34 Months: Momentous departures and a Shropshire Finn

Summer has come (and pretty much gone, judging by the weather here!), so we've been thrown off reporting by too much doing. Sorry... Apologies over, on with the catching-up!

Finn and I left Cori behind for a trip to the Isle of Man on the 2nd of August... and we didn't think about his monthly picture until we were getting ready to leave the house around about 5.00am.  The camera was already packed so Cori quickly grabbed one on her phone.  It's pretty bad.  But at least we didn't miss one out!  So here they are side by side:

33 months old

34 months old

(Seriously, how is anyone that energetic after waking up at 4:30? There is something unnaturally wrong with children.)

You might not be able to tell, but Finn is in a specially made 'Little Turtle' shirt.  He is STILL a turtle - for at least 8 weeks running now. The difference is that he is no longer 'Baby Turtle' but rather 'Little Turtle.' Apparently he had a moment of revelation during a nursery pick up when Cori and him were chatting to one of his nursery workers. She asked Finn the important question of "but if you're Baby Turtle and that is your Mama Turtle then what is in Mama Turtle's tummy?" Finn just went dead silent for a minute and thought about it... then declared with certainty: "Yes. I am not Baby Turtle. Baby Turtle is in Mama Turtle's tummy. I am LITTLE Turtle." And there was no turning back. From then on he was Little Turtle. And despite one brief day a couple days ago when he declared that he wasn't Little Turtle that day but we had to call him 'Green Pea' instead (though by the end of the day it had become Little Green Pea Turtle - who can keep up!?) it shows no signs of abating...

But anyway! On to what we got up to in July! The highlight of July was our trip to Shropshire for a little holiday, but there was much which went on before we get to that, including a few momentous things, such as Finn's friends beginning to leave nursery!

Finn's nursery is excellent, partly because it is restricted to younger children only. This is great, but it does mean that now that Finn is approaching the grand age of three, he will soon be too old to be in the nursery, since it only caters for under-threes.
This is a rather stressful thing for us. We've nowhere else lined up, and we will almost certainly be moving Finn away from his current friends, since we've moved some distance away from the nursery to our "new" flat since he started at nursery. It is rather depressing to have to start the classic Parents-Fighting-For-Good-Education-For-Their-Children game at this stage, but if everyone else is fighting for it, we'd only be losing out by not mucking in. Or, more accurately, we'd be making Finn lose out by our not mucking in. Sigh.
But I'm sure that the September and October updates will be full of that when they come.

What we've been seeing since even the start of June is the slow departures of Finn's friends, as they turn three. The first to go were The Monster Twins (as Lily's dad so brilliantly termed them when he met Finn's two huge and hearty young friends) - we were never very close to them, but Finn adored one of them. They've moved away to another area as well, so we're unlikely to ever really see them again.
More shocking is that Conrad has now gone. Conrad - gone! Conrad was Finn's best friend - and we mean, like, best friend - for so long in the nursery, it's just shocking to think that he's no longer there. Very sad. But at least Conrad's baby brother will be in the same nursery, so we're likely to see the Conrad mob again with Finn's brother. Phew!
(If you're unclear who this Conrad boy is, he was most notably at Finn's 2nd birthday party).
The nursery is beginning to feel a little sad these days - the most notable events are the departures of friends. (Such is life...!)

We did have a very nice final party for everyone in the train park on Thursday afternoon. The place was packed with everyone and all the parents brought food, and all the kids brought Fun-Fun-Fun. Great times. A nice send-off. We've got a few lovely pictures from the day but won't put them here because there were a LOT of kids there (I think the whole nursery basically emptied into the park) and I don't have permission from everyone to put pics of their kids here. So here's one of just Finn, in his stylish party hat:

But, before things get too morose and sad about children we'll not really see again, here is Finn's annual report from the nursery, which tells us that he's doing well:

It's strange to read in this report about Finn's good friends being Reggie, Kairon and Jahzel, because we don't really know them at all. In fact, we don't have any idea who Kairon or Jahzel are. We're a bit ashamed of that, but they are never there to see/meet at the drop-off, and we have never seen them at the pick-up. Mind you, we had no idea that there even were other friends of Finn's until we read that.
It's strange to read of a Finn have a part of his life which we have no idea about, even at this age!

Also in the report, the asking questions about books is something that we've not mentioned here before, I don't think, but it was really prominent in July-time. We could sometimes barely read a sentence without Finn asking "What that say," pointing to some words on the page. Sometimes this is would be frustratingly the page you're yet to get to, or frustratingly what you've already read, or frustratingly beside the point, or just downright frustrating! We sometimes had to stop reading and just respond to his question, "What that say?" until he'd exhausted every bit of text on the page, before moving on to the same question again, "What that say?" repeated until the text on the next page was exhausted, etc. ... Torture!

To accompany the story of Finn's reading, here is a picture of Finn being a book fanatic, even if it means that we have to wait to leave the house as he reads one last book - this is the sort of thing which happens if you get him ready and then let him out of your sight for the 30 second it takes to get your shoes on!

Since that's a picture of Finn evidently being silly, it's probably opportune to report a couple of July's other sillinesses. One is his not taking out cars or trains to play with from his toy boxes (one for cars, one for trains), but instead he tips out the entire box into a heap on the floor. (He will then sometimes shout at you if you try to put anything back into the box that he's not playing with!)
That's kind-of silly, but we found it especially silly when he then decided that it tipping was clearly something that a digger would do, so he then began to call himself a Yellow Digger, making tipping and dumping noises as he tipped out the toys. Odd-ball.

We don't have a picture of that, but we do have a picture of Finn looking oddly pensive for a moment as he sits in his "car" that he'd been scooting himself up and down the corridor on (a "car" even though he was clearly rowing it with that oar/stick of his!):

Between silliness of Yellow Diggering out the toy boxes and rowing a car up and down the corridor is Finn's strengthening obsession with queues or traffic jams. It has come to the stage where Finn will not really play with his cars at all, but will, immediately upon getting them out, lay them out end-to-end in a "traffic jam."
Here is a nice illustration of it, where the town-mat roads were evidently too limited to contain the full reaches of the traffic jam that Finn needed!

Because the weather was so incredibly hot, Finn needed shorts that we really didn't have on hand. So Cori sewed some up in order to get by. The trouble is that Finn is a bit amazed by the sewing machine and 'making things' so whenever she gets it out he wants to 'help.' As helping goes, it's probably as far from actually providing assistance as you could possibly imagine. In reality he just gets to hold some of the fabric with one hand and with the other push the button that 'makes it go' (obviously it is actually a button that does nothing) but it's still makes a simple process seriously more difficult - though the joy of him putting on the shorts afterwards and proudly showing off that he 'made them' is worth it in the end.

The other eventual/major thing that happened in July was that Lily departed for three months to Taiwan with her parents, who got art commissions/exhibitions/residencies out there. It is sad to say goodbye to such good friends for so long - by the time we see them again, Finn will be three, and his baby brother will be around!
But at least Finn and Lily got to see each other quite a bit before they went, including a trip to ours:

So, onto the main event: the trip to Shropshire.
This was to the Holiday House, as Finn soon termed it, a house that Finn's grandad and gran rented for the week. We three Londoners went up to stay for a long weekend, and Finn's cousins came over from the Isle of Man to stay as well.
"Holiday House", grandad, gran, Heidi, Dean, cousins - Finn had an amazing time!
There are a lot of pictures to prove it, so we might leap into a photo-fest...

The journey up went wonderfully smoothly, with some well-chosen books to read, and draw in, and toys to play with. And all this proceeded by our having breakfast on the train - a breakfast of "snails", which is Finn's mysterious word for croissants, we discovered. We didn't know it was his term for them - we just thought he was being silly - but when we happened to treat ourselves to croissants and he happily tucked in with a shout of "Snails!" we worked it out. (We guess that the rolls of pastry perhaps look a bit like a snail, in some way...). Anyway, here's the pictures of the train journey:

We arrived and there were the cousins, all there merrily playing in the hot sunny garden of the house near the canal. Finn was in heaven - he immediately ran out of the car screaming and rolled over in the grass in excitement. His excitement levels rarely came down from that high over the next few days, especially since he was never taken away from his cousins in all that time, unlike in the Isle of Man where we have to leave them to sleep etc. He would regularly just go and hug them, or sit on them, or lie on them - anything to get out his excitement at being around them:

It was also great fun for us to hang out with Finn's cousins - you can do a lot more fun things with older boys, like play rounders!

