Finn's Farm Book

Finn made this book a few weeks ago, and read me the story behind the pictures.

I taped the book together and wrote "FARM" - otherwise Finn did the rest

Left: A house for a chicken
Right: A barn for a farmer

Left: A tractor for Finnian
Right: A whirlpool for a lake

Left: Skates for ice skating
Right: A whale for an ocean

Left: a sandbox for a sand castle
Right: A speedboat for a river

The end

Finn at 5

Yesterday we went to the zoo to celebrate Finns birthday as a family, and we hadn't gone in awhile.  I'll put pictures down at the bottom, but first I just wanted to quickly write a bit about Finn.

We have our ups and downs, downs including asserting his independence, talking back, not sharing with his sister one second and then being rough with her trying to get her to play with him the next - but all of that is par for the course!

This year he's really come out of his shell - I love it!  Between his creativity bursting forth and his shyness starting to dissipate, I can really SEE him, if that makes sense.  Last year he didn't really get along with boys his own age.  Older boys, girls his age, or little boys (younger than Elle) were good, but not boys his own age.  He was also sometimes so terribly shy.  He still is sometimes but not nearly as much as last year.  Now he will just walk right up to his friends parents and say Hi, ask them how they are doing, tell them something funny, ask them for hugs (so sweet!).  He also gets along really well now with boys his own age (for the most part), friend or stranger.  Yesterday at the zoo it really hit me, but anytime we go somewhere with a play center (the local shopping mall, target, mcdonalds, yesterday at the zoo), he is so confident and just so sweet and will go right up to other kids (usually a boy his own age if there is one there) and he asks them if they want to play, and then off they go!

At the zoo near the meerkats there's a little play area with tunnels and stuff. Finn was playing in there and did NOT want to leave - since we were there for HIS birthday I stayed there with him while Conor and Elle went to see some animals.  Finn found a friend and they were playing and the other parents were trying to get their kid to come see some animals, because we were at the zoo after all, but they were just having too much fun!  Finally I got Finn out of there so the parents could go with their kid :) haha

Posing with an Elephant friend

There's a few sections where you can see the Elephants.  In this section we usually only see one (maybe the male?) and he's not usually doing much, then the moms and babies are in another area.
Today was great, there were about 5 or 6 of them in this area having baths!  The kids were so excited to see them catching big chunks of watermelon that the zoo keepers were throwing it, and watching the other zoo keeper splash them with water from buckets

Taking a break for some cheese and crackers

Decided to get a little treat as well - note the sticker on his shirt - he was pretty proud of it!

My mom wanted me to pick up something to give to him from her on his birthday, but I never got around to it -
so on our way out from the zoo we went into the shop and there was a big section of animals this size so I told him he could pick out one to take home.

After we got home from the zoo our neighbor gave us some watermelon - Thea got to try some for the first time!

Today (Sunday) Finn asked me a couple of times "is it not my birthday anymore?" Haha, but he still had a bit of birthday cheer from a phone call from Conor's Grannie and Papa singing Happy Birthday to him, and then we had a video chat with Conor's family and they sang Happy Birthday to him too :)

Finnian's 5th Birthday!!

Yesterday my big boy turned 5!  This just seems like such a big number to me.

We were originally going to invite a couple families over on the weekend for a meal/party, but it ended up not working out.  But a little bit last minute I invited the same two families (minus the daddies) for a morning birthday playdate on Friday (his actual birthday).  Conor made cupcakes the night before and I iced them in the morning.

FIVE!

The kids had a good play (minus a couple of time outs for the birthday boy!) and us moms had a good chat...and got to cuddle a newborn a bit!

Last year he was playing with these cards on his birthday and found the 4 and I took a picture, so I thought I would do another one this year

Of course someone couldn't be left out!

A little shy while we sang Happy Birthday

Finn got a magic set from one friend.  He totally doesn't get all of the tricks, but he loved the hat.  And there's a little rabbit, so he puts it in the hat, puts the hat on his head, waves the wand around and taps the hat and then slides it off to show us the rabbit inside! haha

We bought him real Lego this year.  He is pretty excited about it.
I woke up this morning to the sound of Lego being shuffled and scraped across the floor in the spare room (with the door closed, to hopefully keep the girls away from it!)

