June #2: Finn convinces us to move to the Isle of Man

Having already done most of June already, this post is just for two things: one is the fine display of art; the other is the story of how Finn came to convince us that we should go to the Isle of Man...
But first, the side by sides, which were forgotten before!

19 months old

20 months old

56 months (4 years 8 months) old

57 months (4 years 9 months) old

We might as well make a sandwich of it, and start with just some of the art:

I am afraid that we've forgotten what this one was of, which is a shame, because they are often of fantastic things, like this one, which we felt deserved to have its name recorded beneath the thing itself:

Of course, most of the "what it's of" attributions come more like titles for the pictures, given long after the fact of having drawn the thing. Not all though, some are very deliberate, such as these depicting the story which he made up at nursery and which they diligently wrote out:

It is probably worth stating that one of the nursery workers has a baby on the way, and one of Finn's friends there has a mother who has just given birth - which explains Finn's odd idea of adding a baby to his mother's "tummy" - this is not news announcement here!
We don't really know any context to the story and it's pictures (the one of the family is, of course, drawn mostly by Finn's key-worker), or any idea what is going on, but we are glad that they thought to record them.

The story of Finn's convincing us to move to the Isle of Man is a strange one.
We had resolutely avoided telling him about leaving London, knowing that it was (on child-terms) a very long way away, and that he would not want to give up London and all that he gets from it. We felt sure that he would be positive about the Isle of Man, but that he would absolutely give a fight in being asked to give up London for it. He gets so much from his friends at nursery, his nursery, our family adventures, Dad's Club etc. He seems fully engaged in his life, which is fully embedded in London.
We'd envisaged having to seek out the specialist children's books for those who are moving, or create for ourselves various activities that Finn could engage in the move with. It would take a lot of hard work, but it would be worth it to overcome any negativity or difficulty about the move.
This idea of Finn being against the move, however, was a false assumption.

We don't know where he got the idea from - we don't think that he ever overheard us speaking about it. We did allusively speak about it in his presence at times, but there was never a time that we we ever really clear enough for him to understand even if he was listening, and there never was a time that we felt that he was listening. (He is quiet clear when he overhears something - he will go quiet and evidently concentrate on what's being said, and then burst out into some question or other about this or that term we might have used).
Rather, it seems more likely that it all just comes from a children's TV programme which he'd watched the week before or so. It was one which showed a child packing and preparing to move, as the programme guided the viewer through all the different steps of the process.
This then started a sequence of questions about our old flat, which we'd been living in when he was born. Finn ended up being strangely sad to not have seen it, and to not be able to go back there and play with all his old toys. We tried to explain that we'd brought all the toys here with him, but he was still mysteriously upset about it. He felt sure that we'd somehow left a box of toys from that home there.
But this died down within 10 minutes of talking about it and we heard nothing more until a week or so later...

Cori was on the way back from the doctor's with Finn (about his hearing) on a weekday, and he suddenly returned to a sadness about never having moved before.
"You have moved - when we came to our new home from our old home," said Cori.
"Oh, not that. I want to move again."
It could have gone badly wrong if he'd picked the wrong answer to the question, but Cori thought to ask: "If you could move, where would you move to?"
"Ah!" Finn said in a shaft of inspiration, "I've got it! I love granny. It would be nice if we could be close to granny. We should move to the Isle of Man."
Cori kept her cool and played it perfectly, commenting: "That's quite far away, what about London. Don't you like London any more?"
"I do, but we can always come back and visit. I think it would be nice to live in the Isle of Man."
"I think that's a really good idea, we'll have to ask Deedah about it. He might have lots of questions, so we'll have to think of what he'll ask and what he'll say."
This was about as far as it got before they were at nursery, returning him there for a few hours to claim something of her day. With the door to the room of his friends and nursery workers, Finn ran in shouting "We're moving! We're moving!"
The nursery workers already knew, of course, about the move, and so they turned to Cori to congratulate her on telling him, but Cori pointedly said that it had been Finn's idea and that it was not definite until Finn's Dad agreed also. Finn agreed.
It was a Tuesday, which meant that Finn had his dance lesson, so Cori got a long time to talk it all through with him on the travel to and from the dance studio down by the canal on Shoreditch High Street. Cori began by explaining that I would probably have a lot of questions to ask, and that it would be good if they thought through all of the answers before they spoke to me. Then began a wonderful and impressive exchange where Finn dealt positively and logically with all the possible problems that he and Cori could think of (and, most impressively, coming up with problems himself, and then providing his own answers to them):

Finn: "He will probably say, what if we miss our friends"
Cori: "And what will you say?"
Finn: "I will say that we will make some new friends. But if we miss our London friends, we can write them a letter, or we could visit them, or they could visit us."

