The start of the month saw Finn lose one of his front teeth (which you can just about see in this picture):
Finn is here about midway between Peel & St. John's, on our weekly walk to school along the old train line on Mondays. It's a lovely walk, and a lovely time to be just Finn and I, though I sometimes end up spoiling it by having us set off late and so having to rush too much.
However, one Monday early in October we gathered in some of the abundance of blackberries along the walk for a tub for Finn's class to enjoy. A lovely thing to do, but it ended up making us late again!
As you will see from the picture, we wear boots for the walk, and change into our school/work shoes when in St. John's. This particular journey didn't go so well for my parenting points, as these were the shoes which emerged from the bag after the walk of an hour and more:
Luckily, Cori and the other two go to her Manx play group on Mondays in St. John's, so she was able to save the day and bring in the pair to the new school shoe!
We've already gone too far in a post without something about the baby, so here is Oshin doing a fine fidgeting about on Cori's lap:
And, to level it out, here is that middle child showing off his fine Manx skills, counting from one to ten:
Orry learnt this seemingly very easily at nursery, coming home one day happily saying it to himself. He was very pleased with himself. However, he was somewhat confused when he tried to name the numbers he saw written down when he got to 9 and 10, as he'd taken '... Nuy as Jeih' ('Nine and Ten') as meaning '... Nine, Ten, Jeih', leaving him baffled as to what the eleventh word was for!
The time when we filmed Orry's counting was also when he decided that we should take pictures of him being a statue. Of course, perhaps a picture is not the best way to demonstrate his brilliantly still statuesque posing (and also Cori's here), so you'll probably just have to take me on my word that he was excellent:
Because of where it landed in the week, we delayed the marking of Finn's birthday a few days, and had a lovely home-made family party on the 5th, which looked much like this:
The cake was Orry-edible, as you might be able to surmise from the following picture:
In case you want a video of the blowing out of the candles, here it is:
Finn got a nice collection of little presents, including this genius idea & excellent creation from an old bedsheet - an instant den cover for the kitchen table:
But there was no party for Finn, and no Big Present, as that all went into a very special gift all the same:
We had to go to the American Embassy to register Oshin's birth, and for his passport, so we thought that it made sense to go to London (instead of Edinburgh or Belfast) and to tie it into a trip to Legoland.
As you will have seen in the video, Finn was very excited, and Orry eventually actually understood what he was being excited about!
The good thing about the timing of this reveal was that there was only five or so days to wait, which was perfect for their levels of anticipation.
Those five days on the Island saw lots going on though, including something which was rather frightening for me - my first Heritage Open Day tours. In the end my tour of Sophia Morrison's Peel went quite successfully - I needn't have been as terribly nervous about it as I was!
Of course, we also enjoyed going on a few Heritage Open Day tours ourselves, including ones of a mill in Castletown, and of World War II Peel:
Without the elegance of narrative flow, here are three other things which deserve mention...
Cori & Oshin's fine matching onesies:
Cori & Oshin would be in onsies as it was getting very cold, and we'd determined that we were not going to turn on the heating until at least Hop tu Naa. Though scenes like this made us feel somewhat guilty to stumble upon in the play room:
The two older boys still very much love Oshin, so there is an inevitable supply of pictures of them adoring him, such as this one:
However, sometimes their adoration can be somewhat suffocating for Oshin and the boys have to be constantly reminded not to make him cry from their loving. So it is that the reverse angle of that last picture actually looked like this:
A problem which presented itself for the trip to Legoland was the need to pack lightly and the fact that we knew Orry would want to bring his beloved 'Noodle' with him. However, Cori solved the problem by finding a small version of the same toy online, and then working out the perfect way to make Orry accept his new smaller size - magic!
(Although Orry's request to "shrink me now!" was a bit harder to indulge).
... So, on to the Legoland adventure!
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