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Eighth in a series

Nyan Thomas got to spend much of his eighth month of life in the UK, with the K. side of the family. Mommy, you see, needed to take a big exam to maintain her professional certification, and needed to study hard for it; that was proving impossible to do in Brooklyn, where she was on full-time baby duty all day every weekday. So in early March the two of them flew back across the Atlantic. (She passed the test, of course; hooray!)

But we packed a bit of family fun into the days before they left. First off, Daddy took a day off from work and rented a car, and the three of us drove down to Chinatown in Brooklyn for a weekday Dim Sum lunch, as you saw here.

We also captured this video – still one of my favorites – of Nyan tapping his feet while waiting for dinner to be served.

And one chilly winter day, Mommy and Nyan met Daddy in the city for some personal errands; on the way back, they passed through Manhattan’s Chinatown and came across a random dragon parade. We’re still not sure what it was for, but it was certainly colorful.

Then it was off to the airport – where he charmed the ticket agents and TSA guards, as you read here – and over the sea.

Once he got there, it was time to be spoiled again. He got to attend Phwa Phwa’s 60th birthday party in early March, as you saw here. And his auntie and uncles took him to the playground on a regular basis – it was cool, but not as cool as New  York, and plus spring was on the way. Turns out, as you saw here, the boy loves to swing.

And in between study sessions, there were plenty of Skype sessions with Daddy back in New York.

As the end of the month rolled around, Nyan Thomas was still in the UK, but preparing to return to Brooklyn, where spring had sprung in his absence, and where Mommy and Daddy were about to set in motion some big plans that would mean big and good changes in all of their lives. For more on that, check back tomorrow for the next review!

Nyan Thomas’s seventh month of life – from late January through most of February – started with a bang when, on the afternoon of Jan. 31, we got visual confirmation of the young man’s first tooth! We were quite excited, of course. We noted at the time that it came hard on the heels of a new food regimen, built around less formula and more food, albeit mushy foods like rice cereal, mashed sweet potatoes and the like. The boy was loving the new tastes, and was grabbing for the spoon and leaning forward to get the next bite.

By mid-February we had another tooth in full view, as reported; both were on the bottom, but we could see some on the top that were about to break through as well. He was having some teething pains, especially in the middle of the night, which necessitated some teething gel applications in the wee hours.

We also reported around this time that Nyan was figuring out how to crawl. As we said midmonth:

The young man is figuring out how to crawl – and Sunday afternoon, he actually got it! Butt up in the air, propped up on his front arms, he scooted forward! It was a legitimate crawl, though just a one-time deal. But he did it again this morning. It won’t be long until he figures out how (or builds the strength) to do it for extended periods. At that point, of course, the entire apartment will be up for grabs. We’re still not sure how we’ll deal with that; the kid has boundless energy, and we can just imagine the hijinx he’s about to get into…

That was certainly a very accurate prediction, we can say today…

Month Seven also featured a visit, in late January, from Aunt Maggie and Grandma L., as reported. It was Maggie’s first time to meet the boy, and they got along great; she graciously gave him lots of cuddles, kisses, and baths.

We also bought ourselves a video monitor this month – we should have bought it ages ago, we realized! – and amused ourselves by using its infrared record function to take short videos of Nyan sleeping, or not sleeping as the case may be, as you saw here.

In mid-February, we took Nyan to a nearby Sears portrait studio for a photo shoot in honor of his six-month birthday on Jan. 26. As you saw here, the kid loves the camera and, we’d say, the camera loves the kid…

Nyan Thomas certainly packed a lot into his seventh month of life!

Sixth in a daily series

The six month of Nyan Thomas’s life – stretching from the day after Christmas until late January – was a busy one. Lots of fun activities, lots of developmental milestones.

We started the month with Mommy, Daddy and Nyan spending another week and a bit in the UK. There were relatives to meet, friends to catch up with, and even a trip to the zoo! As we reported at the time:

Nyan was less than impressed at first, as he was in his stroller and couldn’t see much. So Daddy started holding him. He was ever so slightly more interested, but let’s be honest: five months old is a bit young for a kid to enjoy a zoo. Still, it was a fun family outing, and mom and dad certainly enjoyed it.

The UK is not quite as chilly as New York, so we spent a fair amount of time outside, bundling up the boy and going for stroller rides through the forest paths near the K. family home. We also took the boy one day to the seaside village of West Mersea, where we enjoyed delicious fish and delicious oysters (which, sorry to say, led to a bout of food poisoning…)

The flight back to New York was mostly uneventful (though the lad decided he’d poop not once, not twice, but three times over the course of the eight hour flight. So we got to change his smelly diaper three times, in a tiny, unventilated airplane bathroom. The less said about that, the better.) He did just fine with the flying itself, and to alleviate the occasional bouts of boredom, he did what he does: flirted, as you read at the time:

The kid is a flirt. Big time. Any female within about 20 rows of our seat was a target: he’d find a pretty female, stare at them ’til they caught his gaze, and then smile, coo, stick his hand in his mouth – you know, standard flirting behavior. He got really tight with one of the flight attendants, too. (As for the fellas, young Nyan Thomas couldn’t care less: one dude was passing by and stopped by our seat for a minute, waiting for the aisle to clear. The guy looked over at Nyan and gave him a smile; Nyan had been looking at a toy but looked up when he felt someone staring at him. When he saw that it was just a dude, he couldn’t be bothered and immediately went back to his toy.)

Back in New York, it was time for Nyan Thomas to graduate from an all-formula diet and on to solid food! That came in early January, with messy (but, to us at least, adorable and hilarious) results, as you saw in this video.

It took a while to get him eating well – hell, we still struggle with it today – but we slowly started to give him more solid food and less formula. Other than that, the boy spent the month just being Nyan. But by the time his sixth birthday rolled around on Jan. 26, he was about to cross another landmark, one that had been causing him the occasional moment of mild pain and massive drooling over the previous few weeks. Can you guess what on earth we could be foreshadowing? Yeah, I bet you can. But come back tomorrow for the next update anyway!

Fifth in a series.

Our boy had another medical checkup in late November, just after his four-month birthday. It was all good; he weighed in at 13.9 pounds and was 25.75 inches long (or tall?) – a bit low in the percentile for the weight, but nothing to be alarmed at. The biggest thing, as we reported at the time, was that he had to have another round of shots for his vaccinations. Once again, Mommy and Daddy proved more anxious about this than our boy:

But he was fine. Brave, stoic, didn’t even cry out once. He was, in fact, mostly annoyed that Mommy’s hugs were cramping his style – getting in the way of his flirting with the nurses. He was a little fussy and a little feverish and just a bit off for the next couple of days, but this morning he’s back to his old self – gurgling and chirping and playing and kicking and waking up at 5:30. He also rolled all the way onto his side for the first time ever this morning!

Also around this time, we tried to figure out his penchant for pulling off his socks, and I theorized at the time that it was just a side effect of his love of kicking his feet. Nope: I can report now, nearly eight months later, that he just loves taking them off, by any means necessary. Back then, he had to use the friction of the floor; today, he just reaches down and pulls them off. (And usually puts them right in his mouth.)

Nyan Thomas’s fifth month of life took up most of December, and featured another major first: his first airplane ride! Mommy and Nyan spent about three weeks with her family in the UK, with Daddy scheduled to come over at Christmas for a little over a week. That meant he got to meet Pho Pho, Phwa Phwa, his cousins, and the aunties and uncles he hadn’t yet had the chance to charm.

We didn’t know how he’d do on the flight, and were naturally worried that he’d be fussy, wouldn’t do well with the change in air pressure, etc. But no. As we said at the time:

Mommy reports that he was a perfect gentleman the entire flight, even during the two-and-a-half hour departure delay! He spent the entire time either sleeping or – natch – flirting with the flight attendants. That’s our boy!

The next three weeks consisted of Mommy catching up on sleep, and catching up with friends and relatives, and of Nyan getting spoiled, as reported:

Young Nyan Thomas has been winning the hearts and minds of the United Kingdom for the past two weeks. He and his mommy have been getting deservedly spoiled with family love, home-cooked meals, and lots of sleep.

It was, admittedly, not that much fun of a month for Daddy, who was working back in a chilly, dark New York – but there were plenty of Skype calls, and Daddy was happy that Mommy was getting a break from New York, and that Nyan was being well taken care of, not to mention getting to know the K. side of the family.

And at the end of the month, Daddy boarded a jet himself and took the red-eye from New York to London, arriving on Christmas morning. Daddy slept a good chunk of Christmas Day itself – jet lag, you know – but did manage to join Mommy and Nyan for a visit to Mommy’s friend Sharon’s house for Christmas night activities, as we chronicled at the time.

That was also the start of Daddy’s 10-day stay in the UK, which featured lots of fun activities with Mommy and their boy. Coverage of that will have to wait until tomorrow, and the recap of Nyan Thomas’s six month of life…

Fourth in a series.

Baby’s first snow!

Yes, it snowed in October – Saturday, Oct. 29, to be precise. The weather report from the time, via this very blog:

Last Saturday, New York and much of the East Coast got blasted by a rather nasty, wet, slushy, icy, snowy – and early! – storm. In Brooklyn, we got a full day’s worth of cold rain, sleet and really heavy snow that snapped some tree branches, caused plenty of localized flooding on the roads, and generally made for a wet mucky day.

We stayed in that day, and held the boy up to the big windows in the front of the apartment so he could see the snow. He didn’t seem to care.

The next day was bright, clear and cold, but warm enough that most of the snow and slush had melted away by midday. We decided it was a fine day for Nyan’s first road trip, and his first visit to a Burmese Buddhist temple in New Jersey, about an hour’s drive from Brooklyn. The temple itself was modest but filled with  warm and welcoming Burmese-Americans; out back was a stupa modeled after the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangoon, Burma – to a much smaller scale, but still impressive, and looking lovely in the late afternoon sunshine, partially covered with as-yet-unmelted snow.

A week later, the first weekend of November, was the New York Marathon, which runs right up the road near our apartment at the time. It was another bright and cold day, so we bundled up the boy, slapped on his too-cool-for-school sunglasses, and headed out to cheer on the runners.

Later in November, Nyan Thomas took his first ride on the New York subway system. (The theme this month seemed to be movement: road trip, marathon, subway.) We were a little worried that the noise and clamor of the trains would freak out the boy, but as with most things we worry about, we needn’t have worried. He was totally fine, more interested in checking out these new inputs and making funny faces at his fellow passengers.

Also in November, we finally accepted that the boy wasn’t eating or sleeping as much as he should, and buckled down and put him on a stricter schedule of both, with pretty fast and remarkable results. He also became more needy when it comes to wanting cuddles, and found his crying voice, which led to numerous bouts of crying for no reason whatsoever. All of this, we were reassured, was perfectly normal, and thanks to his grandparents and other family members offering us countless advice, we were able to manage through these new challenges this fine.

Nyan Thomas’s busy fourth month of life ended with a bang and a whole slew of visitors: first came Uncle Phil, Aunt Jill and their three boys, followed by another visit from Grandma L., who flew out for a few days. We took another ride on the subway for a visit to the 9/11 memorial in downtown Manhattan, a somber experience that, of course, meant more to the adults than to the boy himself.

Third in a series; come back tomorrow for more of this month-by-month look back at Nyan Thomas’s first life; scroll down for the first two installments.

Nyan Thomas’s third month of life – from late September through late October – started out with a necessary evil: vaccinations. As it turned out, Mommy and Daddy were more uptight about the needle than Nyan was; as we reported at the time:

He was brave. He was nonplussed. He took it just fine – no fussing, no crying, no nothing.

He did get a bit fussy later that evening and the next day, but no fever to speak of. He’s been like that all of his doctor visits, and vaccinations: calm and cool and more interested, frankly, in flirting with the nurses, or getting up and crawling around and exploring the office, than being worried about being poked or prodded. In fact, to this day, we have yet to find anything at all that he’s afraid of. Not sure if that’s normal or not, and I suppose it could be a problem when, for instance, he’s not afraid of grabbing electric cords and shoving them in his mouth for a good chew. Just one more thing for his parents to keep an eye on…

The number of visitors dropped off in October, but we still got to enjoy a brief visit mid-month by Grandma and Grandpa L., who swung through town on their drive back to Iowa from a vacation in Virginia. Mommy and Daddy also both caught a bug in October; Daddy got the worst of it, and stayed in bed for two straight days. They discovered that a cuddly little baby really is the best medicine. (And don’t worry: we made sure we didn’t get the boy sick. In fact, we decided that he had whatever it was first.)

We also noticed in October that our boy was paying extremely close attention to what we do, and doing it himself. Case in point: Mommy had a cough for a few days after she was sick; during one overnight feeding, he suddenly starting coughing as well. It momentarily freaked us out, until we realized it was not a real cough  he was just doing what Mommy was doing.

Another minor health issue in October (seems to be a theme of the month, doesn’t it?): we found a small boil on his bum. Didn’t look serious, but we still had the pediatrician check it out. She said it was nothing and prescribed antibiotic cream. It never really went away, however; a couple months later, Pho Pho (Grandpa K.) determined that it was a fistula – nothing serious, but more than just a boil, and someting that a simple antibiotic cream wouldn’t take care of. This, frankly, was our first sign that our pediatrician was not all that great. She was friendly and seemed competent enough, but on Nyan’s visits to see her, she would spend all of five minutes with the boy after her nurses took care of everything. I guess that’s how it’s done in a busy, crowded place like Park Slope, Brooklyn, but for Mommy and Daddy – who come from smaller towns, where medical service is more personal, and both of whom have plenty of medical professionals in their families – it was rather jarring. It ended up being just one more reason we determined Brooklyn was no place to raise a child.

We also worked a lot in October on communication with the boy. As I wrote at the time:

Otherwise, we’re just enjoying hanging out with him, talking to him, whether in Burmese, English, or baby talk… and yes, the kid is a talker. Especially during the days, he’s babbling nonstop. We figure he thinks he’s actually communicating with us, and wonder what he thinks we’re saying when we make random gurgling noises at him. Other times, we think he seems a little frustrated when he’s babbling and gurgling and yet remains unable to clearly communicate. We recognize most of his cries and what they mean, and have gotten quite good at figuring out when he’s hungry, when he wants a cuddle, when he wants to be left alone, and when he needs a new diaper. Beatrice is especially good at interpreting those signals; I’m not nearly as far along, since I get to spend huge chunks of my days and weeks away from him, chained to an office in Midtown Manhattan.

Minor medical issues aside, I’d say it was a good month, with a lot of progress made as far as figuring our what makes little Nyan Thomas tick.

Editor’s note: Second in a series of posts in which we take a sequential look back at the first 12 months in Nyan Thomas’s life, leading up to his first birthday later this month. For Month One, just keep scrolling down after this post. And check back tomorrow for Month Three!

The second month of Nyan Thomas’s life began with a hurricane and ended with a birthday.

In the waning days of August, all of New York was panicking over the approach of Hurricane Irene. Daddy had lived through a fair number of hurricanes and tropical storms during his stint in the Caribbean, so he was pretty non-plussed about it, and in fact was more excited than anything else. And young Nyan Thomas? He was pretty chill about it too, as you read here.

The storm hit in the early hours of Aug. 28, with damage, at least in Brooklyn, limited to a couple of downed branches and a wee bit of rain. But it snarled air traffic, and Uncle Dominic and Uncle Sean – who had been visiting – found their return flight to London was canceled. It took them four days until they could get a flight out (and what a flight: we found them two seats in First Class on Qatari Airlines from JFK to Heathrow. What a life!). So Nyan got to spend a little extra time with his uncles. Not long after, Grandma L. came for another visit.

We also continued to try to figure out the best ways to care for the little guy; this remains a work in progress, but you can see some of our thinking-in-progress in this post from last Sept. 1. And then there were the various noises the boy would make – which we named and chronicled here.

We also worked on “tummy time.” It’s hard to imagine today, when the boy can hardly keep still as he crawls anywhere and everywhere, but last September, all he wanted was to lay on his back; as you saw in this post, he was not happy when we would put him on his belly.

Nyan’s second month was also the first (though not that last) that poor Mommy, while taking him out for one of their daily strolls through the streets of Park Slope, was mistaken for the boy’s nanny. Oops.

The month ended with another visitor, as Uncle Scott flew out for a long weekend; Chris’s old colleague from the Caribbean, Susanna, was also in town for business and popped by one afternoon. And finally, on the 25th, Daddy celebrated his first birthday as a Daddy. Not a bad way to celebrate a birthday!

I won’t say that we had it all figured out by the end of that second month – far from it, in fact. But we were started to get into a rhythm; not just figuring out the boy’s daily rhythms and routines but starting, ever so slightly, to get a handle on our own routines, and the best way to deal with this mysterious, wonderful creature called Nyan Thomas.

Editor’s note: We realize that the postings have been a little light of late, and we do apologize for that; we’ve been busy with moving and trying to settle down into our new life. But fear not: today we start a countdown of sorts, a look back at the first year of Nyan Thomas’s life, one month each day until we reach July 26 – his first birthday. Today, we go back to the very beginning. And check back tomorrow for more!

When we look at Nyan Thomas today, as he babbles, crawls, climbs stairs, cruises, opens every cabinet he can and in general shows an unending curiosity about anything and everything, we can’t help but be a little amazed at how he’s changed over the past year. I know, I know, that’s a silly observation; he’s not exactly the first baby to near his first birthday, and to hit all the developmental milestones pretty much on schedule. But still. It’s a new experience to us, and no less remarkable, really, despite it not being a first.

As we wrote nearly a year ago, our little guy came along at 8:27 a.m. on Tuesday, July 26, 2011,  a typically hot sunny summer New York day. I vividly remember the entire day, all of the events – from racing across the Brooklyn Bridge in a taxi at sunrise, to the birth itself, to holding our boy, to my own attempts to give him a bottle for the first time (let’s just say that I’ve come a long way when it comes to basic parenting skills!) That first day remains one of those days where you remember pretty much every moment. Such days are rare, of course, but the birth of your first child is obviously one of them.

Nyan’s first 30 days were filled with (duh) plenty of firsts. Lots and lots of first visits from relatives: Grandma and Grandpa L., who drove in from Iowa; Auntie Emerald and Uncles Dominic and Sean, who flew over from the UK; Aunt Nyo and Uncle Min Han, who drove up from Maryland. First visit to the doctor. Daddy’s first day back at work; Mommy and Daddy’s first encounter with Nyan’s first constipation (as you read in the creatively titled post, Poop.) His first bath, chronicled here. Even his first flirting – on his third day of life, flirting up a storm with Joy, the nurse who was discharging him. (“He’s my new boyfriend,” she told us. “I may not let him leave!”) And, sure, there was the first night where he – and thus we – got very little sleep; there were plenty more nights just like that.

It was a predictably intense and crazy month, with lots of new challenges to over, lots of highs and lows (mostly highs, though, I think it’s safe to say). One of the most remarkable things that we’ve noticed all year long is how certain aspects of the boy’s personality were present from pretty much that first day. The way he looks at and watches everything, for example; his intense curiosity about everything. And the fact that he was – and remains, really – a pretty easy going baby, from the start. At one point I wrote this:

We’ve been remarkably calm, actually, throughout this thing; I think it’s a virtuous cycle: Nyan is a mellow, easy going kid, which keeps us mellow, which keeps him mellow, and so on and so forth.

Of course, these days, he’s incredibly active, but underneath it all, he’s still the same curious and easy going little guy he was from Day One.