Friends of Finn, Orry, and Oshin: April #2: Kitchen, hair-cut, river cruise & Hampstead photos

Picking up from the previous post for April, a special place for Orry's Trouble-Making is in the kitchen.
He now throws food less frequently than he used to, but he certainly still dumps it out at pretty much every meal (if we don't catch him first). The dumping-out is normally onto the table, which he will then swipe side-to-side with his spoon until it is all gone (onto the floor, walls, door, anyone close-by etc.). Or, if it is liquid, he will slap it with his hand, splashing everything within range.
One of the terrible new things he started doing in April was standing up in his chair. This he will do when he's finished in the meal, or just bored. Standing like that on his chair, two or three feet up in the air is incredibly dangerous, and so we have to be on our constant guard to leap to and take him down whenever it happens. Hence Finn's being able to capture this view:

This was a part of a sequence of pictures which Finn took with his camera, showing what the kitchen looks like from where he is at every meal:

Another annoying fad of Orry's in April - though only for a couple of days - was wanting to share Cori's chair. This was annoying for a great many reasons, not least of which was the mess that resulted, and the complete impracticality of it all!

Finn was not perfect at dinner either in April. He took to entering the kitchen and immediately whining that he didn't like that food and that he didn't want it. A very discouraging thing to hear having cooked under pressure from a hungry pack of kids for an hour!
Another picture of Orry in the kitchen is this one, which demonstrates more or Orry being annoying (in Finn's chair, drinking from Finn's cup, having bullied himself into having a biscuit!), and also his rediculous hair!

... which leads rather nicely into the story of Orry's first hair-cutting...
I was amazed to hear Cori say that she thought that it was time to cut Orry's hair. It clearly was time, but I was surprised that she saw it of a sudden, having let it slide for months. So I leapt upon it and we set to that evening in the bath. Sadly, Cori wouldn't let me do it, but then proceeded to do an equally bad job with Orry as I ever did with Finn - I felt vindicated:

Orry didn't really seem to care that much about the hair-chopping that was going on. He only really got bothered by it once we were trying to have him turn around to do the other side, at which point he put up a fight and that was the end of that. But we got the worst of it (though we had to admit defeat a few weeks later, in May, and go to the barbers):

I haven't spoken about Finn much so far, so here are a few outstanding Finn In April things...

After his spate of illnesses in March and before, he took to going into nursery claiming that he was still not well. He would show this with a great deal of dramatic coughing to order whenever anyone asked how he was. Very silly, and enjoyed very much by his nursery workers of a morning.

On that note, Finn's nursery workers are wonderful and evidently enjoy the children and their company a lot. But it is especially lovely to see some of them evidently pleased to have Finn's (and Orry's) company of a morning. Olive in particular is someone who enjoys having a little conversation with Finn when he comes in. This is mainly because of the strange things that Finn will say, and so Olive has learnt to test him on it, asking him what he thinks of her hair, or her clothes, or this or that. Without at all being intentional, he will often come out with something good to make her smile or laugh. - A lovely thing to see before I say goodbye and get on my bike off to work.

It was his nursery who asked Finn to get out a book about bugs from the library (which they knew he visited each week). It was a strange thing to ask, but perhaps it made sense in context. So we duly got out a couple of Bug Books and set about learning about bugs - everything from locusts and cockroaches through to praying mantises and dung beetles. I and he learnt a lot (not least that the Giant Water Beetle is the stuff of nightmares), and it was great to get something new for Finn to get stuck into. It is wonderful for him to come out knowing words like "camouflage" and knowing the idea of life-cycles, or being comfortable with speaking of 'male' and 'female' bugs. Bugs, and animals generally, are not his thing - he much prefers "machines" - but it is nice to expand his horizons a little.
Here is he looking very pleased by his favourite book of April (open at the Thorn Bug & Cicada page):

Talking of Finn's avid thirst to learn, Cori was very impressed by his powers of deduction as we were preparing to go on a rather unusual and special "Adventure", as she told it on Facebook:

Finn is too clever.
Today we're going on a "surprise adventure" and he watched me packing the bag. I chose two storybooks to take with us - 'Brilliant Boats' and 'The Tugboat'
He immediately shouted "Oh! Are we taking a boat trip on the River Thames!? Hooray!!"
There goes the "surprise"

The river trip was something which Cori got on special offer, which got us a reasonable priced meal, on a boat. Since we were thinking that we should treat Finn to a boat trip anyway, this sounded like a great plan. And it was - we all had a great time!

There was not just excitement "in town", but also at home. One Saturday morning, between 10 and 11am a party burst into action outside our flat's main door. A heap of people buzzing around, dancing, chatting, clapping, as a drummer and a piper made a heap of joyous noise. A wedding, we discovered, as the bride appeared. It was a great thing to see, and we were delighted to take it all in, though Orry was asleep throughout, and Finn could only muster a minute's interest before wandering off again. It was a beautiful thing, and one worth recording here as a marker for how wonderful and exciting London can be, even on your own doorstep, and also as a marker of how much we love this city of ours:

There is the great Hampstead photo session to finish with, but we have a few other little things before we get there, such as the new thing for April of Orry walking off to action as soon as he hears the key word. So, if you're in the lounge and the word "breakfast" is mentioned, he will immediately be on his feet and will patter off at a pace to the kitchen to try and climb into his seat. The same for other things, like 'Mama' or 'bath' or 'Finn'. Of course, this can be when we're talking about something else entirely and just happen to land on one of the key words. And also, needless to say, this is not when it is something that he is not interested in or does not like - 'nappy', for instance, will tend to send him out of the room away from you rather than attract him to the changing mat!

Here's Orry in Finn's sunglasses, looking as cool outwardly as he always is inside:

Orry is very good at picking things up and impersonating others doing something. This is especially the case when it is his brother who he is impersonating. We were delighted when he picked up the dance which Finn brought home to show us from nursery - sitting down and joining in when Finn taught Cori the moves, and then happily launching into it frequently of his own accord thereafter. He's very good at it...

Here are some pictures of the boys in silly head-wear - why not:

Here is one of my favourite pictures of me and my mate Orry from April, evidently taken at some point early in the morning!

Finn carries off handfuls of toys from the lounge to hoard in his room daily, which have to be moved back as a part of the tidy-up as they're sleeping each night. (Either that or leave piles of toys precariously building up on the top of Finn's cabinets and wardrobe out of Orry's reach!). When I went through one evening I was humoured to see the trains in the doll's house (which he now doesn't use at all as a doll's house, as far as I have seen of late):

And where had all the doll's materials gone to? - I am delighted to report that Finn's true nature was in evidence in that they had all been packed into convoy of vehicles and was evidently in the process of being shipped off somewhere else to make way for the so-much-more-important trains!