Cori: "What about your new school?"
Finn: "It's ok, because I can find a school on the Isle of Man to go it, and it will also be very nice."

This went on for quite a while, covering everything from school, Dad's Club and Dance Lessons to friend, houses and jobs. It even included such important discussions as:

Cori: "What if Deedah gets sad about leaving Orry behind?"
Finn: "Oh, mamma, don't be silly! Orry can come too!"

It ended with the final concluding catch-all reason as follows:

Cori: "Those are all very good ideas, but what if Deedah ends with, I just don't know, Finn?"
Finn: "I will say, Do you love granny, Deedah, and he will say, yes, and I will say, granny is in the isle of Man and if we move there we will be close to her and that is a good thing."

Having been fore-warned by Cori about what was coming up when I returned home, we ran through the questions again, with me asking them directly to Finn and him coming back with the answers (though often calling on Cori to provide the good answers they'd come up with before). After such an onslaught of rational argument, picking off my counter-arguments precisely and one-by-one, I had no leg to stand on and we had to submit completely to Finn's idea of moving to the Isle of Man.
Getting Granny's agreement to it the next day was simple enough, and then it was all clear and simple from then on (at least in terms of the family buy-in anyway!)

One draw-back of this otherwise-brilliant method of getting Finn on board is that Finn subsequently believes that the idea is wholly his, and, therefore, he gets to make all the important decisions. Such as whether we live in a house or in a flat, have a garden or not, what colour the car is, whether the car is convertible or not, what the car's name is etc.
... You will note that there are a lot of car decisions being tampered with by Finn. It will be hard news for him to take when he discovers that we are not going to get a yellow convertible car named Polly!

And now for the second half of the art, beginning with the things Finn helped cut out at nursery in one of their games/activities which really impressed us towards the end of that week at nursery:

The activity was for the children to cut out objects for the home from magazines, and they to arrange them inside blocks which they had set up in the rough shape of a house floor-plan. It was, obviously, a great thing for everyone to play, and Finn especially loved it. As you will note, they also printed out a map of the British Isles, just so they could tell everyone (and probably inform themselves!) where the Isle of Man is.

I don't really know what these people are, or why one is split in two, but at least the following is clear (and clearly marked!)

It's not clear where Orry is, but never mind. For those interested in Finn's artistic development, you will be pleased to know that below our heads is a neck - obvious on Deedah, but less so on Mama - and on our body is a belly-button - it wouldn't be very realistic otherwise!
And, to finish with, Finn's excellent picture of a giant (named Finn Boogee Franklin), the sun (named Finn Sun Franklin Juan), light, a rainbow, a waterfall, Finn, Mama, Orry, and me - a masterpiece:

June: Beginning the London Bucket List

Now that the decision to move to the Isle of Man has been taken, June was made up of a heap of activities and organising (and even more intentions to do even more activities and organising!).

The decision to move to the Isle of Man was a very big one, and not one taken easily or lightly. For everyone, a lot will be given up in making the move. This is even more so for Cori, who has a wonderful London job and doesn't have the Manx ties which others do. But immediately after The Big Decision, we set about making a "London Bucket List" of all the things we wanted to do or which we felt should be done before we left.
It was a strange list to write, as we realised immediately that the list wasn't that long. Although we have enjoyed so much in London over the years, very little of it is the sort of thing to do again, or which make sense to do with children. Walking the streets of our old lives in Hampstead Village, for instance, isn't on there, as it makes no sense with children. And so, even by the end of the month, with the Bucket List long written, the need to do most of them has worn off. We find, already, that we are beginning to let go; the list has many things that we'd like to do as Londoners, but now that we are transitioning into being non-Londoners we some of the items fall off the list. It is a strange thing to observe in ourselves.
Regardless, one of the key things on there was the zoo. This was because it is such an apparent London institution (though we have only ever been twice), Finn always enjoys it, and Orry is into animals. So we went on the first Post Big Decision weekend and we were very impressed that we were out of the house for about eight hours - a sign of how much we made of our zoo trip, and how much everyone was taking from it:

