We had a big family dinner at a local restaurant this evening – Grandma, Grandpa, Uncles Scott and Mike, Aunts Maggie and Sarah, and cousins Mia and Kennedy. Oh, plus Nyan and Daddy of course.
After some good food, the cousins were running around the joint, dancing to the music, and generally being kids. Here’s Nyan showing off his dance moves, while little Kennedy (who’s a bit over a year old) tries to give him a cuddle. Poor Kennedy though; Nyan was only interested in dancing.
And here’s Nyan with Mia. “Make silly faces!” was Mia’s command.
So we’ve left London. Nyan and Daddy are having a sojourn in the US for a couple weeks before they join Mommy on the other side of the globe to start their latest adventure. First, though, we had to get out of London, and most importantly, we had to say farewell to our friends – especially Nyan’s friends. So a week or so ago, we threw a party at a nearby pub. A lot of his friends from school showed up. Here’s our boy with a few of them. Don’t worry, all the grumpy faces were just toddlers putting on a show for the camera:
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The party included plenty of food and toys and, yes, chocolate – so by late afternoon, all those kids had a lot of energy to burn off. Which they did by running around the back garden at the pub, including up and down the wheelchair ramp (the one with a sign that says, explicitly, that it’s not to be used for children to play on. Oops). Several videos from that, including lots of running and screaming:
Nyan Thomas, going against the grain:
And here he is giving cuddles (and vamping for the camera) to one of his besties, Adam:
Uncle Jeff came to visit a couple weeks ago, the same time that the former site of the 2012 Summer Olympics was formally opening as a public park. It was a cloudy, windy day, but Jeff and Daddy took Nyan out for a day of fun.
Here we are at the tube station:
At the park itself, Nyan ran around in the grassy fields, strolled along the banks of the River Lea, oohed and aahed at the tractors and trucks he saw, and oh yes: climbed to the top of the Helter Skelter with Jeff and took a ride down. Here they are, about to head up:
And some action shots of them coming down. Nyan doesn’t exactly look thrilled, but he was all smiles as soon as they came to a rest:
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All that fun helped us build up a good appetite, so we retreated to the nearby Westfield shopping mall – a huge place that happens to feature a microbrewery that Jeff wanted to check out. We got a couple of drinks and relaxed on some couches while we waited for our pizza to arrive. This is Nyan, waiting:
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He also waved at people walking by outside:
Finally, pizza:
Then it was time to head home. While Nyan insisted he wasn’t tired, his expression on the train ride home tell a different story, I’d say.
While going through our things as we pack for a move, we found an old camera with a bunch of photos of Nyan – including some that, we’re pretty sure, have never before seen the light of day.
Speaking of moves, I’m somewhat certain that these were taken by Mommy as we were leaving Brooklyn, as she and Nyan got in the taxi to head to the airport to fly to Iowa. (later that day, Daddy would start driving from New York to Iowa, arriving the next day; the day after that, Mommy would fly to London for two weeks, then back to the US, then all three of us would fly to London in mid-June. Yes we live a rather complicated life at times.)
Without further ado: our boy on May 31, 2012 – age 10 months.
Not much to this post, just some photos from the walk home from school the other day. Absolutely lovely outside (if a tad cool), with bright early-evening sunshine. Here’s the church near our house, and Nyan pointing at the church, and Nyan mugging for the camera.
What’s a Chipping Ongar, you ask? Well. Chipping Ongar is a small rural town in the middle of nowhere, about half an hour or so to the north of us. The London Underground (a.k.a. the Tube, a.k.a. the subway system) used to run all the way out to this lovely little town, but low ridership meant the end of that; the line now ends closer in to the city proper. But some railway buffs (and there are many on this island) took over the stretch of rail, and on weekends and holidays, they run a pair of trains — one decommissioned commuter line, one classic steam train — back and forth on a 15-minute journey between two old stations.
Our boy loves trains, so we figured, why not take a ride on the Chipping-Ongar Railway? It was a (predictably) good call as it was a fun family day.
Here’s the lad, before the ride:
And here he is on the ride itself:
He was very concerned that the train window was dirty (and also wanted to drink Daddy’s coffee):
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Some photos of the lad on the train (and a bonus shot of Mommy too):
When Nyan wasn’t riding the rails, he was riding Daddy’s shoulders:
A few random non-Nyan shots:
Oh, and yes, we took a family selfie (which Nyan decided to photo-bomb):
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Besides the train fun, we had a lovely lunch at a local pub called The Cock. Nyan had fun spreading the sugar on the table (to the management, sorry about that, but at least I managed to stop him before he mixed salt into the sugar bowl!) and took a wander around the pub, as you can see here:
Some photos and videos from the past week or so, giving a glimpse of what our little man gets up to at the end of a long day of learning and playing at school:
Here he is on the walk home, deciding to have a stroll around the outside of the local library, and check out a passing fire engine (which looked, to Daddy’s eyes, like a normal black SUV. I guess Nyan has better eyesight than Daddy.)
Some photos from various walks home, including Nyan helpfully putting away the recycling bins, and posing on the “Grandma Tree,” which is a tree stump that came down in a windstorm last October; a few weeks later, Grandma L. came to visit, and she and Nyan posed for photos on the tree. To this day, every time we pass the tree – which is twice a day, as it’s right on the way to school – he talks about how he stood on the tree with Grandma.
This video shows Nyan playing around in the entryway after arriving at home – pulling bottles out of boots (which are there to help the boots retain their shape) and then declaring, “I’m going away, Daddy. I got to leave,” before putting on various boots and shoes.
And he loves to wear that monkey hat, but it can sometimes lead to an unfortunate case of hat hair:
Sunday was an absolutely brilliant day, weather-wise – not a cloud in the sky, temps in the low 60s Fahrenheit. What better way to celebrate then to head to the park across the street?
Here’s Mommy and Nyan, walking along as Daddy takes a video:
We bought Nyan’s red ball (and his green tractor as well) so he could show off his soccer/football skills. Um, let’s just say he’s got some work to do before he makes the national team:
It was our first visit to the playground since winter, and Nyan went right back to his little ‘store’ and offered to ‘cook’ some pasta and tea for Mommy and Daddy.
There was also an ice cream truck parked nearby, and Nyan insisted we buy him a cone. As expected, he showed no interest at all in actually eating it – he didn’t have one bite. Though he did enjoy walking around holding the cone, before finding a pile of old leaves and tossing them up in the air:
And here he is, wandering around the playground, trying to decide what to do next:
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