It was a very warm June day today, and our boy spent a fair amount of time in the back yard, crawling around on the grass, playing in the pool, chewing on his toys and being fascinated by the garden hose. Here, a selection of shots, in which our hero shows off his wide range of facial expressions.
(Click on any of the photos below to start a slideshow…)
Friday was a warm summer day in Iowa, so Grandma, Aunt Val and Daddy took Nyan Thomas to the creatively named City Park for a bit of fun. They have a small section of amusement rides – nothing fancy, but for 75 cents a ride, who’s complaining?
One of Daddy’s favorite rides growing up was the miniature train that snakes a long oval around part of the park. On Friday, we boarded the black-and-gold (of course) train and went for a couple of laps.
Then it was off to the merry-go-round:
Finally, Nyan and Daddy relaxed in the grass a bit.
Back home, Nyan Thomas got to know Ripley, Aunt Val and Uncle Steve’s dog whom they brought with them on their day trip to Iowa City. Ripley is a very sweet and gentle dog, and while Nyan kept his distance at first, eventually his curiosity got the better of him, and he and Ripley became pals.
To celebrate Nyan Thomas’s return to New York, I took the day off on Monday and we all headed down to DUMBO, the cool cobblestoned neighborhood down along the river, underneath the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. Last fall they opened up a merry-go-round – a restored carousel first built in the 1930s, and one of the few (if not the only) carousels listed on the National Register of Historical Things. Some photos, and a video, of our afternoon (click on photos to enlarge):
Our boy loves the sunshine, and loves the plastic snake toy that Auntie Emerald got him.
Nyan Thomas has gotten to spend a lot of time outside these past few weeks, oftentimes in the company of Noel and Lisa, who’ve done a fantastic job playing with him, taking him around, socializing, and just generally taking care of the boy. (Thanks!) Here’s some shots from some recent outings.
First up: the young man needs to be properly strapped into his stroller:
Here he is with Uncle Noel on a trail through a park:
Nyan has spent some time on swings, as you saw in this video. Here is is on a tire swing. Does he look unhappy?
He is not unhappy.
Another stroller shot:
And a couple more swing shots:
And finally, young Nyan Thomas and Auntie Lisa (at the same pond you saw in these pictures from December) Happy little guy!
More photos from Colchester: Nyan Thomas hanging out in the garden with his cousins Hetty and Pop-Pops, aka the Cheeky Moos:
Nyan and Hetty:
Nyan and Pop-Pops:
With Phwa Phwa and Pops:
And if you’re wondering how much he’s grown since December, the answer is “quite a lot.” For photographic evidence, check out this post from the holiday season.
Also, a couple bonus pictures: Nyan Thomas enjoying watermelon with his Uncle Sean…
And finally, a happy little man:
At a playground in Colchester. Look at that chillaxed attitude! And, okay, I fully recognize that as a doting parent, I’m expected to say things like this, but: does he look great in a hat or what?
On the last Friday of 2011, we headed down to the seaside town of West Mersea in Essex County with brother Sean for some delicious oysters and fish-and-chips. (The oysters, it turns out, led to a bout of food poisoning for at least one of us, but let’s not focus on that; they were delicious at the time!)
Here we are inside the West Mersea Oyster Bar:
Afterwards we strolled the overcast, blustery waterfront, taking pictures of the boats, the oyster beds, the shoreline at low tide, and the lovely little English cottages overlooking the sea.
A few more pictures from our trip to the UK last month.
The weather wasn’t too cold, so late one afternoon we strapped him into the stroller and, with Noel and Lisa, headed to a nearby nature preserve:
The flash and the angle makes this next one look like Nyan and I were photoshopped into the scene. Nope.
Another day, we decided to take the boy to his first-ever zoo, the Colchester Zoo. It’s a fine mid-sized zoo with a decent selection of animals, though it was colder and more windy than we expected. Nyan was less than impressed at first, as he was in his stroller and couldn’t see much. So Daddy started holding him. He was ever so slightly more interested, but let’s be honest: five months old is a bit young for a kid to enjoy a zoo. Still, it was a fun family outing, and mom and dad certainly enjoyed it.
A pair of red pandas up there near the top:
Burmese python!
