Editor’s note: Second in a series of posts in which we take a sequential look back at the first 12 months in Nyan Thomas’s life, leading up to his first birthday later this month. For Month One, just keep scrolling down after this post. And check back tomorrow for Month Three!

The second month of Nyan Thomas’s life began with a hurricane and ended with a birthday.

In the waning days of August, all of New York was panicking over the approach of Hurricane Irene. Daddy had lived through a fair number of hurricanes and tropical storms during his stint in the Caribbean, so he was pretty non-plussed about it, and in fact was more excited than anything else. And young Nyan Thomas? He was pretty chill about it too, as you read here.

The storm hit in the early hours of Aug. 28, with damage, at least in Brooklyn, limited to a couple of downed branches and a wee bit of rain. But it snarled air traffic, and Uncle Dominic and Uncle Sean – who had been visiting – found their return flight to London was canceled. It took them four days until they could get a flight out (and what a flight: we found them two seats in First Class on Qatari Airlines from JFK to Heathrow. What a life!). So Nyan got to spend a little extra time with his uncles. Not long after, Grandma L. came for another visit.

We also continued to try to figure out the best ways to care for the little guy; this remains a work in progress, but you can see some of our thinking-in-progress in this post from last Sept. 1. And then there were the various noises the boy would make – which we named and chronicled here.

We also worked on “tummy time.” It’s hard to imagine today, when the boy can hardly keep still as he crawls anywhere and everywhere, but last September, all he wanted was to lay on his back; as you saw in this post, he was not happy when we would put him on his belly.

Nyan’s second month was also the first (though not that last) that poor Mommy, while taking him out for one of their daily strolls through the streets of Park Slope, was mistaken for the boy’s nanny. Oops.

The month ended with another visitor, as Uncle Scott flew out for a long weekend; Chris’s old colleague from the Caribbean, Susanna, was also in town for business and popped by one afternoon. And finally, on the 25th, Daddy celebrated his first birthday as a Daddy. Not a bad way to celebrate a birthday!

I won’t say that we had it all figured out by the end of that second month – far from it, in fact. But we were started to get into a rhythm; not just figuring out the boy’s daily rhythms and routines but starting, ever so slightly, to get a handle on our own routines, and the best way to deal with this mysterious, wonderful creature called Nyan Thomas.