Daniel is Nyan’s pal from the apartment complex. He’s about the same age (I think they were born a week apart) and they get along great. Daniel’s a sweet kid with a very vivid imagination that’s full of witches, dragons, and the like.
In this video, they are apparently using Daniel’s inflatable pool shark to form some sort of bulwark against an invading army of dragons. Or something like that. See for yourself:
Here we have the two lads randomly running around the playground and making random noises:
And a bonus video, Nyan on his own, building up a head of steam and then… jumping through the rope jungle gym. Sort of.
Our boy, like most kids, loves Legos. And Daddy, of course, loves to take videos of our boy. Put them together and we’ve got a trio of recent weeks showing Lego-playining best. First up, the artist builds an airplane that’s great until it crashes:
Next, relaxing after a long day at school by taking off the shorts and building a Lego model of Mommy’s building:
And finally, here we are with another loud airplane. And a special surprise at the end…
A few weeks ago, Nyan joined his school friend Oregon and a few other kids for some rather casual swimming lessons at a nearby condo. We did about four lessons or so, before dropping it (it wasn’t really structured enough to be worth the time or money). But before that, we managed to get in a lot of fun, much of which was captured on video and in photos. They show how far Nyan has come, given that he hardly wanted to dip a toe in the water when we first got here six short months ago.
Look at that brave boy, floating and kicking without a care in the world.
There was plenty of time for fun too. Here’s Nyan with Oregon:
Here’s Nyan, sort of walking/strutting along:
And here is Nyan the dinosaur. Or is it turtle? Sea horse?
After school the other day, Nyan invited his buddy Kyle over for a swim and supper. School is just across the street from Nyan’s apartment, so it was an easy trip. First, the two lads donned their swimsuits and hopped in the pool.
Kyle brought along some pool toys, including a battery-operated orca and a battery-operated whale shark. Nyan loved them, and didn’t exactly want to share:
It’s all good though. They still had a good time.
Later we went upstairs where the dynamic duo ate pasta while Nyan showed off his toys. Then he showed Kyle his room, including his books and the rocking horse that Uncle Scott made for Nyan.
Next up for these two: playing hookey on Friday and heading off to the zoo. We’ll let you know how that goes…
Nyan’s best friend is a boy named Kyle. Kyle and Nyan go to the same school, and Kyle lives just down the road from Nyan. So last weekend, the two boys (plus the four parents) got together at Kyle’s place for an afternoon and evening of fun and food.
Kyle’s Mommy and Daddy were nice enough to pick us up in their car. Here’s Nyan while we were waiting:
Once we got there, the adults hung out chatting at the table while the two boys played with Kyle’s toys — his dragons, dinosaurs, sticker books, cars and trucks, etc. Standard boy stuff.
Kyle also has an electric car, and his apartment’s main space is big enough that there’s actually room to drive around in it. So off they went, with only a handful of fender benders.
We got video too:
Kyle has an electric train set, too, so Nyan, Kyle and their Daddies spent a little time putting it together and making the trains run.
And here are two boys and their two mommies:
Yes, a very fun time – if it had an off note, it was predictably enough only at the very end, when Nyan did not want to go home, and Kyle didn’t want Nyan to leave. We addressed those issues, sort of, a couple days later, when Kyle came over to Nyan’s house after school for swimming and fun. More on that in Part Two of this post.
For a tropical place, it doesn’t actually seem to rain all that much here in Singapore. Or maybe it’s just that there’s a really long dry season. In any case, a few weeks back it was actually raining at pick-up-from-school time, so Daddy packed an umbrella. It had mostly stopped by the time we got outside, but that didn’t stop our hero from insisting that he use the umbrella.
Although,he didn’t exactly use it in conventional fashion…
Nyan at school, “drawing” with his friend Joseph at the end of a long day. It’s all fun and games and giggling until Adrianna – who’s unquestionably the alpha female of the class – tells them off for being “very noisy!” Does that admonition keep our hero from his art? Click and find out:
Nyan’s late afternoon/early evening usually goes like this: Daddy shows up at school. Nyan doesn’t want to leave because he’s having too much fun (he never remembers this in the mornings when he whines about how he doesn’t like to go to school, of course…but we digress). Finally Daddy gets him to go, and they head for way home, perhaps with some detours along the way as Nyan wants to check out a store, or a digger, or a bird, or anything else that catches his fancy. Eventually they make it to our apartment complex, with its swimming pool and playground and lots of kids about his age. Daddy usually brings Nyan’s swimsuit so if he wants to play in the water, he can. Regardless, though, there’s a good hour or so of playing, until around 7pm when dusk falls quickly and it’s time to go up to the apartment for supper.
Here, some videos of recent after-school fun. First up, playing with pal Daniel in the pool. As Nyan puts it: “I’m a shark! I’m coming to eat you!”
Here he is, showing off some new die-cast cars that come with this spring-loaded launching thing:
Turning on the water fountain, doing a rain dance, and helping make sure the water flows properly into the drain:
Finally, here he is with his friends Danny Boy and Aiden, Danny Boy’s brother. Running, swinging a toy golf club, screeching.
(Notice all the running? We strongly encourage that after school – part of our plan to tire the lad out so he’ll go to sleep more easily at bedtime. It doesn’t work, but we keep trying.)
Nyan’s getting pretty good at doing things for himself – such as brushing his teeth. He’s maybe not quite as good at these things as he thinks he is, but nobody’s perfect…
Back in late August, Nyan’s school took all the kids on a field trip to a place called River Safari. It’s next door to, and related to, but somehow separate from, the wonderful Singapore Zoo that we visited back in May, when we’d been on this little island for all of about three days, River Safari is kind of an aquarium: there’s a long path that takes you past various exhibits showing the marine life in the world’s biggest rivers (Nile, Amazon, Mississippi, a few in China, etc.). And there’s also a couple of giant pandas. (No, pandas don’t live in the world’s biggest rivers, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what the connection between rivers and pandas might be. But hey, it’s giant pandas! So who really cares if they don’t really belong here?) Overall it’s a pretty cool place, not as sprawling or comprehensive as the zoo next door but definitely worth a visit.
The younger kids had to be accompanied on the field trip by an adult, so Daddy had to got to come along. Daddy was waiting in the lobby of the school’s building when all the kids marched out; here’s a video he took before Nyan realized Daddy was there:
And here’s the bus we took, and Nyan on said bus:
It was about a half hour drive to River Safari, and then we had to wait around a bit as tickets were picked up and distributed. The kids entertained themselves by playing around with various statues and generally exploring things.
The little boy in the photo where Nyan is investgating the storm water grate is his pal Kyle, seen in these photos and in the video with Kyle’s cousin Eva:
As we mentioned, River Safari is all about marine life, including fish, crocodiles, manta rays, birds and more.
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And of course, there are two pandas. Though we only saw one (and you may seen these pictures and video in an earlier post):
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There was a lot of walking and running all over the site:
So much so that, on the bus ride back, Nyan zonked out, fast asleep. (Of course, Nyan being Nyan, he spent the first 25 minutes of the half-hour ride looking out the window, asking what everything was, trying to get out of his seat belt to run around, etc., and then conked out as the bus was almost back to the school. Great timing, kid!) But no worries – it was a great day filled with friends, fish and pandas (huh?).
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