Our boy likes to climb into various closets and shut the door. He’s unique, I guess we can say…
Progress Report: Nyan at 19 Months
Every few months, we get an in-depth assessment from Nyan’s daycare/nursery about his progress. We got one back in early March, and I typed the notes up, and am finally getting around to sharing it here. These notes are from when he was about 19 months old, and he’s actually developed quite a bit since then, especially when it comes to talking. But here’s the notes from early March, for posterity if nothing else. It makes for a nice snapshot of how our boy was acting, and what he was doing, at about 19 months old.
(The notes on ‘developmental stage’ refers to what the ‘normal’ range for when a kid does certain things. He was right on schedule.)
Personal, Social and Emotional
Self confidence and awareness:
Nyan is a bubbly, confident boy. He loves coming to nursery. He always comes in with a big smile on his face. Nyan is very good at finding his own nose, eyes etc and is also able to identify them on his carers. Read the rest of this entry »
Road Trip: Leeds Castle
A few weeks ago, the United Kingdom celebrated what’s called the Early Spring Bank Holiday – a public holiday, held on the first Monday of May each year. (Most of Europe closes down on May 1, May Day, but England I guess didn’t want to be associated with that socialist day, so changed that public holiday to a few days later. Something like that.)
Regardless, it ended up being a lovely warm-ish early Spring day, so we loaded up the car and headed for the county of Kent, also known as the Garden of England, about an hour to the southeast. Our destination: Leeds Castle, a beautiful thousand-year-old castle on several hundred acres of land and lakes. Here’s Nyan after we strapped him into the car, clearly excited:
We weren’t the only ones with the bright idea of visiting Leeds Castle that day; the parking lot was packed with hundreds of cars, and the line to get tickets was about 45 minutes long. Read the rest of this entry »
Self Portraits
One of Nyan’s favorite things to do is to grab Mommy or Daddy’s mobile phone and touch lots of buttons. It usually seems to be pretty random – but every once in a while, he shows off his artistic skills. Like the other day, when he grabbed Daddy’s phone which happened to have its camera function up and running. Fifteen pushes of a button later, Nyan had created his latest masterwork – a series of self-portraits, with a few shots of the ceiling thrown in for good measure. It’s art, man.
Packing
We’re off on another transatlantic adventure. Someone was getting a little bit excited…
Out in the Garden (Video)
Check out this video of young Nyan Thomas as he wanders around the backyard, also known as the garden, a couple weeks back. He checks out the birds, looks at the airplanes (he tends to call them all helicopters, for some reason), examines the ants (or ‘spider’ in Nyan-speak), nibbles on a cookie, enjoys the sunshine… well, here, just watch:
But wait, it gets better, in a post-modern sort of sense. Later that day, we were showing that video to Nyan, who was watching it on the camera screen. As he watched, Daddy shot a video of Nyan watching himself on a video. Weird, right? Or something. In any case, here it is:
Nyan and Mommy, Through the Months
The latest in our periodic look at how Nyan Thomas has changed. He’s gotten just a wee bit bigger since summer of 2011, eh?
(Click it to make it big)
A Boy and his Tractor (Pictures and Video)
Some time ago, Uncle Scott sent Nyan Thomas a beautiful old metal toy tractor. It’s probably an antique; certainly it was around when Daddy was a boy. It’s been sitting inside a display cabinet in our living room for a while. The other day, Nyan noticed it, demanded it, got it – and has been playing with it pretty much non-stop ever since. Here’s a slideshow of photos, followed by a few videos of the boy with his tractor, and playing with a few toy trucks as well. Yes, our boy is definitely a boy.
Haircut (with photos)
Our boy’s hair seems to grow pretty quickly. Especially the bit above the middle of his forehead, which doesn’t take long to turn into a unicorn horn. So on Sunday, we skipped swimming lessons (he’d been fighting a cold, and had a slight cough, and as you may know we are very protective (overly so?) when he’s got even a hint of a cold) and headed to Walthamstow, a nearby neighborhood that’s home to an ugly brick 1980s-style shopping mall with a Supercuts inside. (The same place, as it happens, where he got his first official professional haircut back in November, and where he also took his first official (if tentative) steps).
This time around, he was very dubious and withdrawn, almost shy, even though his stylist was a young blonde bird. Usually, of course, he’d be flirting up a storm. But this time he pretty much just sat there, looking concerned and grumpy. He squirmed just a little bit, but not bad, and mostly passed the time (all five minutes of it) by looking in the mirror at the woman sitting in the waiting area and feeding spoonfuls or something to her baby in a stroller.
By the end, Nyan was fine, and even gave his stylist a friendly bye-bye wave as we left. Here, a slideshow of pictures that Daddy took during the haircut – and after, a story about what happened after we left Supercuts:
So we wandered around this mall for a bit, mostly to find an ATM to get some cash. We headed for a bookstore – Nyan loves books! – but just outside was one of those stalls they set up in the main walkway of shopping malls. This one sold toy cars, toy trucks, toy keyboards – all of it at toddler-eye-level, and cleverly and cynically designed to ensure that a toddler – say, a toddler who just had a haircut – would see the toys and not be moved until he played with all of them. So that’s what we did. Cars, trucks, helicopters, you name it. Finally Daddy was able to drag Nyan away (to be more precise, Daddy was able to carry a squirming, unhappy Nyan away) and into the bookstore.
We lasted about a minute in the bookstore before he toddled off, out of the store and back to the toy stall! Their ploy almost worked; Daddy was this close to buying a cheap electronic keyboard, but good sense won out. We managed to get him back in the bookstore long enough to buy a couple new books, and then Daddy carried and expertly distracted him as we walked out and passed the toy stall (‘Ooh, buddy, look in that store! Look at that – it’s a shoe store! Look at all those shoes! Oh, wow, and check this out: a woman’s clothing store! Isn’t that a lovely dress?”) Hey, you do what you have to do.
Hat (Pictures and Videos)
Our hero was in a silly mood this weekend. He found a handful of Daddy’s old baseball caps, and as you can see, proceeded to try them on. Often while wearing his sunglasses. (Click on any photo to make it big and start a slideshow).
And here’s a fun video. The backstory is that Daddy had plopped the Iowa hat onto the boy’s head as he was cleaning up the living room, thinking the boy would toss it aside. But no. He turned it sideways, then grabbed his sunglasses, and strutted into the kitchen to show off his look to Mommy.
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