We had ANOTHER cake after dinner (hot dogs), so this is him pointing out the smoke after he blew out the candles.

Finn's First Dentist Visit

Finn had his first dentist visit today - and while he wouldn't let them clean his teeth, he did REALLY well otherwise.

We have this Richard Scarry book "Best Word Book ever".  I didn't really think I'd be getting him to the dentist anytime soon, but since we were reading the book I would tell him that some day he can go to the dentist.  And then I told him how the dentist would ask him to open his mouth really wide (so he would do that for me) and that the dentist would look and touch his teeth (and then I would point and count all his teeth) and then the dentist might even clean his teeth and give him a tooth brush.  So then he started saying that he WANTED to see the dentist.

My dentist office does a "happy visit" for little kids... it's free for them to come, sit in the chair and look at all the stuff and get a tooth brush.. and if they will let them, they will get a teeth cleaning (you have to pay for that part).

Finn in the fun chair

I was actually really nervous driving there with Finn.. I didn't think he was going to sit in the chair or anything and I just envisioned him having a huge temper tantrum or something!

On the way there I told him that they had a big fish tank (which I was hoping they still had!) and I'm glad I did because he was so excited to see the fish when we got there... and to keep watching them for 20 minutes, which is how behind they were!  I don't normally mind that stuff for myself, but I could see he was starting to get bored and I just wanted to get him in the chair while he was happy!

Cool sunglasses!

Anyways, they finally called us in, and walked us to the last chair (I thought for sure he would see all the people with masks on a freak out!)  But he let me sit him in the chair.  And we had brought the book with us, so he showed the hygienist the page with the dentist and it was good because then she pointed to all the things in the book and showed him where they were in real life.

Then she showed up the water sprayer, suction and polisher and showed him how they worked on her hand... she asked if he wanted her to spray a little water on his hand, but he didn't want that!  I kind of wish she would have asked if she could do it on me and then maybe Finn would have let her, but oh well, too late now!

So he sat in the chair, wore the glasses, went up and down (which he didn't like at first, but when she stepped away for a second he asked me if he could go up again!)

He was so good about opening his mouth for them and letting them look at his teeth.  I was a very proud mamma!

Then they gave him a token to get a little toy from the front and we said goodbye and left.

I actually got home and realized that I miss just hanging out with this guy by himself!  Maybe my mom will have to take Elle for a bit one Saturday morning (hint hint!) so I can have some Mommy and Finn time :)

Finnian is 3 years old!

Today is Finnian's 3rd Birthday.

I still had some money on a Castle Fun Park card that I got off groupon awhile ago, so we all had a family morning. We went mini-golfing... I think Finn had fun, but he really didn't end up golfing much at all! He just wandered around holding his club and ball, every so often putting his ball right beside the hole and hitting it in. Or else going to the ones where you shot it up a ram and it comes out somewhere else... he liked that!

Ignore the bad lighting and red eye!

But this was us preparing for the mini-golf

Afterwards we went to Tim Hortons for lunch. He saw someone eating a muffin and we had our usual discussion of how to say "muffin"... here's a video!

He really is a great little guy. He can be so polite. At the dinner table when he wants something he will say "pass butter please or pass mung (milk) please" without any prompting. If he is trying to get past you or behind you he will say "excuse me". If there are cookies, after lunch he will ask for one and he will bring one for Conor or I before getting his own. He does have his moments though, when he doesn't want to share, or he isn't being very nice to the dog, or he's throwing toys. But all in all he's a good kid!

I think he's been going through some growth spurts because there were a few nights where he was complaining in the night about his legs hurting... plus he's gotten a little clumsy all of the sudden!

It was A LOT more difficult playing mini-golf with Elle in the carrier than I thought it was going to be!

