A couple Thursdays ago, we had a public holiday here in Singapore – i.e., Nyan’s school was closed the next day – so Nyan got to stay outside and play well after the sun went down. What did he get up to? Well, he hooked up with his buddy Daniel, a boy about his age who was born in Singapore to European ex-pat parents, who lives in the same apartment complex as us. Daniel’s big into knights, dragons, castles and the like. So here they are, doing something about fighting the hordes of witches that were apparently descending from the sky:
And here are the two amigos, running around the playground, screaming, yelling, doing the “crocodile stomp” (egged on a bit by Daddy, perhaps):
Finally, here’s the calmest video of the bunch, Nyan just checking out the scene:
We live on a tropical island. In fact we live a 10-minute stroll from the shore, and a long stretch of sand. Unfortunately that sand looks out onto one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and those ships don’t much care if they dump their trash overboard and if that trash then washes ashore. Jerks. But no problem: when we need a fix of sand and sea, we just hop a ferry or a plane and in no time we’re on another tropical island, one with clean beaches.
Nyan had never spent time on a beach before we moved here, but he’s taking to it like a fish to, uh, sand. Here he is, showing off the latest swimwear for this season:
Here’s our boy on the island of Langkawi, Malaysia, this past weekend:
This is Nyan on Bintan, Indonesia – digging in the sand (while staring at the group of girls who would later chase him around) and splashing in a small tidal pool.
Some video of Nyan, kicking and splashing in that same tidal pool:
And finally, what’s a day on a breezy beach without a kite?
It was an odd moment: we’re on a fairly deserted beach in Indonesia, enjoying the crashing surf and the sea breeze, watching Nyan build a sand castle. Suddenly we sense something; we look up; and standing there are six or seven local girls, ages from about four to 10 or so, standing and smiling at Nyan.
What does our Don Juan (Nyan Juan? Don Nyan?) do? Why, he runs away, of course. The girls chase after him, he giggles, they giggle, on it goes. Of course we captured video:
They spoke almost no English – one of them asked us what our names are, and asked if we speak Indonesian, and that was about it. Eventually a young man came over, with a few younger boys; turns out all these kids were from the local village, and they spend Saturdays with this young man who tutors them. Or maybe he’s their regular teacher at the village school? Not really sure. Anyway, we figure it’s rare that they see such a young foreign kid on their beach — the resort we were at does not exactly cater to children, as we learned the hard way — so they decided to come over and say hello. They were sweet and friendly, and it was just one of those really nice moments you come across sometimes when you travel.
The teacher asked if they could take a picture with Nyan so we got a few group shots. Nyan of course had to vamp for the camera and make faces. Oh, Nyan.
Nyan had his first-ever field trip today, a school visit to a place called River Safari, right next to the Singapore Zoo. It’s mostly an aquarium of sorts, with displays showing marine life that lives in the world’s biggest rivers. Pretty interesting. Oddly enough, a couple years back they added a pair of giant panda — what do pandas have to do with the world’s greatest rivers? I can’t quite say. But whatever: who doesn’t love a panda? Nyan certainly loves pandas. (So does Daddy, truth be told.)
We’ll have more on the trip overall in a later post. But for now, some photos and a nice little video of our hero and his pal the panda.
Someday, our boy will be an accomplished bicyclist and/or skateboarder, tearing up the streets as he speeds along.
Today is not someday, however. Today, he loves to ride his little scooter, but he’s not exactly adept at it. Not yet. Someday, yes. But not quite today, bless him.
Mommy and Daddy try their best to be good examples to their boy — we eat lots of vegetables, we don’t watch TV around him, we don’t yell in front of him, etc. And we also make sure he understands the importance of exercise. We talk about it in front of him, we do it in front of him, and we encourage him to be active. Seems to be working, at least based on his love of doing yoga.
It helps that his new school has a playroom full of toy exercise equipment – so Nyan gets to exercise while he’s having fun! Here’s a sneak peek at some of what he gets up to. Starting with… a trampoline!
There’s also a stair master, and a rowing machine.
And this contraption that you swivel your hips on.
Finally here’s just a bit more from that exercise session – maybe this is the cooling-down period? That’s Nyan’s good friend Oregon playing with the truck. (Yep, Oregon – a half Singaporean, half Dutch boy named Oregon. We’re not yet sure what the back story of the name is, but he’s a fun little kid with a cool name, so it’s all good.)
As regular readers know, Nyan Thomas loves to dance. (If by ‘dance’ you mean ‘randomly throw his limbs around while running around the room, somewhat in time to music playing in the background.’ Hey, the kid’s happy, and that’s what counts!) Here is is a few weeks ago, showing off his latest moves. Which, again, is mostly him randomly throwing his limbs around while running around the room. But, yet again, the kid’s happy, so it’s all good.
Our boy, and the star of this here blog, turned three years young on July 26. We were far away from friends and family, but Mommy and Daddy were determined to make it a special day, and we dare say it was a success.
The fun actually began on Friday the 25th, when Mommy — fresh off a long overnight flight from San Francisco — and Daddy stopped by Nyan’s school in the late afternoon with candy, balloons and cupcakes for Nyan’s classmates and teachers. The balloons were a big hit:
As were the cupcakes. And so was Mommy as she read books to Kyle and other friends of Nyan.
That evening, we went out to dinner down the road. The Thai BBQ place we had our eye on was going to be too long of a wait, so we ended up at this odd little place called Fluffy Butter Flaps. Felt like being in a Japanese cartoon, somehow, which is not a complaint. The food was good, the place was friendly, and they gave Nyan a big mug full of milk, which he happily drank while sitting on a couch with some stuffed sheep.
Daddy’s grand plan for the birthday day itself was to get an early-ish start to avoid the crush of crowds at the aquarium, but after all the Friday fun — and all the flying — Mommy and Nyan wanted a lie-in. So we changed our plans and let them snooze:
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So the morning plans instead became opening presents, playing with presents, Skyping and talking on the phone with grandparents in Iowa and England, and eventually a leisurely stroll to a nearby restaurant for some lunch. Then we caught a bus into town, hopped on a subway train, navigated our way through a shopping mall, and squeezed onto a monorail that took us on a short ride to the small island of Sentosa. It’s just off shore from Singapore itself, and it’s pretty much completely resorts, amusement parks and the like. Several hotels, some upscale housing, casinos, a water park, bars and restaurants, and a big ol’ aquarium. It was even more packed than Daddy had feared it would be by mid-afternoon, but aside from a few places where it was heaving, it wasn’t bad at all. And the aquarium overall was very good. Some good displays, touch pools, and some absolutely HUGE tanks filled with the usual suspects — octopi, jellyfish, stingrays and manta rays, tropical fish of all shapes, sizes and colors, and lots of sharks in one of those tanks that has a tunnel running through it, so they’re right above your head. Nyan was pretty fascinated by most of it. His attention and energy started to wane after 90 minutes in there, so we rushed a little bit through the last quarter of the place, but that’s pretty good for a three year old.
To get off of Sentosa, we decided to skip the monorail and take a ride on a cable car that soars over the bay. Tremendous views, particularly right at sunset. We could see most of Sentosa, the Singapore skyline off in the distance, the massive container port of Singapore, and military helicopters carrying giant Singaporean flags, practicing for the National Day celebrations in a couple weeks. Best of all, maybe: the cable car had some sort of comic book superhero promotion going on, so our birthday boy got a superhero mask to wear. He hardly took it off the rest of the night.
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Back on the mainland of Singapore, we looked around a mall called Vivo City — said to be the biggest shopping mall in Singapore, which is no small feat, if you’ve seen the number and size of shopping malls here — for a place for dinner. Unfortunately for us, it was 7pm on a Saturday, so every place was packed. We quickly decided to just put our name down at Jamie Oliver’s Italian place, and only had to wait about 20 minutes. Really good food, albeit with rather lackluster service; both are, in our experience, very much standard at most Singaporean restaurants. The restaurant is right on the water looking out to Sentosa, so we had a view of the nightly fireworks show going on across the bay. We pretended they were doing it in honor of Nyan’s birthday.
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Yes, it was quite a day – and no nap either. We got in a taxi at about 8:45pm and the birthday boy was zonked out by 8:48. Didn’t stir when we undressed him and put him in bed, and slept until 9 the next morning. Happy birthday, little guy!
Nothing much going on in this video. We just wanted to share a bit about Nyan’s overall environment and his day to day. This is from East Coast Park, the seaside park about a 10 minute walk from our apartment. They have this metal observation tower that we climbed the other day, and it gives great views of the trees, the beach and the Strait of Malacca, which is always jam-packed with cargo ships and oil tankers waiting to offload their cargo at the port of Singapore. (They also apparently dump lots of trash into the water – which washes ashore at East Coast Park – and likely spew a fair amount of oil and sewage into the water as well. Upshot: we’ve not actually gone into the water at East Coast Park, and frankly we’re extremely unlikely to ever do so. Bummer.)
Anyway, we just feel this is a nice little video that illustrates a bit of what Nyan’s life is like here in Singapore.
The other day, Nyan’s Montessori school celebrated Racial Harmony Day. All the kids were to wear some sort of national or ethnic clothing for the day. We wanted to somehow honor his dual heritages, so we had a couple of choices for outfits. Oh, sure, we considered his standard Iowa Hawkeyes t-shirt, but decided we’d class it up a little bit (no offense to Iowans, of course!) by putting him in traditional Burmese garb. So we popped by Peninsula Plaza – the local shopping mall that’s home to dozens and scores of Burmese grocers, clothing stories, travel agencies and more – and got him a lon-gyi (the long piece of fabric that Burmese men wear in lieu of pants) and a traditional Burman shirt, the kind Nyan’s great-grandfather wore when he was a lawyer back in Colonial Burma.
He looked pretty good, if we do say so ourselves. And he got numerous approving looks from passers-by on the way to school.
Here is is on the way to school, asking questions about whatever he sees on the way, of course (note his toy helicopter. He has to bring one truck, plane or other vehicle to school each day to share with his friend Oregon (yes that’s his friend’s name)):
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