All good adventures include a picnic, and also a walk on a wall:

The boys loved spying the tigers through a little hole, and, probably more impressive for Finn at least, getting to sit in the little car thing which featured as a novelty within the tiger area:

Other highlights included seeing fish (still Orry's great favourite of all - the aquarium is on The Bucket List, but for later):

Eating ice-lollies:

Walking like an animal (for no apparent reason) and pushing poo:

We had gone there, of all places, as Orry loves animals. His best friend in the world, for instance, is his toy sheep, "Baa-baa." But it transpires that Orry only really likes animals in the abstract, not in the actuality, as the pictures show:

We all still had a great time though. As a final parting shot to the zoo, here is a picture of smiley Orry, doing what is a new habit of his - lifting up his shirt to poke a finger in his tummy-button:

This is a thing particularly funny for me to see as this was my "thing" when I was Orry's age. Sometimes he also will have us do the same to our own belly-buttons, or else put his finger into our belly-buttons. It's all a bit odd. There was also a period in June where Orry decided that he could only fall asleep when he had his head on Cori, and his finger in her belly-button or on a mole on her belly. Very odd!

Less odd, more fantastic, is Finn's dancing. Or, rather, what is truly fantastic is his absolute immersion in music, and his reacting to that immersion with movement/dancing, regardless of where he is or who is around him. This is sadly something which will probably leave him very soon, as he is mysteriously conscious of others "laughing" at him (even though we don't know of anyone ever having so laughed at him), so we see that this freedom of immersion-in-music dancing is something which is probably at its height now and is to be celebrated and enjoyed while it lasts. This includes even when as pass through Camden on the way back from the zoo and we stop to enjoy the street-performers (we always stop at (decent) street-performers in London and it will be a terrible loss to go without them in future):

The eagle-eyed would have noted the "I'm In" stickers on Finn and Orry during the zoo trip. This is in reference to the EU membership Referendum, which the "Remain" people were campaigning for outside the Zoo. We are/were Remainers, but we wouldn't normally wear stickers... but children like stickers, and stickers are good!
When it came to the day to vote, I took Finn with me, dropping Orry off into nursery and then taking Finn back out into the library/polling-booth which adjoins the nursery. It only took a couple of minutes, but Finn enjoyed queuing up, getting the polling card, watching as I marked the "X" and then putting it in the ballot box.
Cori had explained voting a few days earlier with the analogy of asking whether we were to have pizza or chicken for dinner, and everyone voting for their favourite. I had explained it that morning as along the lines of it being a vote over whether or not we are a part of "the Europe Club" which is there so that we can all be nice and help each other. Maybe I was somewhat partisan in my explanation, but Finn knew which side he wanted to win on the day! (He was also about as surprised and disappointed by the result as we were once it came out!)
He went into nursery charged with the excitement of voting and he went in excitedly explaining to everyone what he'd just been doing and he asked to do it himself at nursery. Rather brilliantly, and illustratively of how wonderful the nursery is, Finn and his friends all had a vote that day - with ballot papers and a ballot box, and signs with "Polling Station" up everywhere. It was great to see when we went in to collect them, and everyone enjoyed it all, especially Finn, who was able to explain to everyone (including the grown-ups!) how it all worked! Apparently Finn voted for TV over playing, which didn't surprise us!

After that little spate of words, here are the boys sporting some fine hats - Orry matching his T-Shirt and being a firefighter, and Finn relaxing as a Frenchman:

A lovely outing in June was to the Museum of London Docklands, which we took one Sunday when Cori was working, at the Museum, as she saw the day on Saturday and saw that it was obviously something that Finn and Orry were to enjoy, which they did.
Finn got really into two things there, the first of which was a "rubbish music" session, where we watched a man making a piece music on reclaimed pieces of rubbish and looping it through his recording machine to make some great funky tune. Finn was fully engaged in it and couldn't keep from bopping away. However, he was too shy to join in with the music-making when me, Orry and everyone else went up to join in with the man. Finn remained in his place, resolutely not looking at anyone. Shame. Orry had a good time banging things though! Then we went over and made our own little rubbish drum-kit and shaker, which the two of them played as we walked around the rest of the museum.
Here they are enjoying the rubbish drums at home afterwards:

As well as the general arts & crafts on gallery (including bangle-making and paper-chain making), we went to see a piece of children's theatre. It was a curious mix of being about (a) pirates and (b) recycling, but they pulled it off brilliantly. The story was of a school-trip to a museum, where the two of the actors got sucked back in time to pirate times, and a treasure island which was being desecrated by the careless rubbish-dropping of the pirate. The time-travellers then used the things that they'd learned along the way to save the day and return to the present day. Wow!
The 45-minute session was aimed at 5-to-11 year olds, and I was suspicious of how Finn would take to it. This fear as exacerbated by Orry's becoming touchy 20 minutes or so in, meaning that I had to leave Finn on his own in the crowd of children as I went down the back to entertain Orry (until he shockingly fell asleep upright leaning against me as I had him sat on a bench!). With songs, interactions, moments of fear and excitement, I was sure that Finn wasn't going to be able to get through it without me to help him, but he did, and he had a brilliant time in the process. He got really into it, shouting out at the interactions, standing up and dancing at the recurring song, and following mesmerised throughout. It was amazing and so lovely to see. To hear him shouting out and to see the actors speaking back to him from where I was down the back of the room was very lovely indeed. - How far Finn has come recently - he would never have done a thing like that only a month or so ago!
He was singing the recurring song for days afterwards, and he recalled it enough to have me sing it weeks later: "Reduce it, reduce it, if you can reduce it reuse it. Reuse it, reuse it, if you can't reuse it recycle it. Let's save Mother Earth!"
First a picture taken from the promotional images for the theatre company, of the littering pirate captain, following by Orry and Finn getting stuck into one of the activities in the interactive gallery at the Museum:

In June we realised that Finn has effectively grown out of his balance bike. He is now a confident rider of it, and we can trust him to ride safely on the pavements, stopping at any road (though sometimes less perfectly where pedestrians are concerned!), but he cannot get full speed on the thing and he can't stretch his legs on it. We'll have to shift him to a real bike when we get to the Isle of Man, and start Orry on the balance bike... How fast time goes!

Finn has slowed down on his use of his camera to take pictures of things - he now doesn't return from a trip to the shops with 10s of pictures of shoes or street-signs! In fact, his camera's fastest-growing use is to take pictures of food. Interrupting eating as it does - with his asking for to get the camera, our going off and finding it, and then his faffing around as he takes a picture of whatever it is that is of interest to him. It began with legitimate "fun" pictures of food, where we'd tried to be fun with the meal's presentation (and which we regretted as soon as he asked for his camera), but it soon descended to being for no obvious reason.
Regardless, here are some of the fantastic food pics which Finn snapped in June:

And, if you're a glutton for punishment, you can also check out this video which Finn made with his camera. It is, at least, a very good image of Finn's view on the world (much helped by his finding his megaphone towards the end!)...

Orry has decided that he doesn't like baked beans. This is, I'm sure you understand, something of a stick in the spokes of the generic easy meal that we might give him on a day that we get in late on. This was very much brought home to us when we gave him baked beans and he responded by individually picking out each beans between his finger and thumb and throwing it onto the floor. This, of course, was done without his even looking at us, let alone reacting at all when we tried to tell him to stop. If we hadn't taken the bowl away he'd probably have been there for the next 20 minutes completing the job! Very annoying.
There isn't a picture of the bean episode, but there is this picture of the time that Cori brought home some bread from our favourite bakery near our old home, as a treat for me upon my return from work. As it turned out, however, it was destroyed pointlessly by Orry:

There were a couple of special doctor's trips in June: Orry was tested on Green Lentils, and passed. Although we were delighted to have it pass at least one food allergy test, we are somewhat bemused at green lentils. What are you supposed to do with that?!
Finn went to the GP to have his hearing looked at. He has been terrible at hearing for a month or so, at times to an extremely frustrating extent. Conversations go round and round, with him asking the same things repeatedly and then not being able to hear the repeated answer. Very exhausting! The GP passed it onto a specialist though, which we wouldn't see until the month following.

We were very impressed by Finn when we were eating Mexican food in June. As is typical, he didn't want any of the meat or vegetables, but just wanted his usual quesadilla (which at least is not just a cheese sandwich, we tell ourselves...!). We rolled it up into a tube, ready for him to pick up with his hands and eat. He paused, and then told us: "If we cut this with a knife, it will be a semi-circle." - He was, of course, speaking about chopping it in the middle and then unravelling the thing. After we'd thought about it for a second and realised that he was right, we were rather amazed at his thought to get to that!

