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A Hot Day in Downtown Chicago

09 Aug

Mommy, Daddy and Nyan made a quick visit to Chicago to visit some friends in July. On our last day there, we had a few hours to kill before we had to hit the road, so we went downtown to check out some parks.

A popular draw along the Chicago waterfront is a sculpture called Cloud Gate, also known as ‘The Bean.’ It’s a huge bean-shaped mirror, and you can go underneath it, get up close to it, view it from far away… it makes all sorts of funky perspective, and kids (and adults too) love it. Here it is:

Nearby is a pretty new park area with a large playground. We couldn’t go on some of the things, because they were for slightly older kids. But Nyan had fun steering the pretend pirate ship:

He also had fun climbing into the mouth of the whale:

It was unfortunately a very quick trip, and a lot the people we wanted to see were out of town. But we enjoyed the time we spent with the friends we did get to see, and Nyan enjoyed himself, so it’s all good.

 

 
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Posted by on August 9, 2015 in Photos

 

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A Day at the Park with Mommy

07 Aug

Mommy took Nyan down the street to Willow Creek Park, and shaped a ton of photos. It wasn’t intended to be a sort of modeling shoot, but that’s kinda what it ended up looking like!

 
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Posted by on August 7, 2015 in Uncategorized

 

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Fishing with Grandpa

06 Aug

One of Grandpa’s favorite activities is going fishing. We’re pretty sure he’s been planning fishing expeditions with Nyan since the day, four and a half years ago, when we announced we were having a boy. This trip to Iowa, Grandpa finally put those plans into motion, and the pair went fishing on three separate occasions. Nyan caught a fish pretty much the first time he cast his line in the water, and they celebrated with a picnic lunch. (No fish was served at the lunch, however, as the fish was too small and had to be thrown back.)

A couple weeks later they were back at the same place (a small lake at Kent Park, just west of Iowa City) for yet more fishing. They caught bluegill, catfish, maybe a trout? Of course, Nyan informed Daddy that he also caught a salmon and a tuna. Who knew those kinds of ocean fish had found their way to an Iowa pond?

 
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Posted by on August 6, 2015 in Photos

 

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Earning His Keep

06 Aug

Nyan has always proven himself to be ready to lend a hand when it comes to doing laundry, doing dishes, sweeping, etc., and he’s been no different on our sojourn in Iowa. Check out the lad here, earning his keep by helping out around the house. Which means using a vacuum, because it’s so much fun!

No matter the size of the vacuum, Nyan Thomas is your man:

 
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Posted by on August 6, 2015 in Uncategorized

 

Flashback: Playing in the Pool

05 Aug

In honor of Nyan’s recent breakthroughs in learning to swim, as you read about earlier, we dusted off some footage from mid 2014, soon after we’d moved into our apartment in Singapore, and before Nyan was entirely comfortable in the water. But he was obviously comfortable on shore, comfy enough to start to take off all his clothes as he stood there…

Want to see some videos from last July? Sure you do. Click Play:

Waling to the pool, carrying his inflatable seahorse:

Playing around, pants-less, outside the baby pool before finally dipping his toes:

Enjoying a pleasant swim with mommy and the inflatable seahorse:

And finally… showing off his new goggles!

 

 

 
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Posted by on August 5, 2015 in Photos, Video

 

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Nyan Thomas, Gardener Extraordinaire

05 Aug

Grandma and Grandpa have a nice house with a big yard full of trees, flowers, plants and grass. All that natural beauty take a lot of work to maintain, and Nyan was happy to lend a hand.

Here’s our hero digging, watering the plants and sidewalk, hanging out by Grandma’s fish pond.

He enjoyed digging a hole for the squirrels:

Digging for something:

Feeding bread to the fish in the pond. Narration by Daddy; this video was made at a time when Nyan was insisting that we call him Eagle.

Digging for something else:

The highlight of the outdoor work — perhaps the outlook of this entire trip — came because Grandma and Grandpa were getting a new concrete patio poured in the back yard. Concrete comes in concrete trucks, of course, and what four year old boy doesn’t love a concrete truck?Nyan couldn’t tear himself away from the whole process. He would run through the house, to the back door to watch the guys spreading the cement, then race through the house to the front door, to watch the concrete coming out of the truck and into the wheelbarrows, and then to the back again. Over and over and over. We also tried to get his handprint in the wet cement at the end of it.

Even better, maybe, was that the crew brought a Bobcat to help clean up some of the dirt and gravel. And they said Nyan could climb in!

Before they took the gravel away, it was in a large pile at the end of the driveway. Nyan quickly appropriated it for himself and his dump truck.

After all that yard work and dusty concrete pouring, it’s important to wash the cars. Nyan, once again, was happy to help.

 

 
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Posted by on August 5, 2015 in Photos, Video

 

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Nyan Thomas on the Fourth of July

04 Aug

Though he lives overseas, Nyan Thomas was indeed born in the USA, and this was the first year that we were actually in the US on July 4. So of course we had to celebrate.

Nyan got the day started by dressing in red white and blue, and then by turning a paper grocery bag into a knight’s costume. As you do on Independence Day, of course.

The highlight of the day, though, was a trip to downtown Iowa City with Mommy, Daddy, Grandma and Grandpa, for an evening of fireworks over the Old Capitol, the classic building at the heart of downtown that was once the capitol building for Iowa but is now part of the university. It was an absolutely lovely and warm summer’s evening, and we managed a good seat even though the crowds were out.

As dusk settled in, the fireworks started. Nyan had never seen fireworks in person before, and when the first (extremely loud) barrage started, he was a little startled and got momentarily upset. But, as you can see by these videos, he pretty quickly settled in and very much enjoyed the show.

Here are some still photos of Nyan and Daddy enjoying the fireworks:

Finally, please enjoy these shots of the fireworks. It was a pretty impressive show, and a great way to end the day.

 

 
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Posted by on August 4, 2015 in Photos, Video

 

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At the Park

02 Aug

Down the road from Grandma and Grandpa’s house is a nice little neighborhood park called Willow Creek Park. Daddy spent a lot of time here growing up, and Nyan has as well. It’s maybe a 10 minute stroll from home, and it’s got lots of playground equipment, huge fields, forests, and of course a creek. Daddy took Nyan there one sunny afternoon back in June, and they worked on Nyan’s soccer (football) skills, which remain as comical and as work-in-progress as ever. But he has fun, and that’s what counts.

Maybe the best illustration of his skills comes from this pair of paired shots, showing our hero racing up to the ball and then… missing it altogether, bless him:

We also played with a balsa-wood airplane, and just vamped for the camera.

And we hit up the playground equipment too, including the swing:

Fun times, indeed.

 
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Posted by on August 2, 2015 in Photos

 

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Nyan Thomas, Master Swimmer

02 Aug

We signed Nyan up for some swimming lessons with a local swim school here in Iowa, to keep up the momentum he’s built over the past few months in our pool in Singapore. So over the last six weeks, he went to something like 16 classes, 20 minutes each (short but really just about right for a short-attention-span toddler), at the indoor pool of a local motel. He had a variety of college age teachers, and they were all good, but his favorite was the one he got the most often, a young man named Max.

Over the course of the lessons, Nyan worked on his back stroke, forward crawl with a floating board, forward crawl without a floating board, putting his head under water (which he’s now comfortable doing, a HUGE step forward), and generally just getting more and more comfortable in the water. We couldn’t be happier with the progress he made. Here are a couple pictures of Nyan psyching himelf up for another training session:

Are there videos? There most certainly are.

Here he is in late June, early on in his lessons.

Working on the forward crawl (okay yes he could still use some practice):

Here he’s practicing his jumping into the water, and also a bit with putting his head under water:

Kicking on his back, all by himself:

More forward crawl. Getting better, we think:

The final lesson. Ignore the other kids screaming in the background and focus on how far we’ve come:

Okay, there’s plenty left to learn. He’s not quite ready to try out for the national Olympics team (whether that’s the US, UK, Singapore, or Burma) but he’s so much more comfortable in the water than he was even four months ago. And he’s got a very firm foundation to keep learning once we return to Singapore.

 

 
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Posted by on August 2, 2015 in Uncategorized

 

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A Super-Fun Day with Grandma and Grandpa

01 Aug

Maybe the best day ever? Probably right up there, as you’ll see…

It was a warm day in the middle of summer. Mommy was in California for some business meetings, Daddy was in New York for some business meetings, and Nyan… Nyan got to cruise around Iowa with Grandma and Grandpa. First up was a visit to a real live dairy farm.

Nyan wasn’t all that keen on touching the cows, but he and Grandma (and Nyan’s stuffed pal Woody) did have some fun at one of the cut-out photo op places:

And an unexpected bonus: visiting the dairy farm at the same time was a group of farmers who were driving their tractors around the area. It’s called, a tractor brigade or a tractorcade (we’re not quite sure, and to be honest, this is the first time Daddy has ever heard of such a thing, though he’s told now that this is relatively common among farming folk. Kinda like a gang of farmers, I guess?). Whatever it’s called, it means dozens of tractors lined up in the parking lot. For an almost-four-year-old boy who’s into tractors and all other things mechanical, it was heaven.

But the fun wasn’t over. Far from it. Next stop, the small town of Independence, Iowa, where an old steam engine (and its caboose) sits outside the old train station. Once again, our hero was just a wee bit happy. First time he’d ever seen a real live steam engine in person!

He took a long nap during the 90-minute drive home. Tuckered out but very happy.

 
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Posted by on August 1, 2015 in Uncategorized

 

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