Miscellaneous mirth in the month of May.
Lots More Soccer
Is Nyan becoming better at soccer (football), now that he’s been at it for five months or so? We’d say so, marginally. What’s really important, though, is that he’s still enjoying it.
One important change: we found a stash of soccer/football jerseys in the closet – shirts we’d been waiting for him to grow into. He’s just about grown into them, so we’ve been busting htem out for practice. Looking good!
Let’s take a look at some live action. Here he is practicing his shots on goal. Practice makes perfect, eventually.
Soccer practice is usually a lot of drills, followed by a scrimmage of some sort. In this game, Nyan shows a little bit of defensive prowess (relatively speaking) And we also see the passion as tempers flare after a goal:
Speaking of defense, check out the boy’s defense in this drill!
Practicing ball control and footwork:
Scoring a goal (eventually) in practice:
Boys being boys:
Here’s some sort of game drill, in which Nyan decided he’d just stand in front of the goal, apparently:
Last but not least, it’s fun to wind down after practice by doing a little climbing on the nearby playground equipment.
Dancing King
Over the years, we’ve seen plenty of evidence of Nyan’s dancing prowess. Here’s some more.
A Little More Taekwondo
Time for a periodic check-in on Nyan’s progress in martial arts. The short version: slow but steady progress.
The long version: here are some pictures and videos.
He has fun, but he also works hard at the various exercises and routines.
Oh yes, they still do the warm-up routine where the teacher dumps balls on the ground, and the kids run around picking them up.
Here’s Nyan practicing his moves, and being a little silly, one week when a substitute teacher was in.
Some sort of running exercise, with a little silliness thrown in for good measure.
Sometimes he catches Daddy taking a video. Oops.
All that hard work paid off when, in May, Nyan went for his grading exercise and passed! Here’s his teacher, Mr. Lee, awarding him with some new badges for his belt. Next stop: Yellow belt! Mommy and Daddy couldn’t be more proud.
Next up: Because Nyan is about to turn six (!?), he moves out of the “kinder” class and into the real intro class. Stay tuned!
Goofin’ Around in the Pool
As you’ve seen, our young man has gotten quite good at swimming – both relative to how he was earlier, and in absolute terms. But not to worry: the lad still gets up to plenty of goofy and silly fun in the pool. Check out these videos.
When he’s in the little pool, he likes to show off some routines. All of which he makes up on the spot, of course. Like “Monorail Explode” or “Balloon Circle Explode.” It’s kind of like modern, interpretive dance, maybe?
Here he is in his “Famous” phase, featuring maneuvers like “Famous Shipwalking” and “Famous Airplane Wing.” Also “Famous Train Whistle.”
Spinning around like a, uh, like a corkscrew in a swimming pool, maybe.
Finally, here’s our hero, and Mommy, viewed from 20 stories up. Note that Nyan is (successfully) walking while wearing diving flippers.
Jungle Hike for Mother’s Day
Singapore celebrates Mother’s Day in May, like the U.S., rather than following the U.K. calendar, which celebrates the day in March. Last year, we ended up taking a hike through the jungle along the seashore. This year, completely coincidentally, we wound up…taking a hike through the jungle. Wasn’t on purpose, but it was nice nonetheless.
We went to an interior part of the island, a hilly part full of water reservoirs surrounded by dense jungle, cut through with a number of well-maintained hiking paths.
This being Mother’s Day, Nyan allowed Daddy to take a fair number of photos in which he posed with Mommy:
We also tried out a newly discovered feature on Daddy’s camera phone, which takes “bursts” of shots – like dozens in a row. We thought we’d try to capture Mommy and Nyan both leaping high in the air together. We didn’t quite get the timing down. Nice photos though:
But maybe best of all: the rainforest here was thick with monkeys! We steered pretty clear, as we’d heard they might try to steal a water bottle or whatnot. Managed to get some good pics anyway.
Oh, and yeah, Nyan posed for some photos with Daddy. Although they pale next to all the shots with Mommy, and the monkeys too.
Swim, Swim, Swim
Nyan continues to take weekly, hour-long swimming lessons in our condo pool, and he continues to get better and better. He’s at the point now where he can do several different strokes and shows zero fear in the “big pool” – i.e., the pool where he can’t touch the bottom while keeping his head above water. (Not to worry – we still stay right by him when he’s in the big pool.) Let’s take a look at some recent videos and pictures.
This gives a good overview. It’s in the big pool (with little sound, because Daddy shot the video from far away so as not to disturb the lesson):
Backfloat!
And the backstroke, of sorts, plus some other strokes:
Look at this. No fear:
He’s also learning to dive, sort of.
Some fun times: Nyan likes it when his teacher, Pang, tosses him high in the air:
And finally, just a few still pictures from various lessons and back-floatings.
Flashback Fun with Cousins
Many years ago – about five or so – a young Nyan Thomas went to England (he was living New York at the time) and hung out with his doting cousins, Hetty and Poppy. The three starred in these lovely videos, which you should re-watch right now because they will be very important to understand the rest of this blog post:
With a young Hetty:
With a young Poppy:
Fast-foward many years to autumn of 2016, when all three have put on several years of good living. They all got together again, and decided to recreate those earlier videos. The results? They speak for themselves:
I suppose now we’ll have to recreate these videos every few years for the rest of their lives, maybe? Eh, could be worse.
Random Fun in the Month of April
Just our usual random collection of snapshots and goofy videos from the month of April. Lots of reading, napping, funny faces, playing with friends, etc. Also we’ll throw in a picture of one of his recent drawings, just for good measure.
We got him a history book. He enjoyed reading it to us:
And of course he digs just running around the house, being goofy.
(Yes, that’s some of his original art work.)
More Fun at School
Classes at Nyan’s school end around 5:30 each afternoon. From then til 6pm, the kids go play in the indoor playground as they wait for their parents to pick them up. It makes for lots of great photo ops!
We also often capture some nice memories on video:
And Nyan often runs into various classmates on his way to school in the morning. Here he is holding hands with Kyra, and sharing morning hugs with Kyra and Yew Min.
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