It might not be a picture of Finn with a quesadilla, but this picture is probably worthwhile...

It is of Finn trying on the tights that Cori got for him. The tights were to be adapted into a watery costume for Finn's dance performance which was coming up in July, but he still enjoyed showing them off as they were.

Orry can now distinctly put two or so thoughts together into the one phrase. So, instead of giving one-word demands or questions, he can now speak about things a lot more. "Where Finn?" or "My see" (for "let me see") etc. It is quite the milestone, and lovely to see.
In celebration of this, here is a picture of Orry doing something that Cori thought she'd never see - Orry asleep in the pushchair!

It appears that there is a collection of four kitchen-based episodes from June. These start with the time that Orry climbed into Finn's chair and, while Cori's back was turned, found the flour for the bread-maker. The rest was inevitable...

A fun family-activity in June was the making of croissants. These were very simple, straight from the packet and simply to be rolled onto a tray and backed for 20 minutes, but it was still nice to do something in the kitchen with the boys. It is normally us cooking and them hanging around complaining about having to wait, so it was nice to find a way to involved them in cooking in some way. And the results were lovely too!

Not food-related, Cori had the bright idea of recreating one of her Science Museum show pieces, and create a volcano. Finn and Orry enjoyed the spectacle, but we won't be going to that level of effort again soon - especially not if Finn demands that we keep the expended volcano for weeks afterwards until we can spirit it away!

The final kitchen episode perhaps it's really an event, but the eating of a fruit smoothy did result in some quite spectacular results for Orry...

Since here is as good a place as any other, here is Orry enjoying a flying ride on Mama's shins...

One of the trips which we wanted to repeat before leaving London was the canal trip which we'd taken a long while ago when we'd Manx friends visiting us. Back then, the journey from Little Venice to Camden was a truly awe-inspiring trip for Finn. And, because it was so magical for us back then, it was something which we wanted to repeat once more. This time, however, it was somewhat less than magical - Finn was only mildly excited about the boat, and then wanted to get off because he was bored after only ten minutes. Twenty minutes later, we were all very glad to be off!
The man with the microphone on the boat did, however, leave a lasting memory for Finn, even if not intentionally: when going through the tunnel, in his droll monotone humour, told us all to watch out for the tunnel monster. This, therefore, was something that Finn was frightened of for a week or so afterwards. It is just a blessing for us that we don't have to go through dark tunnels on water very often!

You will note Finn's unusual hairstyle in this picture. This comes from the football - Euro 2016 - when Finn saw Gareth Bale and decided that that was the haircut for him. Out came the elastic band and he refused to have it removed for days. Odd-ball.

Other notable events in June included Finn's best friend leaving nursery. Orlando left early, to go off on holiday with his parents, but wasn't to be back before the end of term. Thus was the first severing of one of Finn's friendships in London. It was a strange reminder that the end was nigh!

Finn has now grown impatient with our inability (or unwillingness) to read to him for hours each night, and so takes a heap of books to bed with him. These he will "look at" very intensely, on his own after we have finished our reading and said good night to him. When he is tired he puts them aside and settles down nicely to sleep. We have no idea how long he spends, but it's probably something like 20 minutes. The result is that he walls himself in with books, which is always a delight to see:

Finn and Orry always take a bath together. They have great fun in there, and they could be in there for hours (if the water did cool off and their limbs start shrivelling up!). Being in a confined space together with water is a great treat especially for Orry, who loves both Finn and water! This puts Orry generally in a great mood, which in turn inspires Finn into a good mood, and everyone is happy from then on (until the bathroom floor starts getting wet!). The new thing for June was Orry's confident standing up and so his happily joining in on washing himself alongside Finn. Here they are doing their "bum-bums" (a terrible phrase, but one inherited from nursery):

Note the gargantuan belly on Orry - he is still a podgy one. A cute podgy though...

June saw one of the most impressive downpours we've ever witnessed in London, going on solidly for days. This didn't really affect us as a family, as it meant that we just played indoors, but it did mean that Cori spent an exciting couple of days at work where all hands were required to attack the flood which she discovered upon entering the office - exciting, if rather stressful, times!

The good rain did mean that the flowers and the rest of the goodies out on the balcony began to bloom:

And, to finish on, here is a jubilant video of Finn and Orry having some fun with socks, as you do: