Finn Henry

Finn saw the work I was doing in the front garden and said “well done. you can have your own branch line”.

There is no higher compliment.

As of Monday Finn will be in the ‘big room’ (aka the Pre-kinder room) at childcare. He’s been spending a lot of time there lately and loves it. Whenever he spends time in there he comes home excited and with lots of things to tell us about what they did.

This is a relief to both of us as he’s been the biggest kid in the Toddler room for a while now and all the kids that he’d got on well with had moved up. Although he’s never been miserable at childcare, there have been some mornings where he really didn’t want to go and there were tears and tantrums when he was dropped off. From a kid who never went through seperation anxiety it was a bit of a shock for us.

In the Pre-kinder room he will be back with his friends and able to take part more age appropriate activities. We’re also expecting that it will push his language along (even though it’s been going brilliantly anyway) as he’ll be with slightly older kids who speak more clearly and have larger vocabularies than he does.

We’re pretty sure that his carers in the Toddler room will miss him, particularly one of the girls who looked after him when he was in the Babies room and works in Toddlers now. She’s been with Finn for all but about 4 months of the 2 years he’s been going to this centre.

Last night Mark & I went out and Jelly came over to watch a DVD with Finn (filling in for Kristen who was unwell - hope you’re feeling better).

We worded Jelly up on Finn’s bedtime antics before we left and assured her that, if Finn was refused to go to bed and was still up when we got home, that would be quite OK. It takes us an hour or so to get him to sleep most nights, so we don’t expect anyone else to have greater success. It seems however, that we were wrong.

We arrived home to find Jelly watching telly on her own and the boy fast asleep in bed. Apparently she put him to bed and … wait for it … he stayed there! To say we were impressed is an understatement.

The night before Finn had put himself to bed when given the option of that or listening to Rad’s lecture (hope it goes/went well), but we thought that was an anomaly. It may be that Finn is finally getting the idea about going to bed and staying there.

Or it may be that Jelly has babysitter magic that works on small boys.

Finn has suddenly started to spend a lot of time playing with 2 hand puppets - Big Bird, who we’ve had for a long time and an emu we bought on our recent trip to Healesville.

Most of the play involves long conversations with the birds. Mark heard one about Big Bird having something he shouldn’t in his mouth, but I don’t remember the details of it. Big Bird also often phones people, including Danny and Grandy.

This morning I found Finn attempting to pull the ‘doonut’ off his bed. When I wouldn’t let him take it there was a bit of carrying on, but he finally agreed to to use a baby blanket from the top of his wardrobe. He raced off to our room, where his pillow, Blankie Bear and dummy were still sitting on our bed from this morning’s cuddle, and asked me to come and look.

Big Bird, emu and Blankie were lying on his pillow on our bed. Emu had the dummy tucked under his beak, since it doesn’t open to allow things to go inside it. And Finn had placed the baby blanket on top and tucked them all in.

Curious George Visits Bird Feeder (1) by TaranRampersad

Finn and I went to see Curious George today and it was his first proper visit to the movies. We had been in a cry-baby box when he was little and the drive in when he was about one. But today we crossed the line and went to a regulat screening.

Finn did wriggle and change seats about ten times. He also called out “where’s George?” quite a lot. But the cinema was mostly empty and I don’t think anyone really minded.

And, as a bonus, the moving was both touching and enjoyable.

Finn spent this afternoon at Uni watching Bob The Builder on his Dad’s laptop while his Dad pretended to listen to the tutorial.

Hopefully now he knows a little more about what happens when Dad goes off to uni now.

Like a Pussycat by MarkOMeara

One of Finn’s favourite tricks is climbing up here and telling us proudly he is like a pussycat.

When we were leaving childcare today Finn was looking at the fish that lives in the toddlers’ room. So I asked if he would like a fish of his own at home.

“No. We have too many animals”

We were all very excited to hear that Finn will be moving up to The Big Room in a couple of weeks. He doesn’t complain about the toddlers’ room but his face does light up whenever he talks about being in The Big Room.

It might also be good for him to be around kids who talk more and have other big kid habits like toilet training.