December #2: Christmas Day, Hunt the Wren Day & beyond

Here it is - the post about Christmas 2018! Whoop!
Let's start with this fantastic picture...

This is the only picture we got from joining in on our friends' family tradition of going up Cronk ny Arrey Laa on the shortest day of the year. Needless to say, doing it after work, it was dark. It was very nice though - a nice marker of the season. Though it was rather too scary for us all when those ahead on the walk lay down and then effectively leapt out on us - terrifying!
We're already booked in for the longest day of the year, when we imagine that the ascent will be somewhat different!

After that all-too-exciting opening picture, we move onto the rather horrifying ones of Orry's foot and mouth:

This did not go well. The first night it came on was horrible, with Orry wailing in frustrated agony at achieving neither a relief from his itching nor sleep. He would flinch about in the bed, in an agony of tired pain. Of course, this was our bed, so Cori got as good as no sleep that night. (I am generally unwanted by poorly children, so I tend to end just being ejected from the bad to make space for them - such is the dad's life).
Orry was ok after the initial horror of it though, and he was then just a diseased-looking child, happy enough.

But we've jumped the gun a bit, as here is Orry & Finn before the pox hit, looking very cool:

You know from their trolley-pulling that we're heading off towards the shop for the weekly grocery shop. It's done by me, Finn and Orry, in a task which they quite enjoy, strangely. It's rewarding to take them to do it, even for its occasional blips, as the admiration that the boys get for being 'such good boys' in their task doing is lovely.

Perhaps less lovely is Orry's whim to now always want to door open when having a poo, when he'll then try and keep you there chatting to him as he does his thing. Not the most pleasant of occupations for the rest of us!

A terrible double-leg injury fixed by the doctor - phew!

And a delighted Orry at a sign near the real hospital:

Sometimes in the morning we run out of time, or we fail to have bread in for sandwiches, for Finn's lunch. Happily, working next door, this is an excuse to have the occasional happy lunch together, normally in my work kitchen, but when meetings are going on, we will take it to the public space, and eat like we're in a rather large hall of a dining room, at a tiny table:

Before moving onto the real Christmas things, it's worth reminding ourselves of the piece of Hop tu Naa that hangs outside the door yet, getting older and creepier:

I adore the thing decaying there, but Cori despises it, seeing it only for being a rotting vegetable on a string outside our front door. There's no romance in her!

Christmas, however, has heaps of romance about it...
Of course, the run in to Christmas begins with getting across to Maughold, with children wearing novelty hats and sleeping on the journey (all three is a rare treat - we didn't want to leave the car, just as they didn't when we woke them!)...

... to get to the Christingle Service - as strange and repetitive as every year, but at least it's only once a year we have to suffer having to shout out 'Santa Socks!' when the vicar works in a bad chocolate-related pun in his sermon, or arguing with Orry about his eating all the sweets off the Christingle even before he's got back to his seat - ah, traditions, the things childhood memories are made of!

And then it was home to get the kids to bed and make ready this lovely thing for them to be waking up to:

When it came to it, we forgot to prepare the children for what the expect in the morning, and we hadn't discussed it either. So it was that it was only with the final presents under the tree that we debated whether Father Christmas left the stockings downstairs in their their room, or in their beds. In the end it went to the foot of their beds (against Cori's tradition, but very much continuing the magic of the Christmas morning wake-ups that I knew as a child).
But it didn't work out perfectly, as when we woke up at 7am or so and went through to them we found that they hadn't dared open then up yet, and had merely been feeling them to try and tell what they were in excitement but awaiting permission to open them. We felt very guilty. But they had an excited time opening them up and munching something in there.
Then it was on to the present opening...

