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Fun, Fun, Fun

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.)

 

 
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Posted by on October 17, 2014 in Video

 

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River Safari

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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Posted by on October 1, 2014 in Photos, Video

 

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Nyan Thomas After Dark

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:

 

 

 
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Posted by on September 20, 2014 in Video

 

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Photo of the Day: Nyan and his Pals

Our hero, cuddled up in bed with some of his many stuffed pals.

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(click to enlarge)

 

 
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Posted by on September 13, 2014 in Photos

 

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Chased On a Beach by Half a Dozen Indonesian Girls

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.

 
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Posted by on August 28, 2014 in Photos, Video

 

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New Friends

We’re extremely pleased to report that Nyan has started to make some new pals here in Singapore. After two months of hanging out with Daddy pretty much non stop, the poor kid, he’s now got some friends at his new school, and he’s started to pal around with kids here in the apartment complex too. The complex is five 21-story towers, built around a series of swimming pools and playground. On weekends and in the evening, the place is heaving with kids. The other day, Nyan noticed that one of the kids, a fella maybe six months younger than Nyan (his name’s Aiden, but they call him Danny Boy for some reason), had a plastic digger or bulldozer or the like. So Nyan went upstairs, got his own plastic digger, and went up to the little boy to share and play. And they were off to the races.

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Later they moved over to the playground, where Nyan and Danny set up a shop, just like Nyan used to do back in Wanstead:

Danny’s older brother was there as well.

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Now, almost every day when Daddy and Nyan walk home from school, Nyan peels his eyes for Danny Boy. If he sees him, Nyan will run up to him, and then it’s a good hour before we’re able to get Nyan upstairs for dinner. But that’s perfectly fine! Here they are on another day, climbing up the jungle gym.

 
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Posted by on July 22, 2014 in Photos, Video

 

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Photo of the Day: Nyan and Aiden

An old university friend of Beatrice’s, Brian, is from Singapore and lives now in Shanghai. He, his wife and their five year old son were visiting recently, so we all got together for an afternoon of dining and wandering around Singapore. Nyan and Aiden are two peas in a pod – energetic, boisterous, total boy’s boys. They got along great. Here they are in a moment (just a moment) of quiet reflection, looking at a cactus I do believe.

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Bonus photo: Nyan got a hold of someone’s camera, somehow. Here he is waiting for just the right moment to snap his next masterpiece.

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(Click to enlarge)

 

 
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Posted by on July 22, 2014 in Photos

 

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Dance-off!

A few weeks back, we were all having dinner at a local shopping mall when this 18-month-old boy came up to Nyan. They checked each other out, and then Nyan started dancing. Then the kid started dancing. Before we knew it we had an old-fashioned dance-off going on!

I’m not sure who won. See what you think:

 
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Posted by on July 7, 2014 in Video

 

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So Long, London

So we’ve left London. Nyan and Daddy are having a sojourn in the US for a couple weeks before they join Mommy on the other side of the globe to start their latest adventure. First, though, we had to get out of London, and most importantly, we had to say farewell to our friends – especially Nyan’s friends. So a week or so ago, we threw a party at a nearby pub. A lot of his friends from school showed up. Here’s our boy with a few of them. Don’t worry, all the grumpy faces were just toddlers putting on a show for the camera:

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The party included plenty of food and toys and, yes, chocolate – so by late afternoon, all those kids had a lot of energy to burn off. Which they did by running around the back garden at the pub, including up and down the wheelchair ramp (the one with a sign that says, explicitly, that it’s not to be used for children to play on. Oops). Several videos from that, including lots of running and screaming:

Nyan Thomas, going against the grain:

 

And here he is giving cuddles (and vamping for the camera) to one of his besties, Adam:

 

 
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Posted by on April 21, 2014 in Photos, Video

 

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Nyan and his Friends

Our little guy has made some good friends with several of his classmates from nursery (day care). Here he is with a few of them.

James (or Jamesy, as Nyan calls him) is one of his best buddies. Here they are, just a couple of old chums, hanging out on a park bench.

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Here’s the lad with sisters Miri and Rosa, hanging out on a rainy Sunday in September, plus a bonus shot of Nyan with Miri a few days ago.

And a bonus: slightly shaky video taken from the swingset.

 
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Posted by on December 6, 2013 in Photos, Video

 

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