Our boy has started taking kung fu classes on Sunday mornings. It’s a bit of a work in progress, to be honest (we should be posting videos in the near future) but it’s good exercise, and it’s fun. And doesn’t he look sharp in his uniform?
(Click to enlarge)
Nyan’s best buddies, Woodie the Bear and Beaux the Blue Cow, take a ride on one of Nyan’s many, many fire engines.
(click to enlarge)
From early May through early June, we all lived out of a hotel room in Singapore. It was quite nice – large, great staff, fantastic grounds including playground and a huge swimming pool. We were certainly ready to move into our new place once we found it, but no complaints at all about the place we stayed (it’s called Tree Tops Executive Residences, by the way, and we recommend it highly). Here are a few photos and videos of what Nyan got up to during our time there. Swimming, playing, napping, waiting for a taxi with Mommy, etc.
Plus a couple of videos: one of his favorite games was to run through the hallways, looking for our room. They all tended to look alike, of course, which made it a challenge. And it also burned off some of his voluminous energy! Win-win.
And here he is, just relaxing on the couch, reading the paper. As you do.
Nyan loves animals – what kid doesn’t, of course – and we’d read that Singapore has one of the world’s best zoos. So last month, a few days after we arrived here, Daddy and Nyan spent a day at the zoo. We weren’t disappointed.
It rained heavily that morning, but the skies were clearing when we arrived at the zoo, shortly after it opened at 10am. The rain meant no crowds, which meant we had the animals mostly to ourselves. We started out at the polar bear exhibit, where Nyan was wowed as he watched the bear dive under the water and eat fish. (He still talks about that today, more than a month after our visit.)
A small sampling of some of the other animals we saw: zebras, giraffes, crocodiles, lions, birds, monkeys, kangaroos. And a cheetah.
And pygmy hippos.
And organutans.
And turtles and fish.
Monkeys too.
The highlight, perhaps, was the elephant show. All morning long, Daddy had been promising that we’d make it to the elephant show, which somehow in Nyan’s mind became ‘We’re gonna see the elephants dancing!” Well, they didn’t actually dance, but they did put on a nice show for us.
Video from the show:
He looks less than enthused, but that’s just ’cause he was paying close attention. And perhaps because the midday heat, the humidity, the jetlag and the hours of running around were all catching up to him: after the elephant show, we made our way to the exit, and he fell asleep in the car within a few minutes of driving off.
Nyan has always been a big fan of his cousin Mia. She lives in Iowa, so he doesn’t get to see her too often, but he’s always really happy to see her. She’s always really good with him as well. They got to hang out a good amount during our recent stop-over in Iowa, with plenty of goofing around, laughing, and hugging. Here’s some of it.
Maybe it’s his Iowa farming roots, or maybe it’s his West Country of England farming roots. Or maybe it’s just that he always wants to help. Whatever the reason, Nyan loves helping out when Grandma is out in the garden. (Same here in Singapore: we have but one solitary houseplant so far, out on the balcony, awaiting transplanting into a bigger pot. Daddy can’t go out there to give it some water without a little helper tagging along and ‘helping.’)
Here are some shots from some cool early spring days in Iowa, Nyan doing his best to make sure Grandma’s garden looks great.
We’ve been in Iowa the past three weeks, and we’ve got the pictures to prove it! There will surely be more to come, particularly some fun videos. But for now, here’s a bunch of Nyan Thomas in the Hawkeye state.
What’s a boy to do when he has to choose between tractors and space rockets?
This is the dilemma that our hero had to face a couple weeks back when we visited Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. This was one of Daddy’s favorite places to visit growing up, and he was happy to share it with Nyan. It’s a fantastic place with trains (model trains and real life trains), airplanes, a coal mine, a German U-boat, dozens of hands-on displays about physics and the weather and history and you name it.
Oh and there are also huge exhibits devoted to farming and to space exploration. Guess where we spent most of our time?
The farm exhibit had, among other things, several tractors that a young man could climb into and drive. Or he could just climb into the wheels:
But his favorite was definitely getting behind the wheel and pretending to plow up dirt. Or harvest corn. Or something.
There were also video displays showing all sorts of farming things, which pretty much transfixed the boy:
Finally we got away from the farm and found the space section. It included scale models of many many rocket ships, which pleased him to no end:
And there was a display where you had to “fuel up” a rocket ship by pushing a button, and then hit the launch button to send it to the sky:
Then it was off the gift shop. Somehow we managed to get out of there without buying a space helmet or toy space shuttle…
We didn’t manage to visit the submarine, or the coal mine, or several of the trains, and lots and lots of other exhibits. We’ll definitely have to return some day.
A smattering of photos from our final days in London. Here we have Nyan Thomas reading with Uncle Jeff, reading with Auntie Zuzu, wearing a lampshade on his head (there’s always one at every party, am I right?), showing off a medal he won at his school’s Toddler Derby, packing his friends into his suitcase ahead of our move… Just Nyan being Nyan, really.
Arriving at home after a hard and fun day at school, there’s little that the gentleman farmer enjoys more than to climb onto his John Deere tractor in the back yard and tootle around for a spell before dinner. While also checking on the crops. Our boy is nothing if not a gentleman farmer.
Those were in London. Here we have the young man showing off his Iowa roots in no less than Iowa, helping Grandma and Grandpa in the garden. Teaching them a few things about farming, no doubt.
Nyan Thomas L's Blog 