The older boys were very 'helpful' with Oshin's presents (whether he liked it or not!), but once their presents were upon them, they weren't so bothered by the baby presents, especially when they got things like Lego & books (Finn) - including this wonderful book from my own childhood (here being read at the breakfast table a little later):

Or, for the child who isn't really bothered by particular things at the moment, the genius present of a Giant Noodle:

This was something fun which Cori thought of from the kids' suggestions when she got Orry the Little Noodle for going to Legoland with. So she created the pattern and spend many a long evening cutting, sewing and stuffing.
A fine thing it came out, even though we knew that his interest in it would be limited, as he's not so into soft toys (beyond his favourite, Little Noodle), and that damn Snowy was only days into his glow of affection. But still, it was a fun thing to get him:

Another great idea of Cori's for Orry was something from her own childhood - the Saxoflute!

(Notice Orry's dancing feet there, Finn's admiration for his new Lego!)
As you might imagine, this changeable tooting instrument thingy was a massive success, with both the boys making new versions of it and tooting around the house. Very delightful/noisy/annoying.
Here is Orry demonstrating the instruments full range of notes as he accompanies Finn's singing of one of their carols from the Christmas Show - 'Nollick Ghennal erriu ooilley' (We wish you a merry Christmas):

The whole family also got a present which the boys loved - a projector:

This, again, was Cori's idea. For it to work in our home, she had to make a screen, which was a large sheet of fabric on a pole, which we hang over the alcove of the bay window. Perfect!

Oshin was a fan of the goings-on of Christmas, but he was probably more interested in his own toes than any of his particular presents!

Of course, we heading north for presents at granny's before a lovely Christmas dinner at the cousins'.
A lovely Christmas Day.

Boxing Day / St. Stephen's Day / Wren Day was, as ever, a very action-packed Manx day, with Hunt the Wren and Cammag, with music in pubs in between.
Unlike the past couple of years, we headed to Ramsey for the Manx dancing in the streets around the (mock) dead wren on a pole, which was nice, as we got to hang out Finn's friend from school:

Finn danced only the first time or so, after which he was one of the wren pole team, with his mate. By the time we got round to the Mitre, we were very glad to get in for a warm-up cup of tea and a biscuit, made all the more delightful with music, which Oshin was enthralled by:

After that, they all stayed in Ramsey as I headed off to Cammag in St. John's. Unlike last year, where the match was being played, this year the music session in the pub afterwards was being filmed, so the game was just for fun, and I successfully managed not to get my shins broken, which was good. The music was good too - a fine conclusion to a good Wren Day.

After the excitement of Christmas, we didn't do too much, other than a few little trips out, such as one I took to Glen Helen with just Orry (as others were ill or else sick of the one inclined to be naughty!):

The pictures might look delightful, but this was the trip where he declared he needed a poo, far up the glen. And so it was that Orry pooed at the side of the path in one of the Island's beautiful glens, and my hanky came out somewhat worse for wear!

We also made a rare trip to the Museum in Douglas, and made the mistake of going past the dressing-up area. Our hoped-for trip to the museum ended up being an inadvertent trip to a dressing-up place. All very fun for a bit - with a bit of joining in too - but all very dull after 10 minutes. Such are museums with areas created for children (effectively a space in the building away from the museum, which you get stuck in with kids!):

Beyond that, here is a rare picture, of Oshin sleeping after being put down after a walk out with me (hence the funny position of him) - success! - Though only for about 10 minutes...

I was out filming for work on the 27th - a tradition that involves an over-salted disgusting cake with soot and egg shells in. The people in the film sent me home with some. It was traumatising, so after a tiny bite, I took it round to a friend interested in Manx thing, but only her husband was in, who was understandably somewhat baffled by the gift!

But, to close the December blogs - at last! - here are those two boys having a lovely episode of play - just the sort of thing a Christmas holiday is made for!

December #1: Parties, writing & more

The first event of December 2018 was Orry's first visit to the legendary Fun Barn in Onchan. It is a rite of passage for children of this age to go to parties here, as loud and generally unpleasant as it is for the parents.

