The dude loves all things mechanical, it’s been well-established. If it roars and moves, all the better. So when we visited Uncle Scott and his gigantic lawn, and when Uncle Scott was happy to show off his riding lawnmower, Nyan was in little boy heaven.
Pictures are great, but they don’t do it justice like video does. Roll tape:
Here we are with daddy:
Daddy again:
Daddy one more time:
The local airport held an air show of sorts: a group of guys owns some World War II-era planes, including fighter planes and a B-29 Superfortress bomber (same kind of plane that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, as it happens), and they bring them around to airports and let people check out the planes. They also offer flights in the planes themselves, but with prices ranging from $600 for a flight in the bowels of the B-29, to $2600 to soar in a Corsair, we thought it best to stick to the ground, which only cost $10 a head (and kids were free!)
The best part, Daddy thought, was the B-29. We stood inside one of the bomb bays, which was full of (defused, I assume) 500-pound bombs. Then we climbed a ladder to stand in the cockpit.
They also had that Corsair, which happens to be the same model as Skipper, one of the characters in Nyan’s second favorite movie, Planes: Fire and Rescue. (The most favorite being Penguins of Madagascar.)
We went on the second day, and only four planes were there – several more were to arrive on the weekend – and the B-29 was the only one we could go in. But it was still pretty cool, and it was a beautiful and very warm summer day. No complaints at all.
For Nyan, probably the best part was the toy WWII plane (it was a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, Grandpa decided) that Daddy bought for him as a souvenir. No, that was definitely his favorite part. Kids today.
Mommy took Nyan down the street to Willow Creek Park, and shaped a ton of photos. It wasn’t intended to be a sort of modeling shoot, but that’s kinda what it ended up looking like!
Nyan has always proven himself to be ready to lend a hand when it comes to doing laundry, doing dishes, sweeping, etc., and he’s been no different on our sojourn in Iowa. Check out the lad here, earning his keep by helping out around the house. Which means using a vacuum, because it’s so much fun!
No matter the size of the vacuum, Nyan Thomas is your man:
We signed Nyan up for some swimming lessons with a local swim school here in Iowa, to keep up the momentum he’s built over the past few months in our pool in Singapore. So over the last six weeks, he went to something like 16 classes, 20 minutes each (short but really just about right for a short-attention-span toddler), at the indoor pool of a local motel. He had a variety of college age teachers, and they were all good, but his favorite was the one he got the most often, a young man named Max.
Over the course of the lessons, Nyan worked on his back stroke, forward crawl with a floating board, forward crawl without a floating board, putting his head under water (which he’s now comfortable doing, a HUGE step forward), and generally just getting more and more comfortable in the water. We couldn’t be happier with the progress he made. Here are a couple pictures of Nyan psyching himelf up for another training session:
Are there videos? There most certainly are.
Here he is in late June, early on in his lessons.
Working on the forward crawl (okay yes he could still use some practice):
Here he’s practicing his jumping into the water, and also a bit with putting his head under water:
Kicking on his back, all by himself:
More forward crawl. Getting better, we think:
The final lesson. Ignore the other kids screaming in the background and focus on how far we’ve come:
Okay, there’s plenty left to learn. He’s not quite ready to try out for the national Olympics team (whether that’s the US, UK, Singapore, or Burma) but he’s so much more comfortable in the water than he was even four months ago. And he’s got a very firm foundation to keep learning once we return to Singapore.
Maybe the best day ever? Probably right up there, as you’ll see…
It was a warm day in the middle of summer. Mommy was in California for some business meetings, Daddy was in New York for some business meetings, and Nyan… Nyan got to cruise around Iowa with Grandma and Grandpa. First up was a visit to a real live dairy farm.
Nyan wasn’t all that keen on touching the cows, but he and Grandma (and Nyan’s stuffed pal Woody) did have some fun at one of the cut-out photo op places:
And an unexpected bonus: visiting the dairy farm at the same time was a group of farmers who were driving their tractors around the area. It’s called, a tractor brigade or a tractorcade (we’re not quite sure, and to be honest, this is the first time Daddy has ever heard of such a thing, though he’s told now that this is relatively common among farming folk. Kinda like a gang of farmers, I guess?). Whatever it’s called, it means dozens of tractors lined up in the parking lot. For an almost-four-year-old boy who’s into tractors and all other things mechanical, it was heaven.
But the fun wasn’t over. Far from it. Next stop, the small town of Independence, Iowa, where an old steam engine (and its caboose) sits outside the old train station. Once again, our hero was just a wee bit happy. First time he’d ever seen a real live steam engine in person!
He took a long nap during the 90-minute drive home. Tuckered out but very happy.
We’ve been in Iowa — Daddy’s home state — for, gosh, six weeks? seven weeks? Something like that. It’s safe to say that Nyan has had the Best Summer Ever. In no particular order, he’s enjoyed a nonstop stream of toys, fire trucks, swimming, cement mixers, trains, Grandma and Grandpa, cows, books, fishing, fuel trucks, airplanes, cousins and aunts and uncles, car rides… I’m sure I’ve forgotten about a zillion things.
And of course, Daddy has been snapping about a zillion pictures. Here, in no particular order, are a small sampling. Most of these are from late June, early in our sojourn here. We’ll post up some more in coming days.
Bonus, just for fun: a couple of shots of Iowa at sunset at the peak of summer. Pretty, no?
As you’ve read, we spent a little time in California last month. Here’s a bit of what we got up to.
We hung out in San Francisco:
And we visited Stinson Beach, north of the Golden Gate:
One afternoon we stopped off in lovely Palo Alto on a lovely sunny afternoon, where we met a nice young couple in a playground, with two kids of their own. We played with them for a bit, and Nyan ran around in the playground:
We also drove down Highway 1 along the Pacific coast and took some shots:
One evening, while waiting for a taxi back to the hotel, Nyan decided to race himself, as he does.
Note how he’s full of beans late at night? That’s the jet lag talking. Not to worry: he got plenty of sleep. Usually in the middle of the afternoon.
Tired little guy. But he had a blast!
Nyan Thomas turns four today. There’ll be dinosaurs, fire engines, dump trucks and other things that four year old boys like. In the meantime, here he is over the years: a couple days old, then about 15 months after that, then another 15 months, and then just a few weeks ago.
(click to enlarge)
Happy birthday, Nyan!
On our mini-holiday in Northern California last month, we spent one day driving south along the shore on Highway 1. We’d intended to get down to Big Sur, but it was lunchtime before we even made it to Santa Cruz, and the geography was clear: making it to Big Sur was going to mean pushing it really hard and not having much time to relax and enjoy ourselves.
So we decided to scrap Big Sur and spend a little time in Santa Cruz, including a leisurely lunch on the boardwalk and just wandering around in the brilliant sunshine. It’s a lovely coastal town, and the scenery is only enhanced by the weird way the fog forms a sort of wall just inland.
The best part, maybe, was the large flock (school? group?) of sea lions (or seals? not sure of the biological differences here, to be honest…) hanging out on a little shelf under the boardwalk.
Very cool. Loved the sounds they make too. And Nyan was totally transfixed too:
So no, we didn’t make it to Big Sur in the end. Didn’t even make it down to Monterey. No complaints at all though.
Nyan Thomas L's Blog 