The photoshoot photos

It has become a tradition to take some photo-shoot style newborn photos at around about one week old.
Here's two lovely ones of Finn:

And a couple of Orry:

And of Finn and Orry together:

And now, as a record for all eternity of how beautiful and perfect and lovely is new baby Oshin, here are the results of his photos:

Oshin's name

It's perhaps worth posting specifically about Oshin's name, since it is new to most people, even those on the Isle of Man.

It is a Manx name, of Gaelic origin. It is the same name as 'Ossian,' which is the much more common rendering of it in countries like Scotland or Wales, and in Ireland it is 'Oisín'.
'Oshin' is the accepted Manx spelling, and it is how it is written down in its most famous oldest appearance. It is phonetic to how it is pronounced (for Manx people anyway - more on that in a bit!).
The most famous 'Ossian' is the apparent narrator of the epic Scottish poems, who is based on the most famous 'Oisín', the figure from Irish/Celtic mythology.
According the the authorities it means 'little fawn,' but we didn't choose it for the meaning (which is a little silly, if you ask me!), nor for his legendary forebear (which is rather foreign to us).
I don't intend to go on about it too much - I only want to talk about how we chose it, and the surprising confusion about its pronunciation - but I'll break it up with a couple of pictures which we took recently of the handsome fella (testing the light & background for the photoshoot which happened another day and which we'll post in a bit) - picture #1:

We were confident with the names for Finn & Orry, but we didn't have a good name ready for Child No. 3, especially once we knew it was to be another boy. All we had were left-over names from before, which had been left over because they were not-liked by the other person. (These included Dollin and Braddan for me, and Angus and Arthur for Cori). So we had to find a new name entirely.
'Illiam', Oshin's eventual middle-name, was ruled out because it would leave him having to spend his entire life tediously explaining: "Illiam - it's 'William' without the 'W'... it's Manx... from the Isle of Man." etc. even though we both agreed that it is a lovely name.

It was Cori who first started to push for 'Oshin', having trawled it out of one of the books/lists of names (though she pushed for 'Ossian or Oisin' until late on).
It was well-known to us from the traditional song 'Fin as Oshin', which meant that I ruled it out. - I knew that the song was about the hero, Finn, getting his vengeance on someone who had caused loads of trouble and set the village and Finn's sisters on fire and so Finn had them torn to pieces... This was not at all the sort of reference I wanted for our youngest son!
However, Cori knew better than to trust my memory and eventually looked it up, discovering that it was not Oshin who was the punished arsonist; it was Orry! - The story was actually of Finn and Oshin leaving Orry behind as they go off to hunt, but Orry retaliates to the women's taunting and teasing him by burning the whole village down (!), which Finn and Oshin spot and rush home to get their vengeance on Orry.
We had been completely against Finn punishing Oshin, or setting Oshin up as a troublemaker - but as soon as we found out that it was actually ORRY who was in the wrong and punished for it, we thought that it all sounded very reasonable and entirely true to character!
So the decisions was made.
Or, rather, we put that name to one side, as a valid option, meaning to go on looking for another possible name, but nothing else came up. And so we tried out the name, speaking about him as 'Oshin' before he was born, getting used to the name. It wasn't wrong, so it began to stick, and I agreed to go for it, on the condition that it was 'Oshin' rather than the more common Scottish or Irish forms. Cori agreed readily enough, if it mean that we were at least agreed on the name at last.
... which was how he came to be named 'Oshin'.

The most famous rending of the song, Fin as Oshin is this:

It's (hopefully) obviously in Manx - so if you're interested, the words are here.

We, probably naively, though thought that the name would be obvious enough for people away from Manx-speaking-circles to pronounce. However, we were both surprised at the confusion coming from the American half of the family/friends.

The problem was in the 'O', with people defaulting to pronouncing it like the capital letter, making the name come out sounding identical to 'ocean'.

We should really have seen this coming, as we had met the same problem with Orry's name, but it still caught us off-guard. It was particularly hard this time around as the explanations we gave to people only worked on one side of the Atlantic and not the other. So, we had to explain it to people in England as the 'o' in 'orange', but to Americans as not that 'o' (which sounds like the British pronunciation of the word, 'oar'). For the Americans it was explained as the 'aw' sound, which confused everyone British as that gives the sound of 'arr' for us.

It was all very confusing, and it probably will always remain just an off name in America which is hit-&-miss in the pronunciation, but Cori's final explanation on Facebook was the following:

Tell a story, Cori
Play some games, James
Put it in the bin, Finn
Don't be sorry, Orry
Do the washin', Oshin.

... It is strange that the easiest word for the cross-Atlantic pronunciation of Oshin's name used a 'a' for the 'o' sound, but such is the oddness of English!

Oshin's middle name is 'Illiam', which is the name of 'The Manx Martyr', Illiam Dhone, as well as being a popular and nice name. That choice was much simpler. Though we hadn't really put them all together until Cori's mom read the name off the bookshelf and asked if the baby was going to be called Illiam. It was that evening that the three were put together and "Oshin Illiam Franklin" sounded rather nice altogether and the name was officially capital D Decided. The initials are a bit unfortunate (OIF), but it is worth noting that these decisions were being made a couple days after he was due, so there wasn't too much time to really fuss over that too much!

So that was how he came to be called what he is called!
And, as the finish to the somewhat dull post, here is the other photo from the pre-photoshoot:

August: The Paternity Leave

It was at the leaving of the Americans (when Oshin was four days old) that my two weeks of paternity leave began. This meant that shortly after Oshin's second week, I headed back to work.

Before getting stuck into the reflection on these important two weeks, here is something of beautiful Oshin - his first bath. This is on Monday, 13th, when Oshin is nine days old:

Happily we filmed the moment he went in the water as, you will see, he loved it and became immediately calm upon getting in it - a lovely thing to see:

And, in case you were wandering if he remained so calm, here he is again later:

Those who know about new born babies will therefore realise that the first bath must have followed the coming off of the umbilical cord. Indeed, that came off finally the day before and was as minging and crusty as everyone elses before!

Paternity Leave is there to smooth the transition into a new way of life, with the addition to the family. It was certainly the case with these two weeks in August, but it has been much easier than it was with the previous two.
Oshin has slipped into our lives very easily. Or, rather, we have slipped him into our lives much more easily than we did Finn, and Orry too. A baby is a known thing to us, so we have just switched into that gear very easily, and re-acclimatised ourselves to this way of life which we recognise and know already.
It is perhaps because of this that these two weeks have felt like something of a holiday for me. Of course, one with a baby, but a holiday all the same - something natural, almost normal (though novel), and something enjoyable and pleasant. This has certainly been helped by my main task being entertaining or distracting Finn and Orry as Cori tended to Oshin. In this it has indeed been much like my holidays from work.
But, away from work for so long, and with our List to drive us forward, I emerge from my fortnight with the family feeling rather pleased with what we've done and how we've all come closer for it.

Some of the special things we've done includes:
... visiting friends in Ramsey and going on the tram, after which Orry felt sad to be away from his friend (actually Finn's friend, really, since she's his classmate!), so he had us draw a picture of her, which made him feel much better:

... repeating what we've done with Finn and Orry and getting his footprint. (We'd hoped this was going to be a magical whole-family experience, but in actual fact we caught Finn and Orry in boisterous and inattentive mood and so ended up banishing them from the room!):

... visiting the Wildlife Park with granny:

... creating some beautiful art between us all, utilising everyone's specialist skills - Orry's chopping of tiny pieces of paper, Finn's drawing and skilled chopping of fish, Orry's drawing of people, Finn's sticking/glueing etc. (Orry drew the sun's face - he's not the devil! Orry also drew the pink caterpillar at the side, with people riding on it, apparently disappointed that the donkey place was closed as they'd really wanted to be riding a donkey, not a caterpillar... Orry is odd):

... we watched a documentary (from Planet Earth, about life in the sea, when Finn amazed us by knowing a lot about it already - whether from Octonauts or otherwise, it's getting into him somehow, including recognising and naming immediately the Vampire Squid and other rather obscure animals), and also a few 'Charles Guard sites' (who has done a lot of films about places of interest on the Isle of Man, such as the ones on World War II sites, which I visited in Douglas with just Finn and Granny on a guided bus tour by Charles himself, which we all enjoyed.

... we followed up on something we heard on Finn's much-loved kids' radio, Fun Kids, and downloaded their 30-minute Science podcast. In the first sitting, Finn listen to four episodes in a row, sat silently tinkering with his Lego as he did so (and we retreated to the farthest corners of the house to be away from the blaring volume of the thing which he apparently needed it to be at to be able to hear it!). It was perfectly pitched for Finn, and a lovely thing for him to be listening to (especially once Orry acclimatises himself to pottering around quietly also, happily stacking up his things on top of the radio):

... although the boys don't normally have much screen-time, we worked it down to very little at all. We felt very virtuous, until they started using their crafty creativity to create their own games of having tablets, drawn on cardboard! They even did this with blocks of wood and sticks when outside meeting friends too! - This is probably the image of the lost-ness of modern youth:

... I also got the boys out, away from Cori and Oshin a few times, including a lovely trip to Ooig ny Meill ('Ooig' is the Manx word for a cave) which was just around the first headland at Niarbyl, but which we didn't know of until a week ago. Finn explains why it's interesting in the video:

Of course, we also got to hang out and enjoy being around Oshin, even in rather unusual situations and/or ways:

And, with all that, it takes us up to the final day of my Paternity Leave. Although we didn't spend the whole day with Cori and Oshin, we had a lovely day, and I hope that the space alone to just the two of them will be appreciated by Cori in the fortnight or so ahead before school relieves her of all of them at once for the first time again!
Rather brilliantly (or rubbishly, depending on how you look at it!), the day began with our being got out of bed by the boys, so that we could watch their show which they had prepared. It was quite spectacular, as you will see:

After that I headed out with Finn and Orry to enjoy the drizzling outdoors with friends. Highlights included doughnuts at a tholtan, exploring the ruins, tales of the Phynnodderree & Moddey Dhoo in the locations where they happened, care-free abandon in playing in the river on the way home:

(Most of these pictures are not mine, which is why they are lovely, and so many selected for inclusion here!)

Then it was home to get into new clothes and relax, even with Cori's 3D glasses for her phone, which we caught her trying out as we returned:

Then Oshin was refusing to leave Cori alone (it had turned into a long afternoon for Cori towards the end!), I put him in the carrier and took him out for a walk for the first time. It was lovely, as ever, along the shore in Peel, leading me to walk further along the headland than I'd ever been before, discovering, to my amazement, a new beach:

And, after all that, it was off to work in the morning, and our New Normal was begun...