Inevitably, Orry was not a child to run off happily on his own to his friends, but lurked on the edge and obliged me to get in. Indeed, even more telling of Orry was that he wanted to play on his own with me near, not even really too bothered about playing with me, but just wanting to have fun, but not wth anyone. But eventually, when his best friends came, he got more involved, and he certainly got involved when the food came out!
It was strange to be a children's party for one of Orry's friends without Finn. It is our first such thing for him, as most of our friends are from the circle around Finn's Manx school. So it was strange to be with 'normal' people. In fact, I was rather shocked to discover that none of the other parents whose children were at Orry's Manx language nursery were bothered about sending their child to the Manx language school. It appears that no one else thought like us about the language's importance (most people were just sending their child to the nursery because it was convenient by where they lived!). It appears that Orry will have none of his nursery friends with him when he starts in September, which will make it trickier to ease him into the new environment.

With December comes Christmas parties, the first of which was for the dance group. But not before they had their final performance of the year, at the Christmas Lights Turn On in Peel (in appropriate seasonal Manx dancing attire!):

You will note that these are picture of Finn dancing. Orry, it was quite clear, was not going to be dancing. And, unlike with Finn early on, it was not that he was in conflict about it and being sorry about missing out even as he said 'no' - he clearly didn't want to do it and there was no conflict in him about it. So we didn't force him, and he showed no remorse whatsoever about missing out on it, despite our best efforts to praise Finn in front of him...! He didn't care, so it seems that he's not going to be a Manx dancer.
He's also not going to be a piper...

He is, however, going to be an enjoyer of bubbles & raucous fun!

Although bitterly cold (and probably a bit too 'sociable' for all our comfort levels!), it is lovely to be in a community like Peel & Manx dancing for events like this, where it is clearly a magical thing for the children to experience and be a part of, and to mark the year by and perhaps a point in their lives.
This sort of privilege of enjoying events like this from the inside was wonderfully shown by getting chatting to the newspaper photographer who I vaguely know through work. I jokingly asked if he'd got Finn in the pictures, as he loves being in the papers. He then showed me the ones he got, of a dance Finn wasn't in, and then offered to take our family picture. So it was that our smiling Christmas Jumper picture was in the papers the next week - now nicely filed away as a happy memory for the future!

This performance was followed shortly afterwards with the lovely dancing Christmas party. As ever, this involved everyone bringing food, doing some fun dancing, to Christmas tunes, and generally having fun. This year had the added bonus of everyone getting a present - a buff, which Finn, Orry, and every child was delighted by, expect maybe Oshin (despite having the best Father Christmas outfit ever)!

Having just said that Orry isn't a dancer, we had certainly thought he had been not long ago, especially when he was brave enough to join in the dancing at the group. In fact, the leader was so enthused by Orry's joining in that she called everyone to quiet in order to present Orry with (the lend of) a medal for his brilliance at joining in. Everyone clapped. Orry was so delighted by it!
He took the medal to bed with him and we'd often find him gazing at it over the next week or so.
But it didn't inspire him to take up dancing ever again. Never mind. It's just not his thing.

A big worry for us as parents at the start of December was that Finn had put himself to be voted for for the School council. This might sound like a strange thing to be concerned about, but, of course, such things are frequently popularity contests in that context, so we were worried that he'd set himself up for an unpleasant disappointment (especially when there are 'popular' children in his class). This fear was heightened by conversations with other parents, whose (older) children were getting very stressed about it all.
The process of election was hard to make out from the school notes and Finn's half-told stories, but it involved postering about, the creation of policies, and a speech to the whole class (or perhaps school). In all of this those up for election had a helper. We were delighted to discover that Finn's was the lovely Sage, who we didn't know he'd been hanging out with at all.
Here is Finn's campaign that he made himself (even the picture is his, as is the dodgy spelling!):

(The text reads something like: "Vote for Finn! I have two very good ideas!" - In yellow, because that's Finn's favourite colour!)
Knowing that he was going into it, whether we liked it or not, we spoke to him about it and asked him what he was going to say in his speech. We suggested a form for his speech, with an introduction, three ideas and why they are important, and a conclusion. Then we worked on the three ideas, which were mainly his (something vague about recycling, the desire to do more science, and wanting to go on more field trips outside of school).
We were then amazed to discover that the result of the secret ballot in his class was that he was elected, with one other representative, to the school council. We were delighted for him!