Some sort of vulture or California condor, maybe. About to munch on a dead rat. We stepped away before it got gory.
Wolves!
And finally, Colchester Zoo has a pair of lovely (if elusive) tigers. Here’s one:
Our boy got several firsts last weekend. His first road trip. His first sight of snow. His first visit to a Burmese Buddhist temple in New Jersey. Okay, on that last one, it was a first for his mom and his dad as well.
We’d been wanting to visit this temple for a while now. It was founded by some Burmese immigrants, and features a stupa that’s modeled after the Shwedagon Pagoda in Burma. That one is several hundred feet tall, and is said to house, somewhere in its base, six hairs plucked from the head of the original Buddha himself. The one in Jersey doesn’t quite have that. It’s only, perhaps, 50 feet tall, if that, and it’s surrounded by McMansions and New Jersey. But it’s a beautiful structure, and the attached temple serves a noble purpose. It was a great place for a quick road trip.
Last Saturday, New York and much of the East Coast got blasted by a rather nasty, wet, slushy, icy, snowy – and early! – storm. In Brooklyn, we got a full day’s worth of cold rain, sleet and really heavy snow that snapped some tree branches, caused plenty of localized flooding on the roads, and generally made for a wet mucky day. (Really looking forward to winter!) Sunday, though, came bright and clear, although cold, and by midday most of the snow and slush had melted away. So we picked up a rental car, strapped Nyan into his car seat and his car seat into the backseat, and headed south – down the BQE, across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, through Staten Island, and into the quasi-rural setting of Central New Jersey.
It was actually only about an hour’s drive, and that included the slow bits through Brooklyn before we got on the expressway. Definitely a world away; lots of freeways and tollways, strip malls, McMansions, even open farmland. Felt like we were in the opening credits of The Sopranos. We found the temple pretty easily, and pulled in to a muddy parking lot.
We weren’t entirely sure what to expect, and it took us a few minutes to figure out the lay of the land. The stupa itself was obvious. And there was a long, narrow two-story building under construction and a small wood-frame two-story house. Nothing that said ‘temple’ to us… but we walked around to the back of the house, slopped through the muddy back yard, and walked in. Sure enough, this was the temple – at least until the under-construction temple/community center is done – and it’s a working temple, with Burmese Buddhist monks and an abbot overseeing them. It’s also a community center, and we had to pass through a small kitchen packed full of Burmese women cooking Burmese food. They of course offered us some; we declined, out of politeness mostly, I’d say.
It wasn’t hard, in this small house, to find the front room, which serves as the main room of the temple. We hung out here for a bit, bowing before the small statue of Buddha, reading about the history of the temple, making a donation to help with the construction. The temple’s monks, it turned out, where in prayer downstairs, and would be for a while, which put a crimp in our plans to have Nyan blessed by the abbot. But that’s alright. We did have a brief conversation with one monk who passed though, and who took the boy into his arms. Nyan, being Nyan, pretty much charmed him. And then, as soon as the monk handed Nyan back to us, he started fussing. Nyan, that is, not the monk. (Nyan had been so good on the drive over, napping or just sitting there quietly.) We’ve learned that sometimes when he’s fussing for no good reason, a change of scenery, or just some movement, will do the trick. So we gave some cash as a donation to help the construction of the community center outside, slipped back into our coast and shoes and headed out to the stupa.
It’s an impressive structure, a tall column of white concrete, I guess, partially covered this day in snow, and glistening in the bright late October sunlight. Atop the column were many small bells which tinkled softly in the breeze. We found the corners of the stupa that correspond to the day of the week we were born – Saturday for Beatrice, Tuesday for Nyan and I – and said our prayers.
A few photos and soaking in the quiet atmosphere and it was time to go. We strapped Nyan back in and headed up the highway, stopping for an early dinner at a random Italian restaurant along US 9. The food was good enough; Nyan sat quietly next to us in his car seat, and we marveled at how the stereotype of the New Jersey native is, in fact, not far from the truth, based on our fellow diners. ‘Nuff said.
We got home after dark. It was a long day, and a lot of driving for a relatively brief stop at the temple. But well worth it. We may go back to get Nyan a more formal blessing from the monks, and may make further donations to help the cause. Not bad for his first road trip.
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