes followed by a production for the parents each week) and we've become very interested in it, putting inclusion in the class in the To Do box for when Finn is older. But it was only when a friend couldn't make it to a show and offered us their tickets that we ended up going.
The whole thing was very magical, beginning with the beautiful place hidden away on a quite leafy idyllic square, where we filed through to a lovely raked theatre with benches full of excited and expectant children. The show we watched was The Way Home, a story about wildlife and environment damage; climate change, expanding urbanisation, deforestation, hunting etc. lead to a heap of animals escaping on a boat out to sea. The story was a bit rubbish but it was more about the experience, which looked like this:

The overarching narrative was entirely beyond Finn, but he was wrapped up in the animals, their individual stories, and the overall drama. He was riveted throughout and he was clearly mesmerised by the whole thing. It was wonderful to see, and lovely to be with him for.

At the end the puppeteers brought out the puppets so that all the children could see them mobbed up at the foot of the stage. Finn loved that also, and was delighted to wait patiently to reverently say "hello" to the monkey and the elephant. Lovely, all round.

After the theatre, we then went and had a special picnic (with our coats on) in the park, which gave Orry to opportunity to crawl off into the leaves and grass, which he was very pleased with himself for! (Note here how he has Finn's Colourful Coat on, which does not look so large on him - we took Orry in the wrap and so we had been sharing a coat until he wanted to crawl off independently)

After that pleasant story, there are now two unpleasant ones to get over before the cute bits to finish off with...

Firstly, on the 28th of October, Cori spent all day at hospital with the two boys. The first was for Orry allergy testing, from 8.30am through to 12.30pm. Cashews and hazelnuts. This was a long time to be in hospital with the two boys, but at least Finn had the tablet to occupy him. Traffic made for a painful trip home, taking nearly an hour, with everyone restless, irritable and very hungry. Getting to the stop was a joy, but this was less joyous in less than a minute when Finn ran off as he usually does to duck under the car barrier outside the church near us. Usually he is fine, ducking under the main part of the barrier, but on this day he went under the shorter weighted end that is pulled down to lift the barrier. With the weight, the thing is lower, and more dangerous. Finn ran straight into it, cracked his head of it and let out a great cry of horror and pain.
Blood, tears, breathlessness of pain etc. Cori had Orry on her in the carrier, which made things difficult, but two passing mothers stopped and helped out, as they mopped the blood and called an ambulance. Soon enough it came and they were back off to the hospital again.
Finn was amazing in the hospital, sitting quietly and without screaming or trying to avoid the inevitable, as the doctors came, cleaned the wound, and glued it up again. He made Cori incredibly proud of him for it, and so happy that he was able to approach it so. After that, it was, at last, a bus home and two tired and worn out children straight to bed!
In the morning, Finn was very excited to show off his "glue" to everyone - me, friends at nursery, and anyone who happened to get into conversation with him.
There is no picture of the blood and tears, but there is one of the offending head-breaker, and the result:

The other not-great story is about the 31st of October...
In the Isle of Man traditionally we celebrate Hop-tu-naa instead of Halloween. The two are similar (and merging evermore), but there is a difference. One of these differences is the singing of songs (traditionally, and in my youth, around the area singing from door to door). Finn showed his brilliant memory when he joined in with the words and singing of the song after only the first few times I'd sung it to him. Indeed, it was so early on in the singing, that I can't shake the idea that he remembered it from last year. I wouldn't put it past our Finn.
Hop-tu-naa, tra-la-laa. Jinny the witch is in the house, give us a penny, we'll chase her out. Hop-tu-naa, tra-la-laa.
As much as I try to Manx it up, we did not, however, carve turnips - maybe next year I'll impose our giving up the ease of a pumpkin...

When it came to the 31st of October, the Halloween element had taken over. So much so that, led by their American mother, they had planned out a day of Halloween partying in the park followed by Trick-or-Treating along Stoke Newington High Street (where, brilliantly, all of the shops had teamed up to welcome such a stream of kids).
I say "planned," because things didn't really follow the plan: firstly, I fell ill and couldn't do anything other than lie in a daze in bed before leaping out intermittently to be sick and then crawling back miserably to hide in bed until the next time I needed to leap out again. This meant that Cori and the kids headed off alone, with some excellent (though hastily thrown together!) costumes on (British readers note, American Halloween costumes are not at all required to be ghoulish or scary):