A few weeks later I was delighted to hear from others inside the school that Finn left an enormous impression on everyone in the first meeting.
Apparently he went in with his ideas written down in his (Lego) notebook, and then ran the show, talking everyone off the block and putting them out entirely by his apparent professionalism. The person I spoke to was delightedly impressed to see it! And, of course, all the older girls turned up to the next meetings with their own notebooks!
Apparently one of the rules made in the second or third meeting, all done very democratically, was that the older children set up a new rule that the younger children would speak and decide on their issues, and that the older children would do so with theirs. This was apparently just a (very effective) way of making sure that Finn didn't take over every meeting with his talking!
We were delighted to hear it. Not because his talking is good (we're well aware that it would be horribly disruptive for a meeting to get stuff done in), but because it shows his complete confidence in what should be an intimidating situation - speaking on a level with older children (in Manx).
... Of course, as is the way of these things, a month or two in and the fervour rather goes from the thing and he and the others lose interest in it all and declare it boring. But he still goes and does his thing.

The 6th of December brings Laa'l Catreeney in the Manx calendar. A day for which there is a song (and the tradition of a custom involving burying a hen and drinking a lot!). We and the school had been speaking about it, but, unlike some of the other children, it's clear that song is not a thing which Finn (or Orry) learns very easily!

In December Orry decided that he couldn't possibly be expected to sleep on his own and that he needed to sleep with someone. So he started creeping up into Finn's top bunk, which Finn was happy enough about - it was all quite fun, and a nice thing to be close to his brother:

We were somewhat surprising by Finn's acceptance of this though at times, due to the terrible snoring that Orry can do. But it says a lot about how good Finn is at sleeping now that he's seemingly utterly untroubled by it, even when it's like this:

Actually, as some might recognise, this is not normal snoring for a four-year-old. So Cori has taken this to the doctor to ask. They have come back with the idea that perhaps he's not resting as he should be like this and that perhaps it explains something of his moods. He is to be booked in for a sleep test at some point. (About which Orry is terrified, for some reason we can't quite work out!)
Also noisy in bed, even early in the morning, is this person...

With Orry mostly sleeping in Finn's bed, it means that Orry's bed has been left clean and ready to accept cute babies when the others are being got ready for the day. A lovely thing!

Unlike last year, where Finn was pressing to get the decorations up even in November, the push wasn't as strong this year, which was nice to get them up on our own time. A fine tree was had:

Oshin liked the decorations too - mainly to kick...

A Christmas themed activity was the creation of a puppet show with some characters which we worked on together, and Finn scripted it out.

(The word at the end of the first line is 'Mooinjer Veggey' - the Little People (the fairies)).
Finn's written words are his weak point, so its activities like that which we should do more of, but which we generally fail to.
Perhaps that because we're normally doing silly things like suggesting that Orry gives Oshin a piggy back around the house - great fun for everyone, expect the parents, or Oshin once Orry gets carried away!

December is also the season for schools shows. Of course, this year was different as we had a show for Orry as well as Finn.
The nursery thing was wonderfully nursery. Everyone was dressed up as stars, father Christmas made an appearance (and Orry wouldn't go near him), songs were sung, snacks were eaten. All very lovely, and it was good that we all (but for Finn, who was in school) could be there, including granny.
Here is Orry in his 'rollage' outfit:

Finn's school Christmas show was also brilliant, though we don't have any pictures from that, sadly. But for the reception class, none of the other children dress up. The event is all songs, readings and some dancing, but that is mainly led by the older classes. The night was fun though, and Finn had fun.

There was a pleasant outsourcing of work at my work in December, getting in an expert maker of things to make a thing. She brought along her assistant...

Unfortunately, the flat-pack Mari Lwyd (of which there is a Manx equivalent, which was why it was being made) was phenomenally time-heavy and so, after a week of evenings, it has been left on the top of our bookshelf for Christmas 2019!

Another Christmas party, of course, is the Maughold Sunday School. We never go, but for once a year, but granny is determined that they should be there for that once a year. No one complains. Lots of traditional party games, a noisy feast, and a heap of treats, of course...

