July #2: Single-dad, graduation & beach-combing

Having already covered most of the big events in July in the last blog, I hope that we can go a little easier here, taking the scenic route to telling what went on in the month… including this scenic view of Orry wearing a pair of Finn’s (clean!) underpants on his head:

Very serious business, it seems. Orry inspired Finn to try on a pair for a hat also, but it was soon adapted to a balaclava:

Which, in turn, inspired Orry to fashion his own balaclava:

Perfect fashions!

You will note that Orry is wearing Finn’s school-shoes in this picture. As you might expect, he walked rather ridiculously in them.

Finn has school shoes already, as we have the requested uniform list from the school we’ve sorted out for him in the Isle of Man: the Bunscoill Ghaelgagh. This is the Manx-speaking school, at St. John’s, next door (literally) to where I will be working. There was little thought needed on this choice, as it had always been a great hope for us for our children to be bilingual, and the Bunscoill was somewhere that I had always been sorry that it was unlikely for Finn to ever get to go to. But now he does get the chance, and I’m glad to say that they had the place available for him (which is so unlike London!). But I imagine that there will be a great deal more about the school and the school experience when we get to September.

Following on from the Brexit success of leading the UK out of the EU in the referendum, (liberal left) London has been up in arms, with lots of protests and petitions etc. One of these marches on Westminster was attended by Lily-with-the-black-hair (who we’ve not seen in ages). Seeing the picture of the family holding up their “We Love Europe” poster, Finn really wanted to make his own one. It ended up looking great!

Finn’s parents and a wolf were added to the picture at Finn’s request. It’s not clear why.

Orry wanted a placard also, so he got one of scribbles and a monster eating bananas, which was perhaps rather less relevant:

Having just mentioned Lily-with-the-black-hair and how we’d not seen her in ages (she’d been in Taiwan for months), it was to her fifth birthday that we went during the week where I was the sole parent in charge of everyone as Cori went off to the Latitude music festival with her work.

It may seem unfair that Cori should get to go to a music festival (including evenings watching bands and drinking beer with friends) as I was at home with the boys, but… well… yes, it probably was unfair, but it was certainly well deserved and very much enjoyed by Cori.
She went from Wednesday through to Monday, offering the festival-going families the opportunity to dig for real artefacts in her fake “soil” and learn something about archaeology and the Museum of London in the process:

This meant that I had six days on my own with Orry and Finn. Things went well, I have to say, as I was very pleased (i.e. smug) to be able to report on the first day without Cori there:

Yesterday went perfectly, to the point of probably being annoying for you to hear about: kids played as I cooked, everyone ate, kids played as I washed up and cleaned the kitchen, we tidied the lounge together, Finn went without complaint to his bed, Orry went to sleep without crying (though it took him 20 minutes to do so on his own), Orry woke at 11 for 5 seconds before I replaced his blanket, then at around 2am when I returned him to the pillow and he went back to sleep until Finn came and got us up just after 6am, breakfast happily, kids play as I got showered, all out ok and into nursery for 8:05 (only late because Orry had a SECOND poo this morning). All good! Let's just hope that we can hold it together thus for the next five days!

Indeed, by the third day, Orry was effectively “sleeping through the night” – perhaps waking once because he’d come off his pillow and needed shifting back, or more often not at all; merrily sleeping through from 8pm to 6pm.

It would be hard to overstate the importance of this Great Change in Orry’s sleeping. Suddenly our being able to regain sleep was upon us. After nearly two years of this not being the case, the through-the-night sleeping was a truly wonderful change for the better.

Besides the sleeping, we all got on very well as a family, listening well, helping to tidy up and watching out for younger brothers etc. I was really impressed by everyone. Part of this, admittedly, was mild surprise at the two boys not seeing that Team Parent was a person down and taking advantage of the situation. But, of course, children (these ones at least!) are not actually out to make our lives a misery. So it was really quite wonderful and rewarding to be surprised that my week of solo-parenting could be quite fun.

Naturally, being solo, I had less chance to take pictures, but this one did please me to have captured:

Finn likes to take a toy to nursery each morning. This is normally something small, but that day he chose to take his guitar. This, of course, came with us to the library – which led eventually to this image of Finn walking home reading a book with a guitar strapped around his neck, as you do.

The weekend was the thing I was really dreading, as there wasn’t the crutch of nursery to get us through. So I was very glad indeed to have two major events to take the boys to: Lily-with-the-yellow-hair’s leaving party (before they departed for their new lives in Berlin), and Lily- with-the-black-hair’s fifth birthday.

Both events were not ideal for Finn, as he ended up being something of an outsider to the fun that was going on through the gang of (female) friends about the Lilys. He was able to get around this for Lily-with-the-yellow-hair’s event, with a great deal of intervention from me and finding another similar-aged boy to play hide-and-seek with, but it went less well at Lily-with-the-black –hair’s, where there was even a flash of bullying at the dinner table, when a girl was rebelling against being sat beside Finn. Luckily there was the mob of parents to swoop in and sort things out, but it rather knocked Finn, after which he never again tried to fit in with the group, instead finding one other boy to play with once we’d moved to the park.

It is worth remarking on these unfortunate states of affairs, we rarely see Finn playing with his peers. If he is playing with someone like one of the Lilys, it is with just us parents around, when things go very well. But when without us as a support network, it is very sad to see that things can go wrong for him. He wants to play, but he’s just not very good at playing at other people’s games; he finds it very hard to join in with games which are already in full swing and run by others than him. Perhaps he is not much of a group-players, preferring instead to play with one or two other people only. And, it certainly seems, he is someone who plays better with boys than with girls.

The last of these is something of a sadness to us, as it was not such an issue in the past, when gender differences barely showed in how Finn and his friends played. But now it looks like the boys and girls are dividing. I would like to blame this on “the girls” not playing “normally,” but I suspect that I’ve just based my idea of normal playing from Finn – a boy – so it’s probably a split brought about from both sides. I have always really enjoyed playing with Finn’s female friends (who have always historically been the more numerous), but I fear that he might not have any real female friends again as a child. This is sad.

One of the big things that Cori unfortunately missed when at Latitude was Finn’s “graduation.”

To give you an idea of what it was all about it, it looked like this:

This picture is of (nearly) all those graduating from the nursery and going to “big school” next year: Leila, Eloise, Mila, Finn, Lily, Alexandra, Hanna, Ella, and Ava.

The graduation was an afternoon when we parents were invited in at 4pm or so, out into the garden where we took our seats in the audience and waited in anticipation for the mob of mortar-boarded youths to be led out into their special places. They then came up one-at-a-time to stand at the front as their key-worker read out their little prepared piece about the child, followed by a hug and applause. This is what Giovanna read of Finn:

Finn arrived at Mildmay quiet, reserved and shy but in this short time here we have witnessed him turn into a confident, inquisitive and extremely chatty boy. He is sensitive and very family orientated, who is always talking about his parents and brother and his visits to America and the Isle of Man.

Finn loves all kinds of books and is always seen looking at them independently or asking an adult to read to him.

He has a huge imagination, and at the same time he is full of information that he uses in his play: building space ships, boats, trains, and special machines are part of his every day routine.

The Great Fire of London, Romans and cannibals have been part of our conversations, and "do you know what?" “If you want to know something you ask Google; in the phone and in the computer,” as Finn has told me.

I am going to miss you, little book worm! And I wish you all the best for the future. And do you know what? In a few years I will ask Google for Finn Franklin, and I am sure I will find your name with a great big invention, and I will say: “he was my boy!”

With this sort of lovely reflection going on for each child, there were lots of very proud parents, lots of tears, and also quite a few fearfully nervous children close to tears stood up there in front of everyone. (Finn survived tears just, by his finally spotting where Orry and I were sat and receiving a wave from us both).

Then there was a good party with lots of playing and chatting. All very lovely. – It was just very sad that it would be the last such event that we would get to go to at nursery for Finn…

The day before one of the dads went in and photographed the children, and did a pretty good job with our cheeky Finn:

There was also taken a picture and all of his graduating friends of the same Key Person:

This is probably as good a time as any to give a sequence of Orry-in-funny-things pictures, starting with the train box, which he got into when empty and then rather enjoyed everyone packing him in with the tracks:

Then there is the one where Finn’s pushing him around in a box developed into the full role-play pf them on an aeroplane, with Orry as the pilot and Finn as the relaxed passenger:

Also rather fun, but rather scary as it is very dangerous due to the possibility of the thing falling over on him, is this picture of Orry having cast out everything from the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers so that he could climb in it to read a book, as you do:

In support of Wales in the Euros (once they were the final British side left in), we got out the dragon costumes to mark the match with Portugal (the eventual winners). It only lasted about 20 seconds, but Orry looked great in Finn’s old costume when it was on him:

When Cori returned from her week at Latitude she brought back some great bubble presents for the boys, which they enjoyed immensely when they had them out in the garden. I forget now why Finn thought to dig out his tutu to wear for the occasion, but he did look great:

Having grown frustrated with the brevity and poor quality of animal documentary clips on YouTube, we were pleased to sit down to watch a full (short) documentary on the BBC site about Giant Squids (Finn’s choice from the list). He enjoyed it and got a lot out of it (much more than we did his constant questions and complaints that he couldn’t hear). It led to some interesting Giant Squid themed art afterwards, including this one, drawn by me, at Finn’s direction:

As you will see, there are a number of very sad people and animals inside the squid having been eaten: Deedah, a farmer, the farmer’s horse, a fish, Finn and Orry, and just being eaten are Mama and granny. All very sad!

This was the drawing that Finn insisted was appropriate to give to Lily-with-the-black-hair for her birthday card. Unfortunately I never got a chance to explain it to Lily’s parents, so they will think us all very odd in this household – which is probably true!

On the way home from nursery Finn likes to ride the “train” outside the noodle restaurant. Orry enjoys joining in with Finn on the bike rack, although rather more loosely:

To clump together three work-related pictures… here is Finn in Cori’s workmate’s desk. Kath was very annoyed to again miss one of Finn’s rare visits to the Museum archive, which made this picture of worker-Finn all the more glorious:

I was given a gift from a work friend on his return from Poland where he had visited the salt mines in the Tatra mountains. It took an Orry to discover that the novelty miniature salt barrel was actually made of salt, as we discovered when he found him suddenly carrying it around and licking it. Weirdo:

Tenuously a work-related picture, we worked out who is to rent out our flat immediately upon our departure from London: Cori’s workmate, Clare:

Admittedly, this is more a picture of Clare’s hand holding an apple piece, but it was a picture taken by Finn…

We are not to sell our (mortgaged) flat in London, as the property prices are increasing rapidly, and are set to continue so, unlike in the Isle of Man, where they are increasing at a much less rapid rate. It also means that we would find it a lot easier were we to want to move back.

This landed us with the problem of renting out the flat.

Instead of going through an agency, we thought it best to ask around our friends. Unsure that we’d find anyone, we were surprised to find two people immediately! So Clare is in for six months, to be followed by Orry & Cori’s great friend amongst the staff at the nursery, Emma.

It is all very lovely and good. If only the form-filling were the same to get it all sorted!

The final great thing for July, and a major piece of Cori’s London bucket list, was beach-combing along the river banks of the Thames.

This was a matter of our signing up to go down to the Thames with an expert London archaeologist, to look around what is there at our feet, and taking it up to be identified.

It was amazing what was there to be found – even within one square meter, you would find Roman tiles, Tudor pipes, Victorian pottery and much more.

Cori was in her element, and Finn too...

However, to be honest, Finn was probably rather more excited about finding plastic ties than anything “historic”:

The only real problem was the mass of booty which we brought home with us:

July – our final full month in London – a great month!