As it need not be pointed out, Finn is a train driver and Orry is... well... err... cute with ears on, I guess. - Cori thought that safety-pinning the fabric ears to Orry's new onesie-hoodie was good enough, and it was.
But, now secondly, things did not go to plan once they got to the party at the park not far from us. Here Finn claimed to be feeling unwell and refused to get out of the pushchair. Cori suspected him of being in a mood and inspired by my illness and so didn't push it too much. She suggested that they just go home, but he said that he didn't want to miss out on Trick-or-Treating. So Cori hiked off 30 minutes or so up the road to Stoke Newington, during which time Finn fell asleep.
At the start of Church Street, Cori was faced with the choice of either turning back with the sleeper or else waking him to do the thing he wanted to do. But the decision was made for her when he woke up of his own accord, to vomit everywhere.
It was a good thing that Finn was in a train-driver's outfit as the oversized neckerchief thing caught most of it and so she was able to remove that, wipe down a bit elsewhere, and then let him continue.
He was able to enjoy a few shops of Trick-or-Treating, but then he complained of feeling ill again, and, sure enough he was sick again, this time everywhere. It was awful. Cori went into the closest shop to ask for paper towels and water to help clean him up and they obliged, by bringing out a bucket of water and a mop to clean off the pavement! Cori explained what she'd actually asked for and they sorted out it properly.
There was no continuing after that, with Finn, the pushchair, and now Cori covered in stinking vomit. So they took a long and vomit-punctuated walk home.
Everyone then got to sleep or thereabouts, as Cori quickly scrubbed down the pushchair and then, at last, succumbed to her own bout of vomiting. Sigh!
That was not a great day! And it was off the back of this that we went into Orry's party - which explains our tenderness about the whole affair.

The rest of the October updates should be able to be done quite quickly...

"No Orry!" became one of Finn's most repeated phrases in October. Partly this was in pretending to parentise over him, but it was mainly as a protection of himself or his own stuff. "No Orry!" he would whine when Orry goes even slightly close to a car he's playing with; "No Orry!" he would cry when Orry padded into the bathroom as he's on the loo; "No Orry!" he would cry when he gets too close to him during the reading of a book. Orry's reaction to these appeals/cries, however, was generally either blissful indifference or else a lovely big smile, like some friendly buffoon who doesn't speak the language and won't take the hint... which is probably what Orry is!

Stealing Cori's utensils became one of Orry's greatest desires in October. For the sake of allergy alliances, she is always sat by Orry, and I (James) am near Finn. Despite not really using a fork or spoon in October too much, he took it upon himself to demand whatever utensil it was that Cori was eating her food with. Sometimes this included her food too, but it was more about the thing itself. He didn't really try to eat with it - rather, he just wanted to bang it on the table (normally in earnest, before smiling up at us in glee) before dropping it with aplomb on the floor. For Cori this was, understandably, rather annoying!

We don't have a picture of utensil-stealing, but we do have one of Orry owning the dinner table in his avid drinking...

We also have a video, of Orry doing his thing once he has the plate and fork...

We sometimes find ourselves having to think twice about whether we give him water or not with a meal. We know we should, but he only ever seems to drink about a tenth of each sip, the rest of it being dribbled out down his chin to drench his shirt. It is an active choice by Orry to do this, which makes it all the more frustrating!
We don't have any pictures of Orry actually doing this, but we do have a video of him being silly with water - though more conventionally, by splashing in the bath:

Returning to the coat theme, October was the month where Finn learnt to do up his own coat. He would have been able to do this long before, I suspect, but he's too cussed/contrary with us when we ask him to do things, that it was always much easier just to do it up in a second and get on with things. But his Key Worker at nursery, Giovanna, is very good with Finn and taught him how to do it one day, and he came home very pleased to be able to show off about it to us. He was particularly pleased with the "trick" he knew, of putting the coat hood on his head before getting going - very clever!

The big red Bugaboo push-chair was retired in October. This is the one that saw us through from Finn, so it has done four good years for us. It is still effectively as good as when we first got it (and we hope to prove it so when we sell it on GumTree soon enough!), but it is now just not very practical. It is much more hassle than it's worth now, with two children and living on the third/fourth floor, so we found that we were just not using it, and we cannot see a time when it will again be useful, and so it is to go. It is strange to see this tool of babies and young children go as unneeded - it seems that we are becoming the parents of boys now, and now longer simply "young parents" or parents of babies...

Finally, here is a picture of what happens when you leave these children out of your sight for a minute. Cori had escaped for the loo, was surprised not to have Orry crying in her absence, and returned to find Orry like this:

By the time she'd gathered in what she could and took Orry through to the kitchen, she found that Finn had done this with that ball of string she left on the side:

The final thing is a note about our new favourite invention of a word by Finn: one day he was idly poking the curl on the top of Orry's head with his finger and when we asked what he was doing he said that he was just poking at Orry's "hula-hoop." What a lovely description for a curl of Orry's blond hair!

And, to illustrate the Hula Hoop of Orry's head, here it is:

Also showing something of the hula-hoop, and a suitable way to finish on, is one our favourite "photo-bomb" appearances by Orry: