And a boat. And other things. This is from the London Transport Museum, which we visited a few weeks back. Pretty cool place, with lots of old trains, trams, and buses that kids can climb aboard. Not to mention several simulators where kids can pretend to drive. If you know our boy, you’ve already guessed that he absolutely loved it.
Family portraits (check out his sweater; he was dressed for the part that day!):
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Here he is, overlooking the old rail cars, and also checking out a model train that was on display:
This is our hero driving the bus down the road – and forgetting to keep his eye on the road.
And here he is driving the same bus before getting bored and switching to a ferry which he then piloted down the River Thames:
He also got to steer an actual bus:
And a couple still photos of Nyan behind the wheel:
Of course we took the tube (aka subway) to get there. Here’s Nyan on the ride home – complete with his own big yellow bus that he bought at the gift shop. (Bought it himself, in fact – handed the money to the cashier, a fact that he still proudly talks about today, several weeks later.)
Just unloading a handful of photos, in no particular order, from January and February that, far as we can remember, didn’t make it in to any other posts. Also a couple of random videos from the same timeframe. Enjoy!
On a rainy Sunday a few weeks back, we took Nyan to London’s Science Museum. It is, like most museums in this city, free and sprawling and pretty great. It’s all about – you guessed it – science, in a variety of formats. Here’s the lad checking out the view from the balcony above the main hall:
That main hall, right when you walk in, has huge old Victorian-era steam engines. There are whole wings devoted to mathematics, and to space rockets, and to the Large Hadron Collider and the research that goes on there. (That last one is probably a bit too advanced for our boy (not to mention his Daddy)). So lots of stuff to see and do. He loved it.
He embraced his agrarian roots in the section on farming:
And there were plenty of open spaces for Nyan to run around, plus random displays of fascinating things to look at: Read the rest of this entry »
It was a big weekend in Nyan Thomas’s world: he moved to the Big Boy Bed! Okay technically it’s the same crib he’s always had, but Daddy finally figured out that, rather than buying a whole new bed, he could just take the front off the crib and voila – it’s basically a bed. Was Nyan excited? He was:
He took to it pretty well – he has yet to climb out of it overnight or when he’s having trouble falling asleep; we’re not sure if he just hasn’t figured out that he could just crawl out and open his bedroom door or what, but we’re not about to tell him that.
Sunday was a beautiful day here: about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, crystal blue skies, nary a cloud to be seen. We had tickets to see an exhibit at the Tate Modern art museum, so we headed there (being careful not to tell Nyan we were going to a “museum” since he associates museums with airplanes and buses). Here’s Mommy and Nyan on the tube, and on the bridge connecting the museum to St Paul’s Cathedral. Look at that bright sunshine!
At the museum itself, Nyan did fairly well as Mommy and Daddy looked at the art – he was a bit antsy, a bit bored perhaps, rode around on Daddy’s shoulders as Daddy pointed out various things in the paintings and Nyan pretended to be interested. Frankly he was more patient than we might have expected.
We had lunch at the restaurant upstairs. While we waited for our food, Nyan drew pictures with the crayons and posed for photos with Mommy:
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And when the food arrived, Nyan decided he would chow down on… butter:
Yes, butter. Straight up butter.
Well, at least he’s getting some calories…
After a train ride home and then a nap, Daddy offered to take Nyan to the park. He didn’t want to, he said. So Daddy asked him what he wanted to do. “I wanna ride a train!” Fair enough: Daddy took Nyan back to the tube station and they rode the train. Didn’t go anywhere: we rode for about 20 minutes out into the British countryside, then got on a train going back the other way. But he loved it. Here he is waiting for the train:
Other tidbits from the weekend: Here’s Nyan, getting in some reading during breakfast. Yes, he wanted to read the local recycling guide.
And here he is playing in the tall char in our bedroom. He likes to crawl into there and pretend it’s a food stand, offering ice cream, cake, tea, etc. to whoever. He had a lot of trouble getting in – he’s growing up!
