During our September sojourn in Iowa, Grandma and Grandpa took Nyan for a day trip to the Mississippi River town of Dubuque. They have this cool museum that’s mostly about the river, its dams and its ships. Nyan was pretty into it:
There were lots of exhibits about old riverboats and locks on the river:
And, for some reason, they had a big exhibit on …. dinosaurs. No problem though – the kid loved them too!
And finally, some random shots around the place. Not a bad way to spend a day!
Nyan and Grandpa have always bonded over their mutual love of model trains. On our visit to Grandpa’s place this September, though, they took it to the next level: Grandpa cleared out a large space in the garage and set up a big table devoted to a model train layout. The two of them spent hours out there, every single day, adding to it and racing the trains around the track.
It was pretty impressive:
Here’s the young engineer himself at work:
They eventually ran out of room and so had to add another table. That necessitated some fresh painting too.
Nyan got so into it, in fact, that even when he wasn’t out in the garage, he was still playing trains: he’d take extra track and build his own little layout inside Grandma and Grandpa’s house.
He’s already got big plans for how to build the train layout next time he visits Iowa. We can only hope Grandma and Grandpa are ready – and have enough room!
About a mile or so from where Daddy grew up is a place called Kinnick Stadium, where the local university football team plays. Daddy spent a lot of time there as a kid; it’s sort of the beating heart of his hometown, to some degree, so it holds a lot of sentimental meaning.
It so happens that a neighbor of Grandma and Grandpa works at the stadium, and offered to give Nyan a tour one day when there was no game. Grandma, Grandpa and Daddy were probably more excited about it than Nyan, to be truthful, but Nyan still managed to enjoy himself.
We started off with a tour of the press box, where we could see the whole stadium from high above.
Then it was down into the bowels of the old building, where the locker rooms are. The visitors’ locker room is well-known for being painted a sort of salmon pink – supposedly to make the visiting team a bit more mellow. There’s no great evidence that it works though.
Then the home team’s locker room, where our boy went a little crazy.
Some words of advice that the players see inside their locker room:
Then finally, it was down the concrete hallway they call the Tunnel, and out onto the field itself. Daddy had been on the field several times before – rushing the field after a particularly exciting victory, mostly – but it’s a totally different feel to have the whole field – the whole stadium, in fact – pretty much to yourself.
Nyan got his exercise in as well. And took a tumble, like all good football players.
PS – little-known fact that “Kinnick” was on the short list for names for our boy before he was born. (Okay, “Kinnick” was on Daddy’s short list. And not entirely seriously, frankly.) Kinnick Stadium is a great place – but we do think Nyan fits our boy much better.
As you may know, Nyan has never been too fond of dogs. He’s long had a healthy skepticism of them, a skepticism that often has spilled over into outright fear. It hasn’t helped that, living in a high-rise in one of the world’s most densely populated cities, he doesn’t have a lot of chances to have long interactions with the furry fellows.
Happily, that changed in September when visiting Phil, Jill and their three boys in Chicago. They have a lovely little rescue dog named Pearl, who’s quite mellow and sweet. Nyan has met Pearl before but never really clicked, but this trip, something came together in his head and before we knew it, Nyan was all over the friendly pooch.
Here he is, walking and cuddling Pearl like they had always been best pals:
Cuddling his new pal:
It wasn’t just Pearl though. He brought his new-found love of canines back with us when we returned to Iowa City. Check him out here with Aunt Maggie’s pooch:
And then there was the Beast, a.k.a. Lily, one of the sweetest dogs you’ll ever meet. She’s Cousin Mia’s pooch, and Nyan loved Beast too.
Okay, so it took a minute. But once they warmed up to each other, it was all love.
Happy to report that he’s still into dogs now that we’re back in Singapore. No fear of them at all. Such a nice change. He’s even mentioned, a time or two, getting a dog himself. Uh, we quickly change the topic. Dude, we live in a not-huge apartment on the 20th floor – not so great for a dog.
Still, pleased as hell that he’s finally into dogs. Our boy is coming along nicely.
An hour or so outside of London is a kid’s paradise known as Diggerland. Someone took a bunch of old construction equipment — backhoes, trucks, and of course diggers — and turned it into a theme park for kids. One day during our August sojourn in England, Auntie Zuzu and Uncle Iain took Nyan there for the day – and a splendid time was had by all.
Here’s an assortment of snapshots that should give a pretty good sense of all the fun that was had:
And yes you can see a couple pictures of a giant digger thing being used as a thrill ride. Not bad at all:
So we went to visit some schools in Cambridge, England. One of them had a computer lab in which the older kids had built a real, functioning robot. They call it Mechanoid, and it’s quite a thing. So the woman giving us the school tour turned on the droid and we had some fun. Or tried to; it wasn’t the most responsive robot ever, I suppose.
Still, there were high fives, or attempts at high fives:
And there were jokes, robot style:
And there was even a moment when our hero tried to dance with Mechanoid:
Okay, so maybe the technology isn’t quite ready for prime time. But still, this was built by some school kids! Very impressive.
Let’s take a look at some of the fun times our hero had with his cousins and other family members in England back in August.
Check out those trampolining skills!
Random scenes:
The littlest one there is Elodie, his young cousin, whom he met for the first time this trip. But they quickly became best friends. Here they are together; I think Nyan is teaching her how to dance:
A few more photos:
And finally, more play time with Elodie. Except this time it’s mostly Nyan making a ‘sandwich’ out of pillows. (Anything green represented ‘salad,’ a.k.a. lettuce for the sandwich.) Elodie, meanwhile, is more interested in just wearing Nyan’s Star Wars hat.
As we’ve been showing recently, Nyan took Mommy and Daddy to England in August for a few weeks of fun with friends and family. There were castles, late night dance marathons, museum visits…. but Nyan’s days (and nights) were also filled with smaller moments that were no less fun and silly and perhaps even photogenic. Here, we capture some of them.
Like this precious moment. Some random dance, followed by some drawing, followed by…well, just watch.
Or that time he decided he wanted to be locked in the car’s boot (or trunk, as they call it in America). Does this count as bad parenting? Nah.
A few random photos from these random days:
One morning Nyan decided he was a bee:
That was about the same time he did a display of what he calls “sky soaring”:
More pictures:
And finally, we saved the best for last. Nyan telling a story about aliens, a plane that’s bigger than the universe, and a rather unique take on economics:
We’ve got much more from the UK trip still to share. Stay tuned…
Nyan Thomas L's Blog 