Tag Archives: iowa

A trio of silliness at (and around) the dinner table.

Playing with a a tow truck while waiting for a big pancake:

Taking off socks, fastening seat belts, and other ways we play instead of eat:

Getting in a bit of morning exercise, then unwinding with a toy house:

(All of these were, of course, shot in Iowa a couple months back.)

Here’s a trio of fun videos from December of our boy undertaking various kitchen activities.

Nyan Thomas, baking a cake and making cups of tea for a very appreciative Mommy and Daddy:

Helping Grandma with the (real) dishes. He loves those purple gloves!

Singing a song as he gets ready to help Grandpa make cookies:

Back in December, Daddy took Nyan and Grandma to a place called the Iowa Children’s Museum. It’s attached to this big shopping mall and is, I think, intended as a place for kids to chill out while their parents spend money at the stores.

It’s an okay place, if a little worn down. Plenty of things to do: there was a life-sized model ambulance, a room made to look like a grocery store, another like a kitchen, and so forth. Here’s our hero behind the wheel of the fake ambulance (which we had a hard time getting him out of):

There was also a room filled with drums, xylophones and other musical instruments:

And there was a large display of model airlanes, ranging from life-size to minis.

As well as demonstrations of air in action – like a thing where you make a parachute fall from 30 feet up, or this demonstration of ping-pong balls and jets of air:

And there was a big, mostly empty room that featured a long wooden ramp-ish think, like a roller coaster. The idea was to drop a golf ball from the start and get it to go all the way. Harder than it sounds – but Nyan and Grandma made it work.

I can’t say that we’ll ever rush back to the place, as it was a bit costly to get into, and just seemed a bit run-down, especially for the price. But Nyan loved it, which of course is what counts.