So, a fun weekend overall. And he was pretty tuckered out by the end of it – and obviously quite happy to crawl into his big boy bed on Sunday evening.
About 45 minutes to the southeast of London, on the banks of the River Medway, is the old town of Rochester, home to the 900-year-old Rochester Castle. It’s quite a sight, both inside and out – the wooden floors have long since rotted away, so inside you get some tremendous views all the way up to the sky:
A few weeks back, on a sunny but windy and chilly Sunday morning, we headed there to take in the views. We climbed up probably eight stories to the very top and found some stunning views:
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Just across the road is the Rochester Cathedral, a pretty beautiful building in its own right. It’s the second-oldest cathedral in England, and Christians have been worshiping on this very site since about 600 AD.
Inside is a huge and tremendous pipe organ. And, on this Sunday, also inside was a silly boy who decided to lay on the stone floor and pose for a photo.
Later we walked around the church grounds, where the grass was still green despite it being the middle of January. Nyan was just happy to be able to run around, pick up sticks, explore the statues… typical Nyan stuff.
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We had Sunday lunch at a pub, wandered the old High Street a bit, and generally took in 1,000 years of history. All in a day’s work.
Nyan’s Uncle Ye and Aunt Lisa got married on Saturday afternoon/evening. It was a beautiful sunny day out in the Essex countryside, and a lovely ceremony and dinner/reception. Nyan Thomas was to be a page boy, helping escort Lisa into the ceremony.
Unfortunately, it was a 2:30pm ceremony, and Nyan fell asleep at 1pm for his usual nap as we drove toward the venue. We arrived at 1:30 and he was snoozing away, so we let him keep sleeping in the car, since he needed some rest. Daddy finally had to wake him up at 2, and the young man was not a happy camper. Not throwing any fits, just dour-faced and clearly in no mood to be a page boy. So he was all dressed up with nowhere to go… but hey, he looked good at least. (Most of these pictures are from the photo session immediately after the ceremony.)
Of course, within half an hour of the ceremony ending, he was in his usual high spirits: Read the rest of this entry »
No real rhyme or reason here, just a handful of shots from Nyan’s visit to Grandma and Grandpa’s in Iowa last month. Being silly, being happy, playing, wearing hats or other random things on his head, reading the newspaper… this is our boy.
Our boy always wants to do whatever anyone else is doing. It’s a wonderful trait to have, we think, and results in all sorts of adorable moments. Like the time last month when Grandma and Grandpa were doing the dishes. Nyan Thomas insisted on slapping on a pair of purple gloves and joining in.
On our return to London, he want to Phwa Phwa’s house and almost immediately insisted on helping her with the dishes too:
He also likes to help vacuum, hang laundry out to dry, cook, make the bed, pretty much any chore aside from putting away his own toys (although we’re working on that and he’s getting better!). We wonder at what age he’ll start to think that chores actually aren’t that much fun. ‘Til then, we’ll have him help as much as we can!
It’s an almost-pleasant 52 rainy degrees (Fahrenheit) in London this January evening – just a wee bit nicer than the -17 degrees (Fahrenheit) or so that our friends and family back in the Midwest are suffering through right now. So it seems fitting, somehow, to post these pictures: It’s Nyan Thomas, decked out for whatever Mother Nature can throw at him, in a snazzy snowsuit and boots courtesy of Grandma and Grandpa.
These were taken in mid-December, when we were back in Iowa, and when the temperature was around 10 degrees F – bloody stinking cold, although nearly tropical compared to what it’s like there now. And yes, there was snow on the ground – but no, our boy had no interest in going out to play in it. “No want snow. Is cold.” Smart kid, actually, although making a snowman would have been fun. Someday perhaps.
But we did head outside, for a bit, in the bitter cold. Nyan was totally fine with it, decked out in his finest thermal ware. And of course he wanted to ride on Daddy’s shoulders, and of course Daddy was happy to oblige.
(No, he’s not looking especially happy in this shot. But trust us – the kid had a blast.)
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