Here’s our lad quietly reading his New York book as Mommy and Daddy go about the morning routine of getting him dressed and ready for school.
Of course, Nyan being Nyan, halfway through he demands to see the picture on the back of the camera. “Look. Loooook!”
And later he explains that he “wants to go to New York in a book.” Which, come to think of it, is exactly what he was doing. Smart kid.
In which our hero visits his personal library, pulls down a book about the human body (or ‘robot’ as he says repeatedly) and goes through the diagrams with Daddy. Special guest appearances by a talking skeleton and Bob the Builder.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: our young man is very much a bibliophile. It’s to the point now where, in that hour or so of playtime after we get home from school and before dinner, all he wants to do is go through his books, completely ignoring the piles of toys in the family room. Then, before his bath, he’ll grab a book and plop down in the hallway, in various states of undress, and start reading until we pick him up and carry him – very much against his will – into the tub.
Yesterday morning was a great case in point, as he was late to school (and Mommy was late to work) because… he just wanted to read. As Mommy put it:
He had a tantrum because I told him we had to go to school and that he needed to stop reading and come over to the pram. He refused. So we compromised and I let him take his book with him on the walk to school.
Please note that we use the term ‘tantrum’ rather loosely, and we recognize that what we see now as ‘tantrums’ (i.e. he cries a bit until he gets his way) will probably seem like, well, child’s play once he really gets into the tantrums. Or so we’ve been warned. And of course, we couldn’t be happier that all he wants to do is read. It just means we need to keep buying him new books!
Here, then, are some photos of the boy who would rather read than get in his stroller and head to school.
Nyan is at a pretty fun stage – he’s just happy all the time, exploring, somewhat independent (sorta), talking… just a joy. We’re taking plenty of photos and videos, even when the videos are not all that exciting. Like these two. Shot this morning, before we got him ready for school – partly due to this, Mommy and Daddy were both a little late to work, but so what? We want to remember, and chronicle these little moments, and the big corporations we work for can wait. Sappy, sure, but whatever.
Anyway, here we have him just sort of exploring the office, after throwing the package of swim nappies (swimming lessons on Sunday!) around a little bit.
(Gotta love how he doesn’t listen to Daddy, at all, when Daddy tells him not to mess around with the computer desk. But he snaps right to it when Mommy weighs in…)
And here, a bit later, playing a bit and then deciding that he just HAS to read a financial markets text book right now. Notice how he shoves stuff out of the way to get to the book. Kid loves his books, and we’re quite happy with that!
Folks, to tell this story properly, we’re gonna have to get a wee bit scatalogical. Bear with us.
Long-time readers may know that we’ve struggled a bit, at times, to – how can we put this politely – keep things moving down there. You know: his poops are sometimes rather dry and painful. Not to mention infrequent. Over the months we’ve tried a variety of dietary changes, to varying degrees of success. Well, a few weeks back, after another extended period of less-than-ideal pooping, we went for the nuclear option: Read the rest of this entry »
Here we have our hero (with his Daddy) going through one of his favorite books, all about colors. It’s got pages devoted to various colors (silver, brown, gold, purple, red, etc) and a whole bunch of pictures of things that match that particular color. He’s loved this book for months now, and never seems to get bored with it. It’s been great to teach him various items, animals, and whatnot; he’s still not quite grasping the concept of color itself, but I think he’s starting to get it.
His thing, as you can see, is to point to one of the objects and demand that Mommy or Daddy tell him what it is.
One thing that you don’t see in these videos is that he is, more and more, able to ID the items himself. For instance, I’ll say ‘Where’s the apple?’ and after a moment or two, he’ll point to the apple. It’s especially endearing with certain words; tell him ‘Show me the lion’ and he’ll point to a picture of a lion and let out a big roar as well. We’ll try to capture some video of that one of these days. For now, enjoy this second video of the boy and his colors (with a special bonus of a runny nose too!)
One of the (many) things we’re proud about when it comes to young Nyan Thomas is that he loves books. The main room in our house – Americans would call it a family room; here, it’s known as a reception room – has plenty of toys as well as a shelf full of his books. Nyan loves his toys (his talking zoo is his current fave) but more often than not, he’ll walk or crawl over to the bookshelf and pull out book after book after book, demanding that Mommy or Daddy read to him, or he’ll point to the pictures and demand that we tell him what he’s pointing at. His love for books bodes very well for the future, we believe.
On Sunday, we were all three hanging out in the spare bedroom upstairs, which we’ve turned into an office/craft room/hobby room – it’s got a desktop PC, a dresser full of camera equipment, Mommy’s boxes of yarn and knitting supplies, Daddy’s guitars, etc. And it’s got a few floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, chock full of Mommy and Daddy’s books. Nyan went over to these shelves and pulled a bunch of books down and proceeded to flip through them. Here’s what he was reading – and I swear to whatever deity you believe in that these photos are in no way staged: Read the rest of this entry »
We try to be good parents, and part of that is making sure we read to Nyan whenever possible. We’re pleased to report that he seems to enjoy books; he can’t read, of course, but he likes turning pages, and recently has shown more interest in the actual pictures. And he will sometimes even sit still for a few minute while we read to him! Positive signs, we’d say.
Without further ado, here are a few pictures of the young man, just before bedtime this evening, getting a little reading time in with Mommy.
(Click any photo to start a slideshow)
Nyan Thomas L's Blog 