It was hot though, all that playing the garden malarkey. Finn, also known as The Sweat Monster, showed himself true to his moniker:

Note the massive lump on his head here which is actually TWO lumps. As in he fell a week before and had a lump and a scrape (see the party hat picture above) and then managed to fall and hit exACTly the same spot resulting in another lump on top and quite a gruesome combination of stages of healing.
Note also that, despite the facial expression here, Finn is not carrying a heavy box full of "garden rounders set" - he is in fact carry an entirely empty box. But it was still hot work, which requires lots of water (with cousins):

We got to have lots of exciting trips out and about, such as to go and see some canal locks, which was a surprising success amongst all the boys (and grandads). It was also something that happened to look very "British", especially with Union Jacks flying in the background!

(they're not just posing here - some kind people let them have a go helping to operate the locks!)

Another great outing was to the Play Barn (which is apparently a term that others are comfortable with, despite us not really getting it (it's an indoor play area thingy, anyway)). This was genuinely enormous and effectively like a maze to get in and out of, with three floors and an entire circuit of play area. This was great when Finn was dashing about after his cousins, but awful when he got left behind and hurt himself and so I had to dash in to save him - he was crying for far too long before I found my way to him!

There was also a football area, which we had a great time on, until Finn got in the way of one of my legendary mega-kicks and had to go off crying to his mum, and also until Jake got in the way of another of my mega-kicks and had to go off to his mum, and also until Oliver also got in the way... etc. But at least Thomase was ok, and at least my team won.
But Finn was most pleased to be able to go on the dodgem cars with his cousins:

Thomase even let Finn have a go, although the steering left a lot to be desired, as did the braking. At least Finn and Thomase found it funny to crash into the sides though! (This is a high-speed picture, just before impact)

Although there were less crashes, Finn also loved to drive in the car. It sounds boring to say it, but since it was one of the main pleasures of the trip, it would be wrong of us not to remember it here:

It's just a shame that he was often too played-out to enjoy it fully (as was his dad):

Also on the motorised transport theme, we took a trip over the border into Wales to take a ride on a miniature steam train.

The train track even had a tunnel, which Finn was very excited about... (he wasn't terrified of it - despite the picture's suggestion):

And, because the weather was so hot, there was the pool - the star attraction of the trip:

 

Yes, that is Finn laughing and having fun as he's sprayed by a hose spraying cold water! - Finn has come on a lot since last summer!

That second picture is also very telling of how Finn expresses high levels of excitement or happiness; by running. So, after a while playing in the pool, Finn climbed out of it and then proceeded to just run around and around the outside of it laughing and smiling. Happy times!

After running round the pool for a while, Finn would clamber back in again for a quick top-up of being near his cousins, before he'd clamber out and run around again. Eventually he got tired and ended up slung over the side licking the pool, as you do. This is a picture of the weirdo-licking in progress:

There could be more to say on our time at the Holiday House - such as how much we enjoyed being with everyone - but we've probably used up too much space with pictures to allow any more words. Never mind. It will be more of the same when it comes to the next update, covering the trip to the Isle of Man. Apologies in advance.

But, as a final gesture, here are some of the curiously curious family photos that we took just before we left:

Until next time!

"Baby Turtle" at 33 months: Orderliness, Silliness and the Great Tongue Disaster

A bit late, but June was fun: baby turtle, nursery friends, perfectionism, World Cup, a tongue-biting drama and the beginning of "No!"
But first, here are the monthly comparisons (this time with friends, in case you were wondering how Hedgehog, White Mouse and Black Mouse were getting along):

Finn's life is full of semi-rituals; things that have to happen, or have to happen in particular ways. Woe betide you should you sit in the wrong chair, or if you don't line up his cars in the right order, or don't brush your teeth in the right way etc. He eventually forgets some of these rituals, which is great, but he also adopts new ones without any prior warning, which is annoying. There are now a small cluster of them around his arrival at nursery:

• Climb along the fence from the bike racks to the front door (which is impressively coordinated for Finn, but which is also painfully slow!)
• Pressing the doorbell button himself (even if that means letting someone else go in ahead of us and waiting patiently for the door to close behind them).
• Taking off his high-vis, coat and helmet etc. as he sprawls across the sofa in the nursery reception (this is generally done by a groaning Dee-Dah).
• Crawling backwards along the L-shaped sofa, back towards the door, before sliding off and announcing "Look! I did it!" (generally done with intermittent "Look, Dee-Dah, Look!" and the responses of "Yes, you're crawling, I see. Come on, come on!")
• Finn positioning my feet very precisely over the threshold to the corridor from the reception, before warning me to "Wait your turn," and then running to the door to the nursery itself, whereupon he shouts that its then my turn, at which point I go and help him open the door.
• Having been smiling and laughing in the lead-up, once one yard inside the door, Finn will turn and grip my legs and sulkily not speak to anyone. I will then have to lope him across to his peg as he continues to grip my leg.
• Slowly being coaxed away from my leg to sit at the table where he will then happily slurp a carton of milk and effectively ignore me as I say goodbye ad leave.

It's a very laborious set of ritual steps to go through each morning, but at least we know it's coming. As evidence, here's a picture of the first step:

A new addition to the "ritual" rota of the weekly post-nursery entertainments is going to the newly-christened "Train Park" (to distinguish it from what is now referred to as the "Train Park With Three Castles", so named (by Finn, obviously) because of the climbing frame there which has three pointy roofs on it). Following the Thursday trip to a Stay-and-Play session at the children's centre round the corner from the nursery, Finn is now used to going to the Train Park, where he knows his friends from nursery will join him.

We've not really been in the habit of spending time with friends from nursery, especially since most of his friends finish at 5pm, not 3.30pm like Finn, and also since we've moved further away to where we now live. But Cori stumbled across Finn's good friend, Conrad, making his accompanied way to the Train Park on Thursday once and they went along to join a mob of them who have all informally come to all go to the one park of an afternoon. Finn loves it and is giddy with excitement at getting to hang out with up to six of his great friends from nursery. It is also great for us to get to see him hang out with these friends of his who we know he plays with all day, but which we normally only see for a minute or two at the start or end of the day. It's also great to actually get to sit down and chat to the other parents, and Finn love its too, especially on the odd occasion when the other parents included Finn in the treats they get for their own children, such as ice creams! 

This is actually a cheat here, since this picture is, clearly, from the park at  Highbury Fields (as I'm sure everyone spotted!), but you get the idea - one rather disgusting-looking chocolate-obsessed Finn is pretty much the same as another.

As this picture, with its ice cream and sun-hat, should show, the weather has come good over the last month. This means that we've really started to go to a lot of parks again. There are now about about six parks nearby which are visited often enough to have been christened by Finn according to some feature or decoration. These grand titles include: Train Park, Train Park with Three Castles, Dragon Park, Station-Train-Boat Park, Taxi Park, and Car Park. (We particularly like the last of these - mainly because it sounds like he's asking to go to a car park, which is kind of funny!)

All of these parks are pretty much the local, which we go to with Finn in order to get out of the house, but when we're going to make a trip of it, we will go further afield, such as we did recently to the ever-popular Coram's Fields with the ever-brilliant Lily (who unfortunately is sometimes known as "Other Lily" when we're speaking to Finn!):

No idea what the praying was about in that first picture - neither of them are at all pious, even if they can at least photograph as being slightly angelic at times...

But, to return to the order/ritual thing again, this trait of Finn's does mean that he can have fits of frustration at times. This has recently meant  that it's been very hard to have Finn's friends around, as they will, quite understandably, touch stuff, which will send Finn into a spiral of upset tears. This is worst at home, where he knows things to be generally ordered (in his own odd way), but at least it's not (quite) so bad when we're off out at other people's places, such as at Lily's...

