Building Rex's Moving Castle

In honour of Star Wars Day this year I'll be introducing another toy making project I've been working on for R that I've dubbed Rex's Moving Castle.

R absolutely loves the two-part Rebels episode The Lost Commanders and Relics of the Old Republic since she first saw it two years ago. She's watched that over and over again so many times. In this episode (context for those who've not seen it), the Rebels meet Rex and some other veterans of the Clone Wars who've retired to an out-of-the-way planet. These people live on an old AT-TE walker, heavily modified from a war machine into a home, in which they travel around the planet, stomping loudly and emitting smoke – highly reminiscent of the titular Howl's Moving Castle, a movie R also loves.

Modified AT-TE vs Howl's moving castle

L and I got an idea. I'd just finished up with building Howl's Moving Castle and the creative juices were running strong. So, unbeknownst to R, we bought a old AT-TE toy off eBay and started to modify it. I kept it covered under a tarp in the office (off limits to R) for several months while I planned and built it up – very slowly.

My home office desk

In terms of projects it was quite a bit of a challenge. I've gone through that episode frame by frame, eyeballing the layout and figuring out how to not only scale it down by 1:18 for the figures, but then modify it further to fit the actual size of the toy Walker (like most toy vehicles, it's not to scale). Fortunately the Star Wars web site has some good diagrams of it from which I was able to fill in the details not clear in the episodes.

Detail of concept art of the modified AT-TE from the Star Wars web site.

The process for building this is both fun and challenging.

1. Take pictures of the toy with a ruler for scale. The hardest part here is taking the picture far away enough to minimise parallax but still be able to focus clearly on the ruler.
2. Import into Illustrator, scaled to the correct size, then start drawing the 2d plans.
3. Print out the plans, page by page, and use them to cut cardboard mock ups. Cutting along the lines of a print-out is much easier than measuring and cutting by hand.
4. Tape the parts to the Walker to see how it fits. Often I'll try putting a figure or two on the part to see if it actually looks right and is properly playable.
5. Repeat many times until the size is right.
6. Do a final full colour print out. Glue it to the foam board and cut it with a sharp razor into that shape.
7. Hot glue that the the walker. Make sure to use a level so that figures can stand on the flat platforms without toppline.
8. Relax for a few days/weeks and get started on the next part.

I started with the easier parts. Building on to the Walker with platforms at the front and back. It took longer than I expected. We'd originally planned to give it to R by the end of the 2017, but it wasn't ready. So, instead, we surprised her with the work in progress with the promise of letting her help with putting it together.

In the months since then I've mainly essentially been learning about mini-DIY. I went through a dry period around the start of this year where I got nothing done. I'd finished the back room in Feb after working on it for 6 months. I sort of gave up thinking that everything left was going to be hard. Or at least notably harder.

A coworker introduced me to Fusion 360 – a bit of CAD software meant for hobbyists and the like. It wasn't too hard to export the Illustrator diagrams, extrude them and position the parts the way they'd look in reality. That was a breakthrough – being able to see what things look like before I even cut them out. It helped tremendously with the top back platform, since it showed me I'd got some sizes way off (the downside of mocking up in 2mm thick cardboard when the actual material would be 5mm). Now that the stuff I'm working on is particularly hard the CAD has been coming in useful.

Putting together with CAD software is slightly faster than cutting and gluing, and much less likely to cause cuts and burns

The latest phase I've done is having to drill into the toy to attach parts. It's a bit scary since if I make a mistake it'll be very hard to recover. Now that I've done it I do wish I'd done it for the front side walkways because it would have supported things much better than just hot glue.

I'm done with the drilling now, as far as I can see. I like to think I'm on the final stretch but I've still many complex things (like winches and pipes) to do and many little things (like lanterns and railings). Regardless I'm trying to not count the things left so I still retain my optimism for the project.

I've set up an Instagram page, My Many Creations for this, the spaceport and other things I've been doing.

Spaceport Part 4: The lower level

At this point the spaceport was split in two parts – the landing platform, and the bookshelf part.

