Tag Archives: london

And a boat. And other things. This is from the London Transport Museum, which we visited a few weeks back. Pretty cool place, with lots of old trains, trams, and buses that kids can climb aboard. Not to mention several simulators where kids can pretend to drive. If you know our boy, you’ve already guessed that he absolutely loved it.

Family portraits (check out his sweater; he was dressed for the part that day!):

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Here he is, overlooking the old rail cars, and also checking out a model train that was on display:

This is our hero driving the bus down the road – and forgetting to keep his eye on the road.

And here he is driving the same bus before getting bored and switching to a ferry which he then piloted down the River Thames:

He also got to steer an actual bus:

And a couple still photos of Nyan behind the wheel:

Of course we took the tube (aka subway) to get there. Here’s Nyan on the ride home – complete with his own big yellow bus that he bought at the gift shop. (Bought it himself, in fact – handed the money to the cashier, a fact that he still proudly talks about today, several weeks later.)

On a rainy Sunday a few weeks back, we took Nyan to London’s Science Museum. It is, like most museums in this city, free and sprawling and pretty great. It’s all about – you guessed it – science, in a variety of formats. Here’s the lad checking out the view from the balcony above the main hall:

That main hall, right when you walk in, has huge old Victorian-era steam engines. There are whole wings devoted to mathematics, and to space rockets, and to the Large Hadron Collider and the research that goes on there. (That last one is probably a bit too advanced for our boy (not to mention his Daddy)). So lots of stuff to see and do. He loved it.

He embraced his agrarian roots in the section on farming:

And there were plenty of open spaces for Nyan to run around, plus random displays of fascinating things to look at: Read the rest of this entry »

It was a big weekend in Nyan Thomas’s world: he moved to the Big Boy Bed! Okay technically it’s the same crib he’s always had, but Daddy finally figured out that, rather than buying a whole new bed, he could just take the front off the crib and voila – it’s basically a bed. Was Nyan excited? He was:

He took to it pretty well – he has yet to climb out of it overnight or when he’s having trouble falling asleep; we’re not sure if he just hasn’t figured out that he could just crawl out and open his bedroom door or what, but we’re not about to tell him that.

Sunday was a beautiful day here: about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, crystal blue skies, nary a cloud to be seen. We had tickets to see an exhibit at the Tate Modern art museum, so we headed there (being careful not to tell Nyan we were going to a “museum” since he associates museums with airplanes and buses). Here’s Mommy and Nyan on the tube, and on the bridge connecting the museum to St Paul’s Cathedral. Look at that bright sunshine!

At the museum itself, Nyan did fairly well as Mommy and Daddy looked at the art – he was a bit antsy, a bit bored perhaps, rode around on Daddy’s shoulders as Daddy pointed out various things in the paintings and Nyan pretended to be interested. Frankly he was more patient than we might have expected.

We had lunch at the restaurant upstairs. While we waited for our food, Nyan drew pictures with the crayons and posed for photos with Mommy:

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And when the food arrived, Nyan decided he would chow down on… butter:

Yes, butter. Straight up butter.

Well, at least he’s getting some calories…

After a train ride home and then a nap, Daddy offered to take Nyan to the park. He didn’t want to, he said. So Daddy asked him what he wanted to do. “I wanna ride a train!” Fair enough: Daddy took Nyan back to the tube station and they rode the train. Didn’t go anywhere: we rode for about 20 minutes out into the British countryside, then got on a train going back the other way. But he loved it. Here he is waiting for the train:

Other tidbits from the weekend: Here’s Nyan, getting in some reading during breakfast. Yes, he wanted to read the local recycling guide.

And here he is playing in the tall char in our bedroom. He likes to crawl into there and pretend it’s a food stand, offering ice cream, cake, tea, etc. to whoever. He had a lot of trouble getting in – he’s growing up!

So, a fun weekend overall. And he was pretty tuckered out by the end of it – and obviously quite happy to crawl into his big boy bed on Sunday evening.

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Earlier this month, Uncle* Jeff came through London on business and stayed with us a few nights. Nyan hung out with Jeff and Aunt Michelle in June, and never forgot the red double-decker bus that they bought for him. So he was very happy to see Jeff, to say the least.

(*Technically not his uncle – Jeff is Daddy’s cousin which makes him, what, a second cousin or something. But Uncle is easier.)

There were lots of hugs, shoulder rides, book-reading and general fun.

On Sunday morning, we headed to the Docklands neighborhood of London, where they’ve set up a free exhibit showing new technologies that will make cities more liveable in the future, or something like that. Lots of things for Nyan to play around with and explore: Read the rest of this entry »