... What? ...Oh, Finn's outfit? - Yeah, a bit weird that. We were round the corner in the park near Lily's and Finn got too soaked from the damp grass etc. So we borrowed some of Lily's clothes when we went back to her's for lunch. We had a good laugh at him in it (without him taking the slightest notice, of course), but it was also very disturbing to see him as a girl; it messed with our vision of him a little. We might have to get used to it though, as he refused to take off his Lily Shirt and Lily Trousers when we came home...

Finn's orderly oddness has also combined with his silliness in a new twist of Finnism: he now insists that he is not "Finn," but "Baby Turtle." And, by 'insists' here, we mean that he really insists; so much so that it is very rare that he will allow us to get away with calling him Finn at all these days. Whether we are telling him to eat his cereals, or to get his bag, or to choose some books, or saying goodnight, or pretty much anything, he will stop us if we refer to him as Finn, saying "No Finn, my just Baby Turtle," to which the response is something like, "Oh, yes. Sorry, Baby Turtle. Can you come and get your shoes on, please, Baby Turtle?" etc.

Like with so many of Finn's whims, we humoured him on it, thinking that it was harmless, that it didn't matter and that it would pass away in a day or two. But it has now been a month and it is growing more pressing for him. We are now "Dee-Dah Turtle" and "Mama Turtle", and our friends who visit are immediately Christened "Anna Turtle" or "Thomas Turtle", and his friends have become "Conrad Turtle" and "Lily Turtle." It has even made its way into the nursery, as we find the nursery staff asking us what this whole Baby Turtle thing is about. To which we say "No idea!"

We do indeed have no idea where he got the Baby Turtle thing from. The only Baby Turtles we know are from Finding Nemo (better known in our house as "Finn Fish Called Nemo"), but it's not that, as Finn doesn't care at all about the turtles there. He also hasn't really cared to see turtles in the few trips to aquariums that we've taken. He also has never asked to see or watch baby turtles on the computer at all. And it's not come from nursery, as they're as baffled as we are about it. It's seemingly just come from nowhere. And we could be in for the long haul, if the lesson of Finn's Key Worker at nursery is anything to go by: her daughter decided out of the blue that she too was a turtle, and from about the age of four insisted that she was a turtle and that everyone had to refer to her as Turtle. It lasted for years, apparently!

I'm afraid that there are no pictures of Finn being Baby Turtle, since every picture here is of Finn, who is Baby Turtle - so there is nothing that Baby Turtle can do to be like a Baby Turtle, because he is one... but we can at least show you a picture of Baby Turtle being something else, such as a pirate!

He also took on the persona of Super Duck for a Dad's Club Saturday morning at the start of the month. To give you the background, Super Duck is a (rather annoying) character from a book, which looks like this:

We picked up a Get-Kids-Reading initiative thing free book from the nursery, which came with a cut-out mask to recreate the Duck's mask. Finn's not one for dressing up normally, but having read the book when we got up one Saturday morning, I suggested that Finn wear the mask, which he did, and then didn't take it off, even when we left for Dad's Club. He insisted on keeping the mask on throughout the entirely of the two-hours of Dad's Club - on the slides, in the train, playing with cars, reading books, eating our brunch etc. Very odd. The other dads were humoured by it, but then just baffled by Finn when he reacted to their questions by very seriously and earnestly informing them that he was not a Superhero but was in fact Baby Turtle...!

As the Super Duck story suggests, Finn still loves books. Lots of books. Generally a "Tower" or books, or else "All of Them" - both of which is quite a lot to ask of tired parents at bedtime! Sometimes it's ok though, like when we go to the library specifically to read books, when it can be quite lovely to have a book-loving child:

June has also seen the development of Finn's independence, meaning, the first signs of rebellion. We were shocked to hear him petulantly shout "No" at us not long ago. It completely took us by surprise and we all just stopped. It was quiet of a sudden and Finn looked very sheepish and exposed. We asked him why he said it and he immediately capitulated and said sorry. It worked out ok that time, but it was a scary thing to see, and probably a warning sign of what's to be tested more over the coming months. Indeed, he has actually pushed "No," a few times since then, but never very seriously or convincingly. We're quite good at explaining things to him, including why we're doing things or why he can or cannot do certain things, so a flat "no" is a rare thing in this household, so clearly even for Finn it's a rather uncomfortable thing to say in that way. Let's hope that it can stay that way...

Finn also enjoyed the World Cup when it was on, catching a lot of the 5pm games for the Group Stages. This would often mean his playing on the floor beside us near the computer, eating cheese sandwiches or some other such easy meal on the picnic rug on the floor in the lounge, and occasionally even bathing with the football on the computer nearby (which Finn found very funny!). He was even more excited about it knowing that he'd get to watch "One train and one bus" at the end of it - a YouTube video of the Wheels on the Bus song, and an irritating train video he saw and demanded one time! But we still felt very proud of him for his football-watching ways, it's just a shame that he was only able to support one of his teams into the knock-out stages... But they probably only made it that far because of having such great supporters as Finn!

But, if you were worried that Finn was looking too heavily over the Atlantic for his roots, fret not! We're counteracting the American (god forbid!) with a good dose of the Manx, such as through some rather impressive singing in Manx Gaelic, as you do:

(And, if there you happen to speak Gaelg, apologies for killing the pronunciation there!)

Having already mentioned a lot of things, it's probably worth mentioning two other traits of Finn's that he's picked up recently: using 'probably' inappropriately often, and listing things on his fingers. The first means that he will tells us that we're probably on a bike (when we're riding to nursery), or that we're probably going to eat dinner now (as we're putting the plates on the table), or that it's probably raining (as we're looking out at the rain lashing against the window) etc. The second means that he will be very easy to set onto a task by simply listing the things that we need to accomplish on our fingers. So we get him out of the house by telling him that we're going to, first, put on our High-Vis, second, put on our helmet, third get on the bike, fourth, cycle to nursery, fifth (because the list, according to Finn, always has to have five items), get to nursery and go into nursery and say goodbye to Dee-Dah. This works really well, as long as you're willing to wait for one  or so additional minutes as Finn repeats back to you laboriously and painfully everything that you've just said, counting them up very questionably on his fingers. Here is a picture of Finn mid-list (although he has one finger extended, don't think that that necessarily means that he's on the first item (that's part of the excitement of a Finn list!)):

(Note that Finn is here still in his Lily Trousers and Lily Shirt, even when back home - he really did not want to take them off!)

So, at last and very-almost-finally, there is the Big Story of June, which revolved around Finn's tongue, or, rather, through it almost... Cori was phoned by nursery to be told that he had bit his tongue but that he was now calm and seemingly ok. Cori's reaction (in her head, at least) was "Why are you phoning me up to tell me this?!" But then when she went to collect him she was first spotted by the other kids who leapt around her shouting over each other to tell her that Finn had bit his tongue and that it had been bleeding. They were very excited to be telling her about it. Then Finn toddled out, in his usual happy way, but then he stuck out his tongue so that Cori, and everyone else, could see it (it was obviously something that he was now very proud of and which he was very used to doing since that morning). What was revealed was something like this... (look away all you squeamish!)...

This is, as you will immediately see, more than just a bit tongue! We shudder to think how much it was bleeding when he did it - it must have been terrifying to see. No wonder the other kids were so excited about it all!

Apparently he did it by falling near to the table and hitting his chin on the edge of it, and seemingly very nearly biting through his tongue completely. But, we discover, the tongue is not something which you can stitch up; mainly because it heals itself so very quickly. This picture is from our brushing his teeth, at the end of the day, at which point it was visibly a lot less gaping than it had been earlier on. By the next day it was merely a large cut, and by the day after it was almost healed over.

But it didn't really effect him (by the time we saw him, at least!). He was quite happy to eat his dinner and drink happily enough, even if a little gingerly. There is something of a line there on his tongue still, but we don't know if that will be a permanent scar or not. It would be a good story to tell if he did get to have a scar - especially since he doesn't seem to have been at all adversely affected by it!

But in case you are feeling sorry for the lost purity of Finn's tongue, here is a rather nice picture that we took before the Great Tongue Disaster (which I feel slightly ashamed of having ravaged rather in Pixlr...)

The only thing left to show now is a few pictures from a family photo session that we did, in a weak attempt at trying to recreate something of the regular and extensive photo sessions that we did when we were expecting Finn. Things were, understandably, a little more silly this time round...