One of the funny things I like to hear him say are "remember when..." and will reminise about something, like Thomas the train getting paint on his nose, or this morning he told me about how his Aunty Megan has to clean up horse poop!

Such a good big brother. Loves to show Elle how to do things. He even will give her the toy he is playing with, and try to get her to play with it - even his favorite train!! Just wait until she comes and takes it from him though!

Oh no!

Starting to get an imagination... but not a really out there one. He was eating cold cereal the other day and said "too hot!" With a funny little grin on his face. I said "no, it's cold!" and he said "no mommy, Finn pretendin' it's too hot"

He is becoming quite the singer too! We've been practicing for the Sweeney Singers Christmas concert, so he likes to walk around humming or singing almost all of the songs we will be doing. There's one in particular that Elle likes, but whenever I start singing it Finnian asks me to sing "look up chilen" (look up children). We are also doing a version of Jingle Bell Rock so he had been asking us to sing that, but one day when he asked me to sing Jingle Bell and I started singing that he got mad and said "no, other jingle bell, one horse open sleigh" (although the last line didn't sound ANYTHING like that, so it took awhile to dicipher what he was saying!)

My favorite though was a couple of days ago I was in the living room while Finn was finishing his breakfast and he sang the ABC's almost in its entirety all by himself... he had never sang it before! I think that Conor sings it to him and will stop at certain letters for Finn to sing the one letter, but this time he was singing the whole thing! I have a poor quality video of it, but I'll wait until I can capture it better and put it up!

Halloween Costume

I'm sooo not creative, plus I'm cheap... Which results in VERY few costume options.

I ended up not buying the kids anything and was gonna skip it altogether until a friend mentioned she had something for both kids that I could borrow. SCORE!

As for myself, I thought I would try on my wedding dress and if it still fit I would do something with that (princess, scary bride...something). I went and got it from my moms house today.

5 years and two kids later it still "fits"!! But there was a bit too much back fat for my liking, not to mention breathing was a bit difficult - if I had a shrug to go with it I might have done it, but I'll pass on dress up this year.

I will say though that I blame at least some of the tightness on current breast feeding and not just baby fat :)

Castle Fun Park

Groupon had this deal for Castle Fun Park. For $25 you get a $50 play card there. And I had a $10 credit, so it only cost me $15... that's less than playing mini-golf twice.

Conor kept telling me not to get it, that Finn probably wouldn't even like the place, but I didn't listen. I wasn't going to go there so soon after buying it, but it was a really really gross day, so I went ahead and took Finnian and Elle there. We went straight down to the mini-golf and Finn had so much fun.

He only actually put the ball in one hole. But he loved putting the ball on the tee and hitting it, and then hitting it a few more times wherever it lay, but didn't really understand that the goal was to get it in the hole. He especially liked the ones where you shoot it up the ramp and it comes out someplace else... he wanted to do those ones over and over again.

Elle slept in her carseat the whole time, so I just picked her up and moved her from hole to hole. I had the best game in my life! I got 2's on nearly every hole! I finally convinced Finn that we should go upstairs and play some games, so we got to the last hole and I told him that when he shot the ball up it would not come back.

I guess he didn't understand because he kept saying "where ball go mommy?". I tried putting him in one of those cars that "drives" when you put in money, he lasted about 30 seconds. He tried skeeball and managed to not get a single ball in, but multiple times had it go on one of the neighboring ramps. Finally I decided there were NO games there for his age, so we went home.

I had to bribe him with "timbees'' (timbits) to get him to the car, since I was carrying Elle. When I showed Conor the pictures of Finn playing golf he was really jealous.

I guess I made a good purchase :)

Guess

Can you guess where I took Finn today?

Cows and Bugs

Yesterday we went to my brothers house to celebrate another brothers birthday. Elle slept most of the time but woke up right when we were going to go home, so I just put her in the carseat and we started driving home. She was NOT happy, she was hungry and was crying very loudly.

Then Finn said "hoy cow baby Elle". I didn't know what he was talking about. Then I remembered the other day she was crying really loudly (she doesn't usually get that worked up) and I had said "Holy Cow". When I realized what he was saying I started laughing and then he just kept saying it, louder "hoy cow! HOY COW!" Very cute... really must start watching what I say around him.