Another thing with granny does each year - or, rather, constantly - is to enter numerous entries into local competitions under different names. This time it was Orry's name which was pulled out of the hat and so we got the call (completely unawares!) that he had won. We had no idea what we were getting, and granny thought it was Lego (as Finn got last year), but not so, it was Snowy...!

We were aghast when the fella in the shop emerged with it. But there was no getting away from it, and so we had to take him. He was much loved though, even from that first car drive home, and beyond...

Orry isn't actually isn't reading that Manx book - he's just enjoys a new book, even if it's just to look at the pictures. He's not that brilliant.
He is still quite brilliant though.
At the start of the month Orry became interested in letters and started to turn more to letters in his drawings:

As well as 'Mama' & 'Orry' and other words appearing, you will note that it says 'Poopoopoop' along the bottom there. This shows that (a) Orry is not playing at writing, but actually making words with the letters, and (b) it is very much Orry doing the writing!
He became quite obsessed with writing, as he does with this sort of a fad, happily filling pieces of paper with words and letters whenever he was able to carve out the time to do it, even as Finn ate breakfast:

If you are wondering what Orry is writing here, you will probably be somewhat as impressed as we were to see that he was writing down rhyming words, which Finn was helping with:

Cori had the great idea of starting him on the blackboard on the back of the kitchen door, which he then had a great time on:

If you're wondering, Orry read this out to us, or at least, improvised what it says in a reading-sort-of way:

"10 days ago it explodes, and then it was 9 days ago, and then 10 again."

No idea what that's all about!

This taking to writing is just the latest of Orry's amazing progress in reading. Cori met a lovely report of this at her Monday morning Manx playgroup...
Cori was chatting to a nice lady there, who found out that Orry was at the Manx nursery. This prompted the woman to speak a friend of hers who had visited the nursery that week in order to check it out for her own son/daughter who they were thinking of putting there. Cori asked how she found it, and the woman related how her friend had been amazed that a child there who was already reading. Apparently the nursery workers were rather proud of this child's abilities and the woman was in awe that a child in nursery could read already - she couldn't get over it.
Cori asked if she remembered the child's name. The woman couldn't, but she said that it was something Manx-ish.
"It wasn't Orry, was it?"
"That's it! How did you know?"
"Well, that's Orry."
The woman was delighted to have met this legendary child - "The Orry!"
Of course, we were delighted by all this. What a lovely thing to discover that other people think like this about your child. - It's the sort of thing that I imagine we'll be telling Orry for the rest of his life!

But, back to the blackboard, so to speak, from the time he started to use it, he loved it, even doing some wonderfully strange pictures, with great determination, demanding that we brought over his chair so that he could complete it as he wanted to...

Here is another of Orry's great chalkboard masterpieces. No idea what of - it's probably a sad person, or a dead person or the like - the sorts of things Orry will report in a jolly way without dwelling at all on it...

Having mocked at the idea of Orry reading Manx before, we were delighted to work out what he wrote here in this picture:

Cori was baffled by it until Orry explained that he was drying his hands - they are the words of a Manx nursery song - 'Ugh, ugh, ugh ta my laueyn fliugh.' If you listen to it, you'll see that he's not that far off. - We were very proud of our Orry for creating such a thing in Manx!

Other bits of genius Orry include his copying out what I'd written out for him a month or so earlier when he was beginning to work out how to read words:

But perhaps even more wonderful are the pictures he drew on the back of these. I've no idea what's going on, but it's great!

Of course, any discussion of Orry & art wouldn't be complete without his fine phone art, frequently created with his equally strong-willed & raucous friend (a sister of one of Finn's classmates), who he hangs out with on his Monday playgroup and at swimming:

They get up to such silliness as this:

Which leads Orry to adapt pictures which might being looking lovely in this way...

But end up looking lovely in this way:

I'll leave the Christmas Day doings for a second post, but I'll leave you with one final picture. Since the greater part of this has been about Orry and his brilliance, here is a brilliant picture of Orry: