Caitlin and Justin Come to Town

Last weekend, my sister and her boyfriend came to town to visit us (and for the Head of the Charles, but that's not too important in terms of my post).  On Saturday afternoon, we played in the street for a while.  I had to show my sister that letting our almost 2 year old "play in the street" isn't as dangerous as she would have expected.  Finley brought his trusty lacrosse stick and two tennis balls.  Caitlin took some goods photos and a video of the fun and hopefully it captures this new-found "game" that Finley likes to play most afternoons when we get home.

We also took them around back to the sandbox for a while and when we came back around front, the mailman was walking up the driveway and Finley gave him a fist-bump.  Cool!  I think both Caitllin and Justin thought it was pretty adorable that everywhere we went, Finley was always sure that everyone was coming along.  Jus-in? KK? Mommy? As if we'd leave someone behind!

On Sunday, we went out for breakfast (Caitlin and Justin probably hadn't been up and out of the house before 9am on a weekend in quite a while!) and then hit up a nearby playground.  Finley went down the slide with Caitlin, played in the sand and the sold everyone some "tickets" at the counter.

Soon it was time to explore the rocks.  This area is a water spray park during the summer months (which would probably be quite treacherous slippery), but it a great running, climbing, and jumping spot now.  

The best part was Finley and Caitlin playing hide and seek/peekaboo around some of the big rocks.

Caitlin really brings out Finley's happy-girly-squeals and after all the peekaboo, she got a few more of out him!

Dan had to go off to practice after the playground so the rest of us went to Wilson Farms to pick out a pumpkin to carve.  However, Finley suggested we go on the Spooky Hayride (his 4th ride this month) first.  Ug.  Long line. But at least he let Caitlin hold him instead of me!!

As usual, it was probably worth the long wait...at least to Finley!

We finally made our way to the pumpkins and after scouring the piles, found just the right one.  Caitlin and Justin did the hard work scooping out all the goop and seeds and then I took the easy way out and carved a big F for Finley.  We showed it to him and asked him what letter it was and confidently, he said, "D."  Oops.  Guess we better move on to the next row of letters on his ABC placement :)

We had a great visit and can't wait to see Caitlin again soon when she comes back up for Finley's birthday next month!

Finley at 1.11 Years Old

Well, it occurs to me that I haven't posted in a while. I haven't taken any pictures in a while. Will our fan base leave us??? In hopes that you all don't give up on Finding Finley, I figured I'd write a bit about Finley's latest antics. He's quite a guy and I want to remember all the funny and quirky things that make him him before he officially turns 2 next month.  A random compilation, but here goes:

1. Finley LOVES music.  He loves listening to music, playing music on his guitar, and singing on his own.  For a week he'll adore one particular song and want to hear it on repeat in the car and just when I think I'll swerve off the road, he'll move on to a new one to spice things up and keep me awake.  After going around and around the Wee Sing CD for months, I downloaded some classic Raffi tunes from my childhood and Finley has taken to many of them!  Baby Beluga is a fav and he can sing along a bit now which is adorable.  My little sister used to call it "Baby Luga" but Finley's coined it "Googa" thus far. This song has always had a special place in my heart and I just smile when he singings along to the line "Goodnight, little whale, goodnight." He also likes Raffi's version of "Octopus' Garden" and "We're Going to the Zoo."  It's funny to see what lyrics he'll pick up on and sing after hearing a tune enough times.  "Hot Potato" is a family favorite since it comes with dance moves and I've ben trying in vain to capture Finley rocking out to it, but the perfect opportunity has yet to appear.  Finley has more hip favorites, too, like Katie Perry's "Last Friday Night" and LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem" (once he can understand the lyrics, these probably wouldn't be appropriate parental options).  His guitar can play Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and while it has lots of other song buttons, this one gets the most attention.  Dan played him the real version and he totally missed it, right over his little head.  The funniest music preference he has came from some car rides with Dan where he found some Reggae on the radio and jammed to it.  The other night, I came upstairs to some odd, island sounding music and discovered that the boys had tuned the shower radio to some Reggae for bath time.  Ha!

2. Finley is a sports fanatic.  He can throw a frisbee backhand (lefty) pretty impressively.  In fact, we can't let him throw inside anymore since our living room lamp almost bit the dust after a nice toss.  His beloved "yeh-bo balls" are two tennis balls (his attempt at saying yellow balls) that he likes to throw around, ask Dan to juggle with, slam dunk in the basketball hoop, and hold onto while riding in the car.  However, the yellow balls have recently found a new place to play and that is in our street.  Since Finley's a good rule abiding citizen and always goes to sit on the curb or stand in the driveway when a car is coming, we have taken to playing with him in the street.  He likes to carry his little lacrosse stick down and toss the tennis balls around and chase them.  Dan and I know zero about lacrosse so hopefully he won't want to further his skills beyond throwing the ball backwards over his shoulder.  He can dribble a soccer ball with minimal trips/falls and can throw a football in the air yelling "touchdown!"  Sadly, he still has a weird throwing motion for round balls and refuses to learn how to catch anything, but I suspect this will change in time.  He likes watching the Giants on TV on Sundays (for 10 minutes or so anyways) and when he sees the players doing something he'll call out "runnin"  "frowing" "fall down" "clappin"--a future in commentating perhaps!  He also likes to wear his NYY foam finger and yell, "Yeah, Yankees!"  It's nice to have a 3rd sports fan in the house :)

3. Unlike his father, Finley is great with names. He remembers kids and adults names well for his age (I think) and often surprises us when he blurts them out.  He's very good as associating kids' names with their parents' names.  If he went somewhere or did something memorable with someone, he'll say their name and then name the activity.  That association will remain until it is replaced with a more current one.  Sometimes after we put him to bed, he'll be talking to himself and often people's names come up.  Like the other night he was talking about Dave and Charlotte, then Mike and his Prius, and Henry and his dog, Kiki.  He also knows my name is Allison and his daddy's name is Dan, but also calls us "Babe" from time to time if we aren't paying attention to him...wonder where he got that from...

4. Finley is enjoying the Friday night tradition of Shabbat.  A couple months ago we started trying to do candles and such each week so that Finley would learn the routine (but also so that he wouldn't think all candles meant birthdays and cake).  He took to it from the start! He loved watching the candles get lit and listening to his parents sing together.  Last night, he finished my song for me by saying "Shabbat" right on cue!  Even the Good Shabbos kiss from me makes his smile.  The blessing over the challah is always hard to wait for, but he manages and then loves getting the first slice of the braided bread.  For those that don't know, I converted to Judaism before we got married since the Jewish culture and family traditions are so important to Dan and his family.  Watching Dan watch Finley light up during our Shabbat dinners is a very fulfilling experience and makes me proud of the decisions we made for our family.  Finley will be psyched during Hanukkah when we'll light candles and sing for 8 nights in a row!!

5. His bedtime routine has been pretty similar for a long time now, but he's beginning to work the system by requesting additional books before we read The Going to Bed Book.  Finley's a good talker with an excellent vocabulary but doesn't link too many words together just yet so last night after reading a book, he went over to his shelf and said "one more" which we couldn't turn down.  While it's not exactly a sentence, it seemed much more mature than just "more." However, the best addition to his before bed ritual has been the Forseter family tree.  After we read him his "night night book" (as mentioned above), we have always said, "Goodnight, Finley Forseter" and a month ago or so he echoed "seter" and we explained that it was our last name (in toddler friendly words).  We also told him who else has that last name so now after we say "Finley Forseter" each night, he'll list off all the other people and we'll say "Forseter" after each one: Daddy, Mommy, Owly and Fanta (his loveys), GG, Geeka, and Ellie (for now!).  There are a handful of other Forseters that he knows and perhaps after our trip to LA for a Forseter wedding in November these extended family members will make the list!

6. Pretend play is a good developmental milestone that Finley passed many months back but never fails to make me laugh with.  His trucks and trains all do very realistic things (except for if they fall/crash they get kisses on their boo-boos) and he cooks like a pro in his kitchen.  There's always line at the gas station in his garage and he almost always makes sure they pay before filling up.  He shares his snacks and water with his stuffed animals and even wants to put diapers on them.  He knows doctors are for "check ups" and loves playing with his friend, Charlotte's doctor's kit: giving shots, using the stethoscope, etc.  When I took him to pick up my contacts the other day at the eye doctor, he liked seeing the people in the waiting room get called in to see the doctor.  He'd yell "check up!" for each one.  Hopefully he'll show the same enthusiasm for his own 2-year-appointment next month, though I doubt it...

7.  Just so I'm not sugarcoating everything, Finley does have a less flexible side to him that's worth noting.  He's very particular about certain things and can cry at something as silly as which bowl his Special K is put in or which water cup is available. I'm sorry, my son, that anal retentiveness comes from me.  We may give him too many options or not enough, or simply be way off the mark.  Like most toddlers he's torn between wanting his parents close, but not wanting to do everything they say.    Overall, he's a very gentle, funny, sweet, and polite little dude who just doesn't want to have his socks, shoes, and jacket put on after being awake for only 10 minutes on a school day--well, can you blame him?  Thankfully, the older he gets the more reason/logic we can work into the equation.  He'll keep asking "why" during the conversation, but I think he understands more than he lets on!

That's probably enough and I suspect only Grandparents may have read down this far...but with my sister in town this weekend and our trip to Florida next week, something tells me I'll have some great photos soon! Stay tuned :)

New Romping Grounds

There are a handful of perks to Dan still playing competitive frisbee, but a recent one is that he had practice on a new local field where he spotted a neat place for Finley to play.  We popped by before lunch the other day and Finley showed off his a new trick.  Called "superman," Finley can go down backwards on his belly down the slide.  He watched some older boys doing real supermans at the park the other day and was fascinated.  A real superman would be going down face first on your belly, but our cautious toddler isn't quite ready for that so he found his own adaptation.

(he's saying bicycle at the end as some kids on bikes rolled into view)

 And to my great joy, Finley had decided he once again likes swinging!!  Especially when he gets to hold onto and toss a small airplane that he found on the ground :)

 The main attraction, in Dan's eyes, of this new playground was the gigantic tires stuck in the ground.  Finley wasn't so sure about them when we first got there, but when some other kids arrived and crawled all over them, he was pumped to try them out.

A proud papa!

Being nearly 80 degrees and sunny, it felt like one last burst of summer.  Finley's crocs and sunhat got a great last hurrah and Dan's team won the regional championship in gorgeous weather.   Oh...speaking of frisbee again, both Finley and Eliot (whose dad, Josh, coaches Dan's team) love running around during tournaments.  Throwing tennis balls, kicking soccer balls, playing Ring A Round the Rosie, sharing (and not sharing) snacks, tickling each other, and generally enjoying the sunshine.

A Spooky, Non-scary, Hayride

One of our favorite weekend destinations is Wilson Farms.  Not only do they have deliciously fresh and often local fruit and vegetables, but lots of other fun things that Finley looks forward to checking out.  Koi fish, a parrot, a llama that roams free, chickens, forklifts, and best of all: free samples!  We go at least once a week, but often more than that.  Thank goodness it's just around the corner from us--we can walk for a longer adventure (it's about a 3 mile loop) or just drive (less than 5 minutes).  Today we went to do something I had been waiting to do for years, the Spooky Hayride!  Before Finley's arrival, I didn't want to take a spot from some little kid and last year, I didn't think Finley would enjoy it quite yet.  So this was the year!  We waited in line as two tractors came and went loaded up with people.  Finley was an excellent "waiter" and enjoyed checking out all the other kids, the tractors, and snacking on some raisins.

After about fifteen or twenty minutes, it was our turn!  Finley was thrilled and couldn't wait to climb aboard.

When the tractor's engine revved up and we started moving, he was wiggling with excitement and I was impressed that he sat on his own between us.  Part of me expected he'd quickly jump up on a lap once we got going, but he seemed more than content where he was.  So grown up!  Here Dan and Finley are waving to the second tractor coming to load up new passengers.

This "Spooky" hayride promised to be seasonal, but not scary on the flyer therefore there were scarecrows, a few headless bodies, giant candy corn cutouts, a huge fanged tomato, a pumpkin patch, and some large spiders crawling down the hill.  The "spookiest" part might have been the tunnel and since Finley loves driving through tunnels, he was psyched to ride through one.

I know you are curious what was inside the tunnel, right?

Fanged carrots, of course!

We finished the loop and Finley hopped right off and said "thank you" to the driver.  We got to grab some free candy corn and apples on our way out.  We squirreled the candy corn away for ourselves, but offered Finley a fresh apple that he thoroughly enjoyed.

In fact, he loved this apple so much he bit right down to the core and into the seeds!  After some guidance to rotate the apple, he continued to munch until there was nothing but the stem, the seeds, and a little bit of flesh holding it altogether.  The best news of the day is that the hayride will run up until Halloween so we can go several more times and perhaps avoid long lines by going after school in the coming weeks :)

Spaghetti Spaghetti Spaghetti

My quest to have more family dinners continues, but the good news is that when I'm not trying to eat my own dinner, I can snap photos of Finley eating his!  Spaghetti*, carrots, corn, and fresh bread were on the menu the other night.  The * is to clarify that I call "spaghetti" just meat sauce since Finley continues to snub pasta on the home front.  The carrots were scarfed up so quickly the only photographic proof is the last one in his mouth in the picture below.

While the spaghetti was being slurped up mostly by using a spoon, a spaghetti covered hand managed to emerge and rub his forehead and hair.  Nice.  

 After his cleaned his plate, he gnawed on some bread for a while and seemed to love every crumb of it.

 Thank goodness it was a bath night!

Shana Tova!

Last Wednesday afternoon, we drove down to NY for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.  We talked before we left about going to New York and all the people we would see there.  Finley enjoyed saying "Noo Yurk" and listing the names of those we'd be visiting on the car ride down.  GG and Geeka's house was soon filled to the brim and buzzing with family and friends.  Finley didn't take as long to warm up as he has in the past, but perhaps that was due to the fact that he seemed to remember their house and where all the toys were!  

Finley's Aunt Caitlin came out from Manhattan to see him and eat some of GG's delicious food even though she's not Jewish, what a gal!  We tried several times to get a photo of the two of them, but silly Finley just wouldn't sit still.

 We got to see Baby Charlie, too, who was visiting from London.  She is Dan's cousin Karen's daughter that we had yet to meet.  Finley likes babies and Charlie seemed to take to Finley right away!  This little girl is a trooper seeming to be happy as a clam after a long trans-atlantic flight.

Finley went off to bed and we had a lovely dinner before going to bed ourselves.  The next morning, we got all dressed up and put Finley in his wrinkly button down shirt (I don't iron my own stuff so I certainly wasn't going to iron a toddler's!) for temple.   Finley was quite stimulated looking around at all the people, lights, stained glass windows, and rows and rows of chairs.  We found our seats and he snacked on some raisins while the Rabbi talked.  Since the Rabbi had walked by our row as we were sitting down, we had told Finley his name was Gordon.  That proved to be a misstep since Finley continued to call out "Go-don" throughout his sermon...whoops.  Soon the cantor was singing and Finley also called out "Jack!" What a coincidence that both names of those guys up on the bima are also names of trains from Thomas and Friends.  By far, Finley favorite part was hearing the shofar blow.  He was entranced!  We lasted as long as we could before hanging out with a sleeping Charlie and her parents, Karen and Dave, in the hall.  Later, we went home for lunch and a long nap before getting ready for dinner at Linda and Jacob's.  

Finley was up for about an hour before we put him to sleep at Linda's upstairs and he made the best of every minute of it!  He was thrilled to see Oreo, the dog, and kept calling out "A-o" and looking all around for the canine.  Oreo was a good sport letting Finley pet her (or him?).  Finley also enjoyed some chips and enjoyed dipping them in some guacamole.  However, the appetizer highlight by far was the freshly make arepa that Finley declared to be "chicken" and then ate it up.  I figured I shouldn't correct him since he rarely eats things that aren't in his comfort zone and that was a good call :) Linda gave us several more to take home and Dan is excited to give one to Finley when he wakes up from his nap this afternoon!

The following day we returned to temple and got to hear Aunt Ellie sing with Jack, which was spectacular as usual and Finley did a nice job playing with his trucks, eating his bagel, listening to teh shofar, and watching all that was going on.  At one point, he even found his own chair and picked up the Siddur and told us he was reading it.  What a good boy, he even opened it up the correct way (backwards for Hebrew reading).

Just before leaving, it occurred to me I hadn't taken many photos so I snapped away! Here Finley is laughing with Geeka at lunch:

Cooking for GG with his beloved spatula.

Playing Ring-Around-the-Rosie with Ellie

And playing with the tractor/front loader that is by far his favorite toy at his grandparents house.  We were impressed how much better he was at "driving" it all around the house this time.  He even pressed the button for the reverse alarm when he would go backwards!

Also, Finley had fun playing with a crane that Dan had as a little boy.  This picture is of Dan in the early 80s moving some blocks with the crane.

 

 Our last stop on the New Year road tour was at Pat and Marty's for dinner before driving back to Boston.  Finley got to meet Henry and Isabell, twins about his age, and he gorged on grapes and challah.  Life is good, huh Geeka?

Touch-A-Truck aka Wait-In-Line

Last Sunday, we went to Newton South High School for a free family friendly event, Touch-a-Truck.  Not the best sounding name in my opinion, but I guess they can't call it Wait-in-Line or The Horn-Honking Festival.  Picture this: a huge parking lot full of all sorts of awesome vehicles, horns blaring, and people EVERYWHERE.  

We weren't sure where to begin, but I tried to encourage Finley to sit in vehicles that aren't readily available to him in his daily life (i.e. firetrucks, school buses) and so we found a huge crane and started there.  It was quite a climb into the cab, but we made it!

Then we were off to find all the other trucks and that meant standing in a lot of lines with other eager kids and patient parents.

Finley did well waiting for his turn, but the problem that we ran into a few times was that after waiting in line for five or ten minutes for one truck--his eye would have caught sight of a different truck he wanted to test drive.  Ug.  I was often successful at convincing him to wait for the truck we were already in line for, but occasionally we had to bail and wait elsewhere.  All in all, he was a trooper as it got warmer and more and more people were ahead of us.  He didn't mind the horn honking too much, except for when we were 2 people away from our turn in the garbage truck and a parent pulled that horn twice..."ALL DONE ALL DONE DARBAGE" (poor pronunciation, but I got the hint and we moved along).

Finley was an excellent Touch-a-Truck patron, in my unbiased opinion, since when it was finally his turn each time, he'd climb in, look around, move the controls, let me snap a photo, and then ask to get down and find another truck.  Other children were up there for what felt like an eternity and had to be forcibly removed...but maybe I'm biased after all :)

He sure seemed to like the view from up there!

We finally found a "truck" that didn't have a line, the brand new Prius.  Yes, not everything on the lot was a gas guzzling, air polluting vehicle--go Green!

All in all, it was well worth all the waiting in line and getting hot and sweaty.  Finley had so much fun and it was great to be outside on a beautiful day with a toddler who was truly in hog heaven.  I wasn't sure how to include this final picture, it came out so beautifully I had to put it in...so here it is.

I feel like I should have been singing "I'm proud to be an American" while waiting under this huge flag and perhaps it was a fairly All-American day in the end :)