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So poor Finn must just attract bugs of all sorts to himself. The mosquitos are finally gone, thank goodness, but then last night he woke up in the night crying and crying, and he's in our room right now while his room was getting painted, so it was pretty annoying. Conor kept going to him and eventually at about 6 he just brought his pillow with him and stayed the rest of the night in Finn's bed.

I had no idea why he was so upset, but Conor said that he noticed a couple bites on Finn's neck when Finn walked away. So I checked later on and I saw a couple... then I pulled the back of his shirt down and saw no less than a dozen bites on his back! What the heck?! We figured maybe a spider, who knows, but seriously poor guy!

The bites.

The other day we got slushees and Finn really wanted some.

On Friday we went to Mill Lake with my mom for dinner picnic.

Elle doing some tummy time!

A new sleeper from some Aussie friends!

Naptime

We've been having issues with Finnian's naptime lately. He likes to come out of his room. I don't mind if he doesn't sleep (actually, I really do mind that he doesn't always sleep and nap, but there could be worse things), but he likes to leave his room, which I'm not having ANY of that!

Today he was in his room singing, and reading books and then I heard the organ, and I knew he had left his room. So I brought him back to his room and told him he didn't have to sleep, but he had to stay in his room until Conor or I said he could come out.

Then I heard him on the monitor reading a book, but the page turning sounded as though it wasn't one of his books (the room doubles as Conor's office), and then I heard him breathing as though he was asleep. I figured he has probably been reading on the chair and not his bed, so I wondered if he was asleep in the chair or not.

Conor went down and came back up with this picture.

He fell asleep reading Conor's bible!! haha Unfortunately it was already after 230 at that point, he didn't nap as long as normal, but we'll take what we can get!

Finn's sleepover at Grandma's

Below is a picture of Finn and his little suitcase going to Grandma's house for his sleepover.

Last night went splendidly. The movie was awesome! And when we got home, Elle was sleeping peacefully and hadn't even woken up for the bottle. Here are the pictures and captions of Finn's sleepover that my mom put on facebook.

"Finn had lots of toys out"

"He loves having a bath"

"Cleaning my bathroom"

"Bedtime snack"

"He's sound asleep, I must have tired him out, so sweet"

"Morning time, eating grapes and watching cartoons with Grandma"

I'm going to do some shopping with Elle this morning and then I'll go pick up my little... my BIG boy!

Defiance

This is the new face of defiance.

It's name is Finnian.

It likes to throw it's toys.

Run screaming when you call for him.

Slam the door in your face when you say no.

Throw it's plate of dinner on the floor.

And just cause you to want to pull your hair out about 10 hours of the waking day.

But he's pretty cute!

The "I loath mosquitos" club

Anyone else want to join this group?

Everytime we think that they are dying off they come back with a vengance! And poor Finnian is taking the brunt of it.

I love her!

If he gets any on his feet or legs, it's game over. Especially at night... he wakes up and just cries and cries because they are bothering him. He pretty much can't go outside at all, because most of the bites he's been getting are just from the mosquitos that get in the house, I can't imagine what they would be like if we actually went outside for a walk with him!

But, this is affecting me as well, because then I'm not getting outside. I don't even want to go out on the deck because I feel kind of quilty leaving him inside.

Finally tonight I couldn't take it anymore, I needed some fresh air. So I took Elle out in the stroller (she has had a couple of bites herself, but they don't seem to bother her much at all, so I wasn't too worried about a little walk), while Conor stayed in with Finn.

We weren't even out for 30 minutes, but it felt so nice to go for a walk and get some fresh air. It also felt great to walk for 30 minutes and not be tired out, as I had been before Elle was born (being pregnant and all tires you out!)... I think on the nights that Conor bathes Finn, I'll take Elle out for a walk then, so that I don't have to feel guilty about Finnian not being able to come.

I had to take quick pics otherwise the mosquitos were going to take us away!