This was immediately followed by me (James) going off to an afternoon looking after the nephews on my own. This began with picking Oliver up from orchestra, visiting a bronze age burial mound (in a residential street in Douglas) and putting a sight on the Norse crosses in a church, before going back to the other two boys in Ramsey, where we watched Star Wars and then took a walk up the hill. This was, quite honestly, the most pleasant and least-stressful afternoon with children I had had in a very long time - it made me very much look forward to Finn & Orry being older!
(The tree swing was as scary, for us all, as it appears in the picture!)
We haven't had any videos so far for October. Here's a very exciting one; of the very exciting game of leaping through a hoop without touching the side at all. You will note how excellent, sort of, Finn is, how silly Orry is, and how little Cori is required to move in this game:
Whilst we're on the topic of videos of silliness, here's another; of one of Orry's ridiculous games which he is liable to make up. This one was him testing us to see who could guess the thing depicted by his bread after he'd nibbled at it. This was about the third round, complete with congratulatory hand-shake at the end:
Something entirely not-silly-fun was Cori's taking on a crafty task for the dance group she & Finn are a part of. They have a uniform which they created for themselves when they formed three or so years ago, but they've grown in number since and the person who created the uniform has now gone. So, for want of others who could do it, Cori offered (or was co-opted) to do the following:
- Work out and draw up a pattern for the skirts using the finished articles
- Sew three skirts to measure
- Learn how to weave and then work out a pattern for the belts
- Weave 10 belts
- Create a sword/stick bag, sewing it together and weaving the strap for it.
This was a fun way to be involved at first, but it soon developed into just being a time-drain over the month-and-more which it took. The belts were the most painful to create as each belt took two hours to make, once she knew what she was doing, but since she was starting from scratch, was one or two belts in.... She was very glad to be done, when was done, at the very end of the month.
To give you an idea of why Cori was so pained by, and proud of the belts, here are a couple of pictures:
And the very intricate strap which featured a little red fish pattern (the name of the dance group translates to Red Herring)
In the middle of the month, nothing too spectacular took place - just the usual run of the mill family things, which creates photographic memories like these...
Hop-tu-naa was on the horizon, which explains the witch and some of the other bits to the wall-paper roll picture. The next picture is the result of Orry taking it upon himself to ensure that the camping mat Cori was using to exercise on did not roll up at all in any way:
The last one was of Orry and his namesake friend. The Orrys began to hang out more after Cori's return from London, which has meant that they've had to distinguish themselves as 'Big Orry'/'Orry Mooar' and 'Little Orry'/'Orry Beg'. Orry sometimes insists that he is to be known always and only as Little Orry. This is most insistent at bed-time, when he will make us do the final good night kiss again if we make the mistake of just saying 'Oie vie, Orry' (Good night, Orry) - 'No, do it again; I am Little Orry!'
I've no idea what the kids under the blanket is about in the next picture, but the dust is from one of Finn's birthday presents, where he had to chip away at the 'rock' to uncover the dinosaur bones within. Good fun, but a terrible mess:
And, to conclude the pictures, here is Orry looking good in his dress-up attire:
Undoubtedly missing a few memories and stories along the way, the next big thing was the show Finn's class put on in school for everyone, bringing together everything they had been learning that term. We get very little from him on what he does in school, so it is nice to see something of it in the video they created for it, which is available here.
If you are struggling to see Finn, he appears in this form, for some reason or other...!
But, the big thing which happened at the the end of the month was, of course, Orry's birthday - his third birthday, no less.
Here he is on his first morning as a three-year-old:
This was a much more low-key affair than Finn's Lego & Inventing Party, but this is how Orry would have wanted it. He is not a fan of crowds of people, so he was very happy with the idea of just a few of his friends coming round for a play and some cake. The privileged two were Nora and Evie (and her brother, Samuel). Big Orry was due to come, but he was ill that day, and so couldn't make it, sadly:
Orry had a lovely day of it. As the younger brother, and as the kid with allergies at parties, he is rarely the centre of attention. So it was really special for him to have the balloons and decorations for him, and it to be his cake which everyone gets a piece of, and for all of his friends to be around. Hence the lovely smile on his face in that last picture.
Orry was also very excited and delighted by it all in the lead up. Cori was delighted when he walked into the room and admired her lackadaisical 'decoration' of the lounge (a few streamers tossed over the lighs), saying: "Wow! It's amazing!"
He also, obviously, very much enjoyed 'helping' with the cake!
In actual fact, this party was held before his actual birthday, as we knew that there was to be too much going on then to be able to fit it in. This mostly revolved around hop-tu-naa.
As is the tradition for us, this included my (James') only bit of baking each year, creating some fine Hollantide fairings (photographed before baking):
Also, of course, some fine turnip carvings:
This I was even forgiven for bringing some of my work home, since everyone rather enjoyed being involved in creating a couple of gifs:
As is the norm for us (and most families on the Isle of Man!), we went down to Cregneash to carve more turnips (a lot of turnips were carved this year!)...
... and, more importantly, for Finn to have his first outing as a Manx dancer!
He was excellent and we were all tremendously proud of him (Granny came down for the occasion too, of course). Having only been actually taking part in the dancing for a few weeks, he was a little behind the game on most of the dances, but he had a very good forgiving-&-yet-bossy partner (Dottie) to keep him in line. (Excuse my spoiling the audio here by my vocal enjoyment of it all):
At the end we had expected Finn to be elated or with a great sense of achievement, but it was not so. Rather, he took it as just a normal sort of thing - dancing with his friends - and he just hung out with them and went off fooling about as if it was not big deal at all that he'd just been Manx dancing in public. We felt very proud, and with swelling hearts, especially when he admired the older dancers thus with Dottie:
After the dancing was when we actually did our moot-carving, in a large tent with about a 100 people there carving away and milling about. For the entertainment, they had a compere there on the mic, introducing and managing a stream of kids who were going up to sing or recite hop-tu-naa songs or rhymes. I was amazed that when Finn wandered off for a moment Cori tugged at my arm to look, and there was Finn in the queue to sing!
He had seen that children were getting sweets for singing, and so there wasn't a second thought for him - he went and joined the line. And when he got to the front it was just him and the mic singing through the song. He'd not learnt it at all, other than just picking it up as I sang it around the house, but he remembered all of the words (with a stumble) to what was a quite long song. Again, as for the dancing, he finished it and happily took his sweet, before returning to us merely pleased to have a sweet - nothing more; no sort of lingering nerves from a performance or anything of the sort. What an amazing and brilliant boy! We were very proud of him.
Sadly there is no video of the singing (he was up and doing it too quick for us!), but we did get the one picture:
(We were also rather proud of the dance group and Finn's school, as a stream of Finn's mates followed suit and fearless went up to get a sweet - the public performance bar was set too low for kids in a dance group created from a school like theirs!)
We do, however, have a video of our first ceili. Or, rather, a video of a hint of the ceili.
This was organised by Finn's Granny, as a fund-raiser for the church in Maughold, so we had to go (sadly missing the school Hop-tu-naa disco) but ended up having a really great time, even for the boys, as tired as they were. Though it would have been slightly more enjoyable for Cori if she didn't have to carry Orry the whole time whilst dancing! If only it was him who fell asleep in a corner and not Finn!
We were back in the Maughold church hall a few days later, for the Maughold hop-tu-naa event. This year it was very special as the boys' cousin Georgie was over with Uncle Andrew too.
It is rare to have them over, so it was very lovely to have a day with them strolling around Peel and making good on one of our intentions for Orry's birthday, of getting ice-cream:
Then it was off to the Maughold event for the usual series of games and runs through the dance and the competitions etc., this time with the young witch from Woking involved!
Finn was an expert in the dance, of course, having been doing it at his dancing for a couple of weeks before. Indeed, I was a happy witness to one of the most lovely things I have seen at Finn's school that morning: the entire school marched out onto the fairfield at St. John's with all the teachers, one of whom piped hop-tu-naa on her bagpipes and the entire school danced there with their teachers. It was lovely and all of my workmates came to the window to swoon at the sight. A lovely thing...
Anyway, I was saying that Finn was an expert at the dance, and also at the song, of course, and so he ended up at the front of everyone singing fearlessly through his hop-tu-naa song, twice (since the leader was sufficiently impressed to ask for it a second time). We were very proud of him, as you would be!
Orry was also on stage a bit too, doing his bit to bring home the usual hoard of prizes. He, however, was rather less delighted to be the centre of attention, as the pictures might show!
Hop-tu-naa, of course, was the 31st of October, and early in the morning on the first we were off on the boat for our next adventure. But that will be for the next blog...
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