The landing had the roof for the Falcon to land on, and an internal hanger for Moya – R's Fischer Price little people airplane. The bookshelf part had 2 levels for fun play, a top floor, too tall for R to even reach, and a large bottom section which was no fun and just held random toys she didn't like to play with.

Needless to say, it bothered me that the space was not put to good use. I didn't really have a vision for how it could be used, but I did have plenty of spare parts left over from the Theed playset which were just adding to the clutter. So I decided to put them to use and make and half-floor in the lower level.

This was more difficult in a way since it required 1) actual construction that was more than apply hot glue to a to attach it to b and 2) a plan. The best I could do planwise was to use as many of the left over parts as I could.

In progress waiting for the glue to dry

The floor left over from the playset was awful. Which was why I'd not used it up until then. It was full of cut out lines where you could theoretically move figures around and make them do actions. I filled those in with hot glue and painted over the top so it didn't look too bad. You can see in the picture that they're visible, but I can live with it.

The floor is supposed to attach to two partial walls. I glued those in place, and glued shut the moving parts so it would be stable. Unfortunately there was the huge gap between them, which, without something in there, made the whole thing too wobbly. So I put some thick card stock between then, and covered half of it with a standard imperial wall decal, and fixed below that a lenticular postcard of the solar system R had lying around. It bothered me for quite a while that I was using a real space thing in Star Wars themed décor. But I told that part of my brain to shut up over and again until I could live with it.

Ready for play

I added on one of the random archways to the end to make it look more like a room, and connected the side of that to the other wall with pipes made from bendy straws. Hot glue does not stick to bendy straws very well at all. So these kept breaking off. I still need to replace a few of them.

With the platform ready, I had to attach it in place. I couldn't just glue it to the shelf above. It would fall off as soon as R played with it with any force. I had to support it somehow. I settled on some thick wire we had left over from handing things in R's room. Attaching that to the shelf above gave it stability and has held to this day.

Shortly after that, I finally finished decorating the stairs on the landing platform. The big problem I'd been facing was making them look thematically like the Bespin steps – the lights on the rise part with the circle - rectangle - circle pattern. I had the reflective tape to make it, but cutting a round shape was beyond my skills.

I bought a hole punch, which gave the ability to make repeatable perfectly sized round dots. I gave up on my attempts to make the shape between the dots rounded, but I think it came they came out pretty well regardless, as you can see in the photo.

Flash photo to emphasise the reflective tape

Spaceport Part 3: Painting

I had in my head an image of the Falcon in the Death Star from the first movie. That, to me, is what the landing platform for the girl's spaceport should look like. Landing lights, arrows on the floor, a big glowing entrance – that sort of thing.

This was new territory for me. First I had to overcome my reluctance to make permanent changes. So far I'd only unscrewed things. By paining there was no going back to the dollhouse the way it was before. So I had to be sure I was going to get it right or I'd risk ruining this dollhouse for nothing.

I started with the easy part: Stickers. I bought some shiny stick-on sparkles, and some highly reflective white tape. An easy first step, but I couldn't add those until I was finished.

Then was the next easy step: colouring stuff black. Everyone knows how to use a sharpie. So I drew some black highlights around the edges. I had R help me put the "landing lights" (shiny sparkle stickers) on the edges that I coloured black. Her temperament wasn't well suited for measuring and putting evenly-spaced stickers, but she persevered. And when we finished, she covered pretty much everything she owned with the remaining shiny dot stickers. Lesson learnt: put supplies away when done.

The black sharpie was easy to use, but it wasn't enough. I needed something grey so everything wasn't too dark. I tried buying grey sharpies and other pens. Nothing worked – they weren't opaque enough and the wood pattern showed through. I had to try something new. I got some dark grey paint and mixed it with white until I got the shade I was looking for (You've unlocked: mixing paint). Together it made a nice landing platform for the Falcon.

The top landing platform

To complete my vision, I had to paint the bottom as well. It was mostly a case of painting the floor black, then adding reflective tape to the floor and around the entrance as decorations. I printed out some decals from an extremely helpful website and glued them to some supports and the uncovered floor area.

Painted with decals

The Theed door (above) fit perfectly, so I put that in as an entrance from the uncovered area. I also had some left over paint, so I painted parts of the stairs grey (the parts R hadn't already painted with watercolours one industrious rainy day) and added a floor decal to the landing.

With figures and stairs

To finish off the effect I painted the other floor I took from the original dollhouse

(turns out, painting is pretty easy to do, though it takes ages to finish due to the whole paint/dry cycle)

and added more decals to the supports to make it look more Imperial. Note the additional observation platform on the top floor (Mon Mothma’s standing on it). The original attachments met with a bit of an accident, so I put it back together with more pieces and a little less wonky.

You can also see, slightly, a balcony I made from the original styrofoam we'd planned to make a little Millennium Falcon out of. I'd just painted it and added laminated decals for the floor (I’m finally getting good use out of the laminator I bought on a whim a (it was on sale) a few years ago). To top it off, I made railings out of toothpicks. The railings were, ultimately, too fragile, and ended up breaking a few months ago.

That was pretty much it for several months. It was a lot of work to get there, and I couldn't figure out how to attach the rest of the parts I'd gotten. So they sat there through the summer until late fall, where Part 4 begins.

Spaceport Part 2: The observation tower

We've had a shelving unit for some years. It used to live in the kitchen to store pots and pans, but since we moved to the current place, it's lived in the girl's room. We made a partial attempt to use it as a bookcase, but it ended up just being random storage – mostly for toys.

Once the dollhouse was turned into a spaceport, and all the extra parts moved onto the bookcase, I felt the two could be combined into a single larger spaceport. It needed some sprucing up, so I found some cheap used Star Wars playsets in dubious condition on ebay. Most of the parts were from a Theed playset – it didn't appear to be very fun looking on its own, but there were lots of walkways and platforms. I glued these to the shelves so they hung above the spaceport, making the bookcase into a sort of observation tower.

As it turned out, she wasn't tall enough to play with anything on the top level, so that ended up mainly to just be used for storage and posing figures she didn't use much. For the most part it was just for decoration, or as a thing guests could accidentally break, or just something to stop us from easily getting into her nearby drawers.

It was fairly bland up to that point, but I had an image in my head for the making the landing platform more fun. That would require actual decorating. More on that in Part 3.

A new turn of events

For the past four days R has decided to put herself to bed. I'm a little shocked at this given how difficult bedtimes have been for the past almost six years.

For the first 3 years, getting her to sleep mostly involved a combination of holding her while singing and bouncing up and down for 2 or 3 hours. L and I would usually alternate days for bedtime responsibility, though in the early years, it was more a case of 2 hours of bedtime for L followed by 2 hours for me, repeat until the girl was asleep. Plus naps.

After my slipped disk L was too painful to hold for long, so bedtime became more reading plus songs. We started with exactly 3 books, then songs (usually the same 3 songs) until sleep hit after a couple of hours. After she was 4, she demanded 4 books, then songs. This started to be a challenge because this is when my eyesight started going. But she started to consistently fall asleep during certain songs, so at least the process was starting to get shorter.

Sometime around when she turned five she started to fall asleep while I read to her. Around this time I got my first pair of glasses. Which meant reading was easy again. So I would read as many books as it took for her to doze off. Usually in only an hour or two at most.

Last year we came to an agreement that she would put herself to sleep once a week, in exchange for being able to go to bed in my bed once a week. It's been hit and miss, to be honest, but she succeeded more times than not.

Recently we came to an agreement that she'd put herself to bed twice a week. The agreement involved bribery. Every night she successfully put herself to bed she'd get either a toy out of toy jail, or get a new Star Wars toy. She apparently likes this. So for the past 4 days she's been enjoying getting a toy back every day. And while I'm not keen on the idea of her having too many toys, after nearly 6 years of hours of bedtime routine, this is worth every penny.

As things stand now, one of us reads to her while she gets ready for bed. Then, we leave her to put herself to bed. She usually plays for a little bit, then reads to herself. Her reading skills have increased dramatically since the start of the year. It's fairly likely that this is the driver behind the new behaviour. That and her rediscovery of her bedtime playlist. She usually asks for the music during bedtime. Tonight she asked the music be turned off so she could sing to herself instead. I think it's working.

I suspect, like with most skills, this will work for a while, stop for a bit, and come back and forth until settling down again. I'm fine with that. I'm personally revelling in the spare extra hours of time. I've made a path in the office so I can finally reach the filing cabinet! I did my taxes and paid bills! I've built two new platforms for her spaceport. Productivity!

The girl's first convention

I've been doing a few Star Wars related posts lately. It's the week after 2017 Star Wars Celebration and the week before May the fourth, so I felt it was a good time to get all these stories out.

Last year, R and I went to the Star Wars Celebration in London. Given how much she enjoys Star Wars and how close it fell to her birthday, L and I decided it would be fun for her to go as her 5th birthday present.

I cannot stress enough how much R loves Ahsoka. So L and she decided that she could go in costume as Ahsoka. And not just any Ahsoka, but a 3-year-old Ahsoka.

For maximum effect, R would go as 3 year old Ahsoka and I would go as Plo. (Plo was the one who recruited her into the Jedi. It's a long, complicated story which was cut down to literally 7 seconds of show.

We spent ages in the weeks beforehand putting together the Ahsoka costume. L found something like a pattern online for a Little Ahsoka. I was never very good at making clothing from patterns. My time in university working in a costume shop was more spent on repairs than building from scratch. So L and I spent ages trying to figure out what all the parts meant and how they went together. The absolute hardest part was adjusting the photos for perspective so we'd have flat patterns of the right size we could work with. After a few paper trials we figured out how it could all work and scaled it so it would fit R's head.

(if there is interest, L can do a guest blog on how she put it together)

In the days before the event, L and I were up late, cutting, sewing, painting and staring at the 4 or 5 reference photos we found online, plus as many of R's toy Ahsokas as we could find. Turns out, those things on Ahsoka's head are called lekku. There are loads of instructions online on how to make lekku (tho that's mostly for twileks). Later, I found out the horn things are called montrals. Though I'm not sure knowing that at the time would have helped.

The finished headpiece

The Accident

A few days before event, on the way to school, R got her foot caught in the spokes of L's bike. A nasty accident which took off several layers of skin and left R unable to walk. No bones were broken, but she was in a lot of pain and couldn't put any weight on that foot. They gave her these tiny 4-year-old size crutches and we borrowed a push chair from the neighbours. With that, we would be ok to go to the event. Unfortunately with all the extra care and attention the injured girl needed, there wasn't time to put together costumes for both of us. So the idea of a Plo costume was lost in favour of giving her the best experience I could.

The day

I'd prepared everything the day before, going as far as going to the venue the day before to pick up our badges early. On the day, I'd prepared enough food and water to get us through the day. We had the push chair and her crutches so she'd be able to move around. I even brought a jumper just in case she got cold in the July weather. And finally, I did some research online on how to do cons with a small child. I felt prepared.

We got there early. It took so long to get through the security queue, we were almost too late for the Ahsoka's Untold Tales session – the one thing we absolutely had to see. As it was, we did get in, but far enough back that it was hard to see, and hard to keep the 4-year-old R at attention. FWIW, I thought it was really good. And twice we've gone back to watch the video on youtube, now that she's less distractable.

Ashley Eckstein, the voice actress who plays Ahsoka did a meet-the-fans thing. It took us ages to find it (silly me, asking a staff member for directions). And by the time we got there it was too late to get R on stage to meet her. And while Ashley did a bit of pose for photos and meet the fans when she got off stage, the fact that R was confined to a pushchair due to her injury, more able-bodied fans felt free to push right past her (the low point of the day).

We didn't get to meet Ashley, but we did have a fun day seeing all kinds of interesting stuff. We spent a while in the kids' entertainment area, but it disappointed R that she couldn't participate in any of the standing-and-moving games.

She liked seeing the toys a lot. Especially the part where she'd tell me which ones she wanted to have. But of the parts she liked, I think it was the Lego stall she liked best. People made small ships out of legos, which the staff put up on display. R did one ship by instructions and another more creatively. When asked by the staff, when handing it over, she told them it was a Zillo Beast. I was proud that she'd chosen such an obscure star wars creature and that said it so matter-of-factly as if everyone should know what she was referring to. In terms for the best stall for a younger person, IMO, the Lego stall won for being so hands-on and so engaging.

Near the end of the she was starting to get a bit tired. I was still a bit disappointed over her not being able to meet the Ahsoka actress. But R made up for it in blagging her way on to the stage so she could get her picture taken on the Millennium Falcon set piece (lesson learnt: it doesn't hurt to ask). I'm even more proud of her for pulling that off than I was for the Zillo Beast thing.

On the Falcon

And finally, we went home. She was tired and got a little cranky, but we got home by 6pm. She immediately sat down, with her fading face paint, and hair poking out from under her headpiece, to play with her Ahsoka toys.

To this day she still wears the headpiece on occasion. Sometimes just when going to the supermarket with me. I suppose, given how much she loves it, eventually we'll have to make her another one when she outgrows this.

Spaceport: Part 1

When R decided she really liked Star Wars, I gave her some of my old Star Wars figures from my childhood. And after time, she was starting to amass a bit of a collection of these and other small toys. And as toy collections grow, so does the mess of a child's room.

R also has a big dollhouse. A nice big wooden, handcrafted (as far as I can tell), dollhouse. It was a hand-me-down gift from a friend whose daughter no longer used it. R did like it and use it for a while. But eventually she stopped playing with it. It was too small for her stuffed toys and too big for her smaller figures. So it became a place for dirty clothes and toys she didn't use. It moved from room to room, taking up precious space in our London flat. So one day I asked her about it.

You don't really use your dollhouse. Do you not really like it?

(sheepishly) No.

How about we turn it into a space port?

YES!

That's where the Spaceport project began. Today it's gone well beyond what I had intended. The original plan was:

1. remove the top two floors of the dollhouse
2. turn the bottom level into a spaceport for her Fisher Price airplane (named Moya)to park inside

I took all the remaining parts of the dollhouse and put them in the bookshelf we used to store toys and stuff. Which had the nice effect of splitting the large shelves in two. Already it added storage and saved space.

I had some ideas of how to decorate the spaceport to make it more exciting, but I was hesitant to start. Partly because it meant making permanent changes to the dollhouse, and partly because much of what I had in my head was, if I was honest, beyond my skills. Turn out, when I did try enhancing it, pretty much everything I tried failed at first. Then I'd have to skill up to make it work. Repeat over and over for a year and you can imagine it's gotten quite elaborate by now. But I am getting ahead of myself…

The Falcon

She liked putting all her star wars toys together on a broken piece of styrofoam and saying it was either spaceship or a sofa. Usually the former. L and I talked about colouring and shaping the styrofoam to look a bit like the Millennium Falcon, but that never really materialised.

Time passed, as it does, and one day I was following links on the web, as you do. I ended up on the Star Wars site, on a page talking about the original Millennium Falcon toy. This bit struck me:

It measured about 53 centimeters long, and compared to a figure of Han Solo (about 10 centimeters tall) was almost four times too small. If Kenner had built the Falcon on a 1:1 scale with the figures, it would have been about 190 centimeters long. Hasbro almost achieved this with their “big” edition of the Falcon in 2008 which measured about 82 centimeters.

“Big” edition??? I'd never heard of that. A quick search on the web found a trove of reviews and pictures. This Millennium Falcon would be just the sort of dollhouse that she'd appreciate. But given that it was released in 2008 and there was no way it'd still be in shops, I dismissed it as just a fantasy. That was until L introduced me to the world of Ebay.

It took a couple of months of looking, but I eventually found one at a reasonable price (they usually go for at least £100 in reasonable condition, so I was lucky). When it showed up, it was, for starters, huge. L took some photos of me playing with it.

Are you sure it's for her and not for you?

Well… did I ever tell you about the time when I was a kid and I asked for a toy Falcon if I could keep my room clean for a year?

Did you manage it?

Are you kidding? I didn't last a week.

R loved the Falcon. It became the home for her Star Wars and other toys and lived on top of the spaceport. Where it lives to this day. But the spaceport itself has changed quite a bit. but that's a story for part 2.

Order of convenience

I introduced the daughter to Star Wars around two years ago. I think what first attracted her to it was it just being fun. The fact that it was punctuated with toys she played with at my parents' house helped make it a bit more personal. I've pretty much completely skipped that aspect of our lives, and at this point it's not insignificant. So with Star Wars Day upcoming shortly, it's as good a time as any to fill in the details.
There is so much out there on the web saying what order newcomers and children should see the Star Wars films. I had this dilemma, so I decided to discuss it with L.

Should we show R Star Wars by episode number or by release date?

You have to ask? Release date.

But we could...

Release date.

I pondered this further for about 3 seconds. Do I show R Phantom Menace which is visually nice? Or do I introduce her via Star Wars which is just fun? This is what I decided. (Various spoilers follow)

1. Star Wars

I've described before how we first we sat down and watched Star Wars. I let her see it a few times after that. Sometimes she'd ask questions about stuff answered in other movies, and I'd just give some non-spoiler detail and say she'd see eventually.

2. Clone Wars: 5.10 – 5.13 (The R2-D2 set)

This is a set of 4 episodes of the Clone Wars where R2-D2 is on a mission with a few other droids and small Jedi. It's minimally violent and fun. It only has a few short scenes with clones and Obi Wan and Anakin, so no real spoilers there.

Between this and the movie, she enjoyed the idea enough that she started playing pretend with Star Wars themes.

You drempt about the move last night?

I had my own little save light. Like the one Darth Vader had.

Oh a light sabre. Would you like to have your own little light sabre? A toy light sabre?

Yeah. I had one in my dream.

well, I wanted you to have this pulls inflatable lightsaber out of the bookcase when you old enough but I wasn't sure if your mum would be up for it. inflates it

Your very own light sabre.

YES! I wanted one of these! I'm going to show mamma!

I got an inflatable light sabre on Star Wars Day a month previous and had stashed it in a bookcase in the living room waiting for the day she'd ask for one. I didn't expect ti so soon.

3. The Empire Strikes Back

She enjoyed the movie enough she demanded a Space Robots theme for her birthday. Which we obliged with Cyberman spacehopper Racing and an R2-D2 cake.

We also went to the Secret Cantina, which she loved and still talks about today. She played legos with a cantina band alien (a Bith) and loved playing with the Twilek dancers, who, in turn, seemed to really like playing with her.

4. Return of the Jedi

It took a while before we watched return of the Jedi. Mostly we could pace her. Partly so she'd have a chance to enjoy them more. And partly because I had to wait six years to see the 3rd film, and I didn't think it was quite fair.

We saw this after she'd already played with an Admiral Ackbar doll which said It's a trap when a string was pulled. So when that scene occurred, she said It’s a trap over and over for
quite a while.

At this point I decide to get tickets us to go together to see Star Wars Celebration in London for her 5th birthday present. I explained it to her as like the Secret Cantina but 100 times bigger.

5. Phantom Menace, anti-cheese edit

I did have a really big dilemma, about showing R the first of the prequels. Eventually, I found online a version which replaced all the racist caricature voices with subtitled alien speak. It also edited out some of the dafter parts. While it cut out more than I'd have liked, it seemed the best option out there. So in Feb 2016 I played the movie and within the first minute she'd declared, No! I want to watch real Star Wars! So we watched Return of the Jedi again, and that was that for several months.

Eventually I caught her in a good mood and she sat through it. So, with the goodwill I followed it up quickly with…

6. Attack of the Clones

I'd not really seen it since I saw it in the cinema. It was not as good as I recalled. But R was ok with it. We were on a roll, so I started her on…

7. Clone Wars, seasons 1-2

I started from the feature-length pilot and went on from there. I was careful to avoid creepy or overly violent episodes. Or anything where Jar Jar has more than 2 lines.

She loved Ahsoka. Really. By mid-March she'd stopped calling herself Elsa and started calling herself Ahsoka. She called me Anakin and L was Obi Wan. And she'd constantly tell me that Don't worry. I'll stop you from turning to the dark side!"

At this point she declared she wanted a birthday party with the theme Star Wars underwater and Octonauts in Space. Can you guess what her other favourite TV show is?

We'd watch an episode of two of Clone Wars on the weekends, with the occasional movie. But after a while she refused to watch any more. I think seeing one episode where Grievous kills a young Jedi was too much for her. So we took a pause away from watching Star Wars for a while. (I like it, but I don't like how it makes me feel.).

She still wanted to be Ahsoka and wanted to lightsabre spar with me as Anakin. She just didn't want to watch anything.

8. Rebels, season 1

Her reluctance lasted a month or so. When she was ready to go back, we started on Rebels. She had a Chopper doll, so it made sense to let her see Chopper in action. We watched some of the less scary, lighthearted stories from the start of season 1. She was very excited to find out Ahsoka was in Rebels.

9. Clone Wars, season 2

Watching this after starting Rebels was actually a good idea, since I could point out young Hera in Liberty On Ryloth.

10. The Force Awakens

We got ten minutes in when we first tried, when she said it was too much. So we tried again a month later. We just needed to make sure she saw it before she went to the Celebration in July, so she wouldn't have big reveals ruined for her.

The second time she tried to watch it she was happy to see the whole thing. We just had to skip over the scary roller monster parts, the torture bits, and some of the light sabre fights.I didn't think it made much of an impression on her, but to this day she gets excited when she sees Rey or even Ben.

11. Clone Wars, seasons 3-4

First, she saw 4.01-4.03, the Water War episodes as a birthday present (the only real underwater episodes, so it fit the theme). We skipped a good chunk of these to avoid overly scary things, like the Maul brothers and witches episodes, and the Mortis episodes which are too spoliery for Return of the Sith, and for some reason she didn't want to see the ones where Obi Wan goes undercover.

At this point we get her the I Am a Princess Little Golden Book. I was reluctant at first, but the more I read it, the more I like it. It’s all about the noblesse oblige that is so missing from princess stories. I am a princess. I look after others and keep them safe

The only quibble I have with it is that I feel I have to insert "queen" before Breha every time I read it, because she is and that's the reason she's a princess, not her birth mother's early employment.

12. Rebels, season 2, first half

She loves anything with Ahsoka, so the second season of Rebels made her happy. Initially she'd not watch any episodes with Inquisitors. And especially not the one where they kidnap children. But she really like the one with young Leia (A Princess On Lothal), the one where Hera gets a B-wing (Wings Of The Master), and most of all, The Lost Commanders episodes. The latter she demanded every weekend to the point that we’ve put them on her iPad and she'll watch over and over whenever she wants/can. Even though Ahsoka is only in a couple of scenes, she can't get enough of watching Rex's Moving Castle.

13. Clone Wars, 5-6

It took a couple of months to get through season 5, but season 6 was over in 2 weekends. For some reason she didn't want to see the banking clan episodes, and the Jar Jar ones are still censored by me. When we got to the end we could finally watch…

14. Revenge of the Sith

We had to skip some of the scarier bits, but she'd been wanting to see how it played out, and was sufficiently warned of the scariness. It did give her a chance to put 2 and 2 together on so many things, so it was nicely closureific for her.

15. Rebels, season 2, the rest

After seeing Revenge of the Sith R was much more up for dealing with the scariness of the Inquisitors. So we watched all of season 2 (still skipping The Future Of The Force). She dealt with the last episode better than I expected, despite it being a bit emotionally traumatising for me when I first saw it. But I suspect someone must have spoiled it for her in the year which has passed between it showing and her seeing it.

16. Clone Wars, Mortis episodes

As I said above, the Mortis episodes were a bit too spoilery, so I held off showing them until after she'd seen Revenge of the Sith. We had a nice chat afterwards about how Anakin would always turn dark to save those he cares for, and what that means in terms of the greater good.

17. Rebels, season 3, in progress

We just started season 3, and have seen the first 2 episodes. She's not showed much interest in seeing further – she just wants to see the Rex’s Moving Castle episodes again and again.

She mentions The latest movie occasionally and asks if Ben and Chewbacca are in it. I keep telling her, no, it's essentially Rebels: The Movie, but without any of the characters you know in it. Except Chopper. So I’m putting off her watching it for a while, because it is so very bleak. It's good, but oh so very dark, and R might not be ready for that plus the added lost-little-girl factor. So we'll just wait and see when she seems ready.

Beyond all that, I've been debating over whether I should introduce the Ahsoka novel. I've read it myself, and I think she's ready material-wise, but she is only 5¾, so reading a novel of that level is beyond her. Audio book? Read it to her myself? I'm not sure yet.

So this is my what order to see Star Wars list. I'll just put this out there as another drop in the web’s overflowing bucket of opinions.

Now we've marched

Yesterday the family took part on the Women's March on London. As I mentioned before, it was R's first protest as a walking individual. So we did try in the lead up to the march to plan appropriately. Part of this is making sure R understood why we were doing this. After all it would be somewhat immoral to bring her to a protest against her will. This involved another discussion very similar to the Sexism at school one, but this time trying to scale up the argument.

After that was the preparation. I did some reading up on how to take a child on a march (Lost the link for that one, sorry) and tried to incorporate as much of that as I could. In the end, this is what we did and what we learned from the process

I won't sit down, I won't shut up

• Make things together — The wife and daughter worked together to make a banner we could carry. It was important to involve the girl since it would help her feel like this was her march. L and R discussed many options for a slogan for one side of the banner: I won't sit down, I won't shut up which is a line from a Frank Turner song that R really likes. The other side of the banner came, somewhat modified, out of my last blog post I can't believe this is still an issue. R helped a bit with the painting, but the bulk of it was L since she has better handwriting that either of us.
• Bring helium balloons — I hate using helium for reasons I won't go into, but it really did help having a floating pointer down to the girl at all times. It meant not losing her in the crowds dozens of times. When it was too crowded to move and we'd not met up with L yet, the girl kept ducking under people to get very slow 250 meters to L. I followed holding the tops of the balloons and apologising to people over and over. Anyway, We filled up six oblong balloons and wrote slogans on each: Girl Power, Women's rights are human rights, This is not normal and Never give up, never surrender. I tried to think of a good Firefly quote to include, but couldn't manage it before we ran out balloons.
• Phone numbers — beyond balloons, we need to make sure R could get back to us if she got lost. So we made sure she had backpack on, with a couple of toys to make her happy, and a large piece of paper with my phone number on one side and L's on the other. I tried to get R to memorise my number, but no. The best she got is that All phone numbers start with zero. Except in America where they start with one.
• Prepare plenty of food — this wasn't as important as I thought it would be, but I suppose it was better to have more food than less. Most of the food was eatable while walking, though I brought a tupperware full of pasta and a spoon, just in case. And napkins, of course. I had more than half the food remaining when we got home. I even remembered to make food for myself, which I something I normally forget
• Water — plus a flask of hot coffee for me. I only brought 250ml for R, and she didn't drink much. I only gave her some when she asked, because I didn't want to risk R drinking too much since there were no loos anywhere in sight. So that worked out too.
• Scooter — Bringing the scooter was a good idea, to a point. She'd have not been able to manage the walk on foot, so to that point it was essential. But it was really hard to get through the densest of the crowds. We have a ScooterSling which is indispensable to a parent, and made it possible to carry the scooter without hitting people in the face or other parts.
• Keep warm — That was pretty easy. When we were still, everything was jam packed, so that was warm. When we were moving, that kept us warm too. Base layers were enough. Though I did have an extra scarf in her backpack (with the toys) just in case.
• Be a little paranoid — The kettling and other problems at the student marches has gotten me paranoid. I brought no wallet, just a credit card, a bit of cash and an old phone with all unessential accounts and access turned off. Nothing to worry about, it turns out. It was safer than an afternoon at the pub. This time.
• Plan in analogue — The big miss of the day was when everyone changed the meet up point and didn't tell me. I got a message from L with a URL pointing to a spot on a map, not quite realising how bad LTE does internet when you are with thousands of people in a single cell. A dot on an empty grid. Great. Lessons learnt: always phone or send an SMS with a specific crossroad. And next time, paper maps it is, or maybe some downloadable maps like Here. And figure out in advance which roads are completely closed due to sodding Crossrail.
• External phone charger — Essential. If you have a modern phone, never leave the house without a charger. If