Nyan turned 9 years old in July. We kept the celebrations low-key, centered around a sleepover and full day of play with bestie Jayden.
They swam:
They built Legos:
We had a casual birthday dinner at a local burger joint.
And of course, they posed for goofy birthday photos.
No, it wasn’t the most action-packed birthday ever, but Nyan got to spend it with his parents and, especially, his best friend. Hard to beat that!
You’ve seen how Nyan spent a good part of his truncated summer break at soccer camp with his friend Edris. He also spent five mornings at tennis camp, also with Edris.
It was held outdoors, at the tennis courts attached to a hotel downtown. We didn’t get a lot of pics or video from the lessons themselves, but here are the kids doing warm-ups one morning:
And warm-up sprints:
And just being goofy.
Here are Edris and Nyan, walking through the hotel after camp:
In fact, post-camp was surely some of the most fun of the week. We had a decent little walk from the hotel to the train, including passing through a fancy mall. They enjoyed checking out the art gallery in the mall:
The train ride home was lots of fun too. The trains were almost always just about empty, giving the boys plenty of space to goof around, look out the windows, etc. Good stuff.
We had plenty of playdates during Nyan’s month-long summer break. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
We had Edris over one afternoon. They played Lego and Minecraft…
And went for a swim:
And goofed around outside:
And had dinner at Nyan’s favorite Italian restaurant.
Another time, Nyan went to Edris’s place and hung out a lot with Coconut, their dog.
We also had a playdate with Oscar and Noe, the identical twins in Nyan’s year at school.
More Minecraft, of course.
Chitchat by the pool:
And LOTS of vamping for the slo-mo camera in the pool.
And of course — of course! — we hung out with Jayden and Jonnie. Here they are, enjoying ice cream:
And enjoying a sunny, breezy day at the beach.
We’ll have more with Jayden soon, and with his other friends too.
As mentioned, Nyan was off from school from early July til early August. To keep him occupied, we signed him up for a few day camps — including two week-long soccer camps with his good friend Edris.
This was good as it got him exercise, got him socializing, and kept his soccer skills intact – all the more important since he was no longer doing his Saturday afternoon soccer class (they had to move the class to a location pretty far away, and it just wasn’t feasible).
The soccer camp was not too far away; a short bus ride followed by a nice early-morning stroll. We often bumped into Edris on that walk, and the boys goofed around.
The camp was held inside this cavernous concrete building, with about five kids total. They did drills, they worked on skills, they played matches. Let’s check out some of the action, shall we?
Penalty shots:
Some sort of skills drill. I’m sure there’s a point to this exercise.
Exercising:
Playing a match!
And finally: showing off, or trying to show off, his spin-the-ball-on-finger skills.
We got Nyan a bike with training wheels several years ago, and a while back we took off those training wheels and Daddy tried to teach him to ride down in the basement parking garage. It was not a success. Many months later Daddy thought he’d buy Nyan a real bike and take him to a park where he could ride on the grass — soft in case he crashed. But then the coronavirus came and… yeah. Didn’t happen.
Once Singapore came out of lockdown in June, bike lessons were a top priority for us. But we got smart: we outsourced! Found a local company that does lessons, booked a lesson (actually two lessons, a Saturday morning and a Sunday morning) and off we went.
It was a complete and total success.
First step was learning to balance. Piece of cake.
And then… he was riding. Pretty much just like that – within half an hour of the lesson starting. Impressive! We took a lot of video; here are just a few.
By the way, the lesson was held under a freeway bridge going over the bay. Made for nice views!
We went back for the second day of lessons. Not really necessary, but it made him get even better.
Then it was time to buy his own bike! We stopped by the local sporting goods store where he showed off his chops by riding through the store. (It’s fine; they encourage it.)
In the end, we ordered a bike online as an early birthday present. They delivered it one Sunday evening.
We took it out for a spin around the pool right away:
And many times over the following days and weeks.
It wasn’t long before it became a weekend routine for Daddy and Nyan to take long, leisurely bike rides along the waterfront. Very proud of our boy!
Nyan’s primary/elementary school Year 4 was… unusual, to say the least. We started in August 2019 by going to school for a week, then missing two weeks to return to England for a wedding. So it took a little while to get back up to speed. Then, when the coronavirus took hold, we switched to home-based learning in April 2020, which continued pretty much til June.
The year was supposed to end in mid-June, followed by a two-month summer break. Except they decided to split up the break into two one-month breaks; the first break was the entire month of May, with the school year then extended. So: Home-based learning in April, summer vacation in May, back to school in June (some at home, some back in the school building), and end of the school year in early-ish July, with the new year to begin in mid August. Got all that?
Here’s our hero on that last day of school on July 10, 2020:
One of the assignments early in the year was to write a letter to his grandparents. He did it late because we were in England, but he did it. And it’s a beaut:
At the end of the year, Nyan brought home a big folder chock full of various drawings, poems, and other stuff he had done throughout the year. Let’s take a look at some of them. We won’t bother to try to explain them all; most are pretty self explanatory. (Click on any pic to enlarge!)
MISC WORK PICS (Start with the portfolio cover oic)
Here’s some other assignments, with a more personal, who-is-Nyan kind of bent. Some great drawings too.
Finally, a bunch of random pictures from recent months. (Again, click any pic to enlarge). His attention to detail remains astounding!
We started to slowly come out of coronavirus lockdown in June 2020, but in a very restrained way.
Nyan started to go back to school, in proper protective garb:
But it wasn’t full-time in-class learning. Here he is in mid-June, excitedly playing some sort of on-line quiz in Mandarin class from home:
Toward the end of the month we were allowed to socially mix again, so we quickly put together a sleepover with Jayden. The boys had a blast of course, playing and watching a movie and reading.
We also took a quick trip one Saturday afternoon to Gardens by the Bay. All the indoor gardens were closed, but we could walk around the jungle-park areas outside. Had it almost entirely to ourselves, and it was a great little trip to get some fresh air and exercise.
How empty was it? This is the passageway from the subway to the park. Usually heaving with people.
To be honest, Nyan wasn’t especially thrilled to be there, as you can maybe see from his body language in these pictures. Oh well. It was a good thing to do.
Maybe best of all: our swimming pool reopened in June! We celebrated with a slow-motion jump:
Swimming lessons resumed soon thereafter, as did his usual goofing around with Pang, his instructor.
Nyan also showed off his somersault moves, after some prodding from Daddy:
Yes, it was good to be back. Things started to really ramp up in July. More on that in upcoming posts!
A few random photos from lockdown during April, May and half of June 2020. To be honest, there weren’t may photos from those two and a half months because we just didn’t do all that much!
Those signs were for a photo we took to send to Great Grandma on her 97th birthday in May. (And Nyan made sure Slothie was in the picture!)
The mini car was something we stumbled across on an evening stroll. Cute little car.
That’s just Nyan rambling and letting his imagination run wild. Not much else to do in lockdown!
Nyan’s bedroom window juts out so that it overlooks the balcony from the side. On the corner of the balcony is a bougainvillea plant whose branches stick out over the railing, near to his bedroom window. Back in March we noticed some weird bunches of sticks on one of the branches. We kept an eye on it and eventually figured it out was a nest being built by a couple of olive-backed sunbirds, little fellas that look kinda like hummingbirds. Cool! We watched them build the (rather ugly) nest:
Eventually they laid some eggs and not long after, we had a couple of baby birds! It was really cool to watch them being fed.
But then… disaster! One of the babies got its food stuck in the thatching and couldn’t get it out. It just sat there, upside down, stuck, for hours, including during a massive thunderstorm.
We felt bad, so eventually Daddy went out, in the storm, and with a pair of scissors, verrrrry carefully cut the little guy loose from the thatching.
The bird was cold and shivering, and clearly exhausted from hours of struggling to get out. We gave it a little sugar water and made a little nest out of a towel, out of the rain, so he could rest and recover.
It wasn’t long before his parents found their little guy and brought him some food.
He stayed there overnight, and the next day we found him back up in the branches of the bougainvillea plant, starting to flap his wings a bit. He looked a little rough for wear but was improving.
This went on for the next day or so. Then, suddenly, our little friend was gone. We figure he got his wings and flew off to another perch somewhere in the neighborhood. That was a little sad, but we were happy to have helped him out!
Nyan was quite proud too. During one of his daily online meetings with his class, he talked about the whole situation and showed the recovering bird to his teacher and his class.
All in all, it made for a nice diversion during lockdown!
It was of course a struggle to make sure we all got enough exercise during lockdown. The pool and gyms were closed; the beach was closed; couldn’t really go outside. So we got creative, with little exercises at home.
Like slow-motion jumping jacks:
And, at the beach, playing a made-up game involving hitting a seed with a little shovel:
(Okay, that was actually from the day before the lockdown started; hence no mask and no beach restrictions. But the point is the same!)
Slo-mo jumping at the beach:
(Again, just before, or perhaps the day-of, the lockdown.)
Most days we would just go for a walk around the neighborhood, just to get the blood moving, if not actually pumping hard.
His school helped out by sending links to various exercise programs on Youtube to play along to at home. We did these most days.
And we found weird dance-along videos too:
His music teacher also sent over a video with instructions to dance. So dance he did:
Yeah, it was not a terribly active two months, of course! But we made do the best we could.
Nyan Thomas L's Blog 