No big deal here, just an assortment of photos and videos from the month of September. Starting with some of the artwork and school work he did that month, including an exercise where he wrote from the point of view of a pencil:
Some random shots:
A motion-sensitive robot he built, plus more pictures:
Goofing around in the school yard before classes one morning, and more picts:
Finally, another awesome robot: an X-wing fighter flying through space.
Remember our last post, where we showed a couple videos of Nyan swimming in the infinity pool atop Marina Bay Sands? It should be obvious from that, that our boy continues to show steady progress when it comes to swimming. Let’s check out some other recent displays of his aquabilities:
Working on his strokes:
More working on his stroke, followed by some silliness:
Okay, so he still has some work to do on his form etc. But so much better than he used to be, so we’re quite proud:
At the end of a hard lesson, it’s always fun to get tossed:
On weekends, we don’t have swimming lessons. Instead, we get to play – sometimes with a toy boat, sometimes just practicing our leaping and jumping.
Anyone who knows Singapore knows that Marina Bay Sands is this fancy hotel complex on the edge of downtown. Three 55-story towers, topped with a long structure thats home to bars, restaurants and the world’s most photogenic infinity pool. The place ain’t cheap, but we decided a while back that, at some point while we live in Singapore, we would splurge on a one-night stay at the hotel.
That point came in late September. We’d wanted a quick escape somewhere, but schedules didn’t allow; so a staycation it was! The fact that it was Daddy’s birthday was just icing on the cake. Anyway, one Saturday afternoon we checked in.
Let’s take a look at the property itself – the room, and the giant casino, which Daddy poked his head into later that night (nope, he didn’t gamble a penny).
Plus here’s an excited six year old doing “The Marina Bay Sands Dance” soon after arrival.
Our room was on the 47th floor. The “Sky Park” — home to an observation deck, the pool, some hot tubs and a few bars and restaurants — is on the 57th. Either way, in whatever direction we looked, whatever time of day we looked, we were guaranteed some spectacular views. Here:
What about the pool, you say? Why yes, we did spend a good amount of time in the pool:
Nyan, especially, loved it. Check out his skills!
In the evening, we had a delicious meal at a restaurant in the fancy shopping mall that’s attached to the hotel, and then went out along the waterfront to catch the nightly light/laser/water fountain show. It’s on every night at 8, and while it’s a bit over the top, perhaps, we loved it.
Nyan was captivated:
Near the end, they released a bunch of bubbles. Kids – and Mommy – did their best to catch them:
The main point of our staycation was, of course, family time. Mission accomplished. We even managed to take a few photos with the boy!
To be honest, we were a little dubious of the hotel going in. Could it really be worth the cost? Could it really live up to the hype? But, as it turned out, it was great. We really enjoyed it, the staffers were friendly, the facilities were great. We just may have to have another staycation there someday.
Did you know that our boy loves to read? Yeah, of course you do. Check him out in various reading poses during the month of September:
His new school doesn’t give much homework, but one thing they do demand is that the students read out loud for 10 to 15 minutes every night, and that the parents listen in, record in a logbook what the student is reading, and of course help out with any tough words or whatnot. Nyan obviously took to this assignment like a fish to water. Here are a few videos of the boy showing off his reading chops.
Not bad at all. And he’s only gotten better since then.
The coaches who run Nyan’s Saturday afternoon soccer clinic thought it’d be a good idea to have teams from another soccer clinic come by for a few games. A good idea for sure – see other kids, get the competitive juices flowing, learn the value of teamwork, and all that.
Unfortunately, the kids that showed up were a little bit older and a lot bit better.
I mean, Nyan’s team wasn’t *terrible*. Not really. They just weren’t quite as experienced, I guess.
Nyan showed more interest than we might have expected, though he clearly doesn’t quite have the proverbial eye of the tiger.
Yeah, Nyan’s fairly easily distracted. Oh well, he’s having fun:
And fun is what it’s all about, really. Even though Nyan’s team lost their games by several goals – about 3-0 for each of three games, I think, though Nyan’s team did manage to score at least once — the kids had fun, as you can see from these group shots at the end.
In mid-September, we got word that Nyan’s old school, MMI, would be taking class pictures. We thought it’d be nice to get one last picture of Nyan with all his classmates, since he spent more than half the calendar year there, so we headed over to MMI one morning before Chatsworth (his current/new school).
This being the last year at MMI for this group of kids, they put on graduation gowns for both individual and group photos. Here’s Nyan getting set for his host of individual shots:
And prepping for the group shot:
There was some time to goof around with his pals, too:
A few weeks after that, Chatsworth was closed for teacher meetings, so Nyan went back to MMI to spend the day. Had a blast too:
They were doing a unit on space and planets, and the teacher used some app on her smartphone to make it look like the kids were holding planets. Pretty cool:
And, yeah, more goofing around with, and hugging, his classmates:
Want to see how those class photos came out? Sure you do. Here you go:
This blog has multiple themes. One of them is that our boy leads a rich and varied life – especially on the weekends. Let’s take a look at a couple of recent weekend events.
First up: Kara’s birthday. Kara is the younger sister of Nyan’s bestie Kyle. She was turning two, so her folks threw her a party at their condo, with a lot of time in the pool, lots of great food, and of course cake and general running around.
Oh, and goofing around with selfies, along with Kyle and his mom Sara:
Another day, Nyan and Daddy went to a Lego exhibit downtown. It was a traveling show of some of the world’s greatest structures, made out of Legos.
Pretty impressive. But Nyan, frankly, was a little bored with this section of the exhibit. Probably because he knew that, around the next corner, there were large rooms full of Legos he could play with. So off we went.
Just look at all those Legos!
So Nyan built a racecar, and raced it down the sloping track. Not bad.
Finally, in the last room of the exhibit, there were still more Legos — but all of them were white, and there was but a limited selection of shapes. The idea was to challenge the kids to construct their own buildings. So construct Nyan did:
And when all was said and done and built, Nyan got to place his engineering marvel on the big table with all the other constructions.
Quite proud, and understandably so.
So that’s just some of the recent weekend fun our boy got up to.
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