Fourth in a series.

Baby’s first snow!

Yes, it snowed in October – Saturday, Oct. 29, to be precise. The weather report from the time, via this very blog:

Last Saturday, New York and much of the East Coast got blasted by a rather nasty, wet, slushy, icy, snowy – and early! – storm. In Brooklyn, we got a full day’s worth of cold rain, sleet and really heavy snow that snapped some tree branches, caused plenty of localized flooding on the roads, and generally made for a wet mucky day.

We stayed in that day, and held the boy up to the big windows in the front of the apartment so he could see the snow. He didn’t seem to care.

The next day was bright, clear and cold, but warm enough that most of the snow and slush had melted away by midday. We decided it was a fine day for Nyan’s first road trip, and his first visit to a Burmese Buddhist temple in New Jersey, about an hour’s drive from Brooklyn. The temple itself was modest but filled with  warm and welcoming Burmese-Americans; out back was a stupa modeled after the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangoon, Burma – to a much smaller scale, but still impressive, and looking lovely in the late afternoon sunshine, partially covered with as-yet-unmelted snow.

A week later, the first weekend of November, was the New York Marathon, which runs right up the road near our apartment at the time. It was another bright and cold day, so we bundled up the boy, slapped on his too-cool-for-school sunglasses, and headed out to cheer on the runners.

Later in November, Nyan Thomas took his first ride on the New York subway system. (The theme this month seemed to be movement: road trip, marathon, subway.) We were a little worried that the noise and clamor of the trains would freak out the boy, but as with most things we worry about, we needn’t have worried. He was totally fine, more interested in checking out these new inputs and making funny faces at his fellow passengers.

Also in November, we finally accepted that the boy wasn’t eating or sleeping as much as he should, and buckled down and put him on a stricter schedule of both, with pretty fast and remarkable results. He also became more needy when it comes to wanting cuddles, and found his crying voice, which led to numerous bouts of crying for no reason whatsoever. All of this, we were reassured, was perfectly normal, and thanks to his grandparents and other family members offering us countless advice, we were able to manage through these new challenges this fine.

Nyan Thomas’s busy fourth month of life ended with a bang and a whole slew of visitors: first came Uncle Phil, Aunt Jill and their three boys, followed by another visit from Grandma L., who flew out for a few days. We took another ride on the subway for a visit to the 9/11 memorial in downtown Manhattan, a somber experience that, of course, meant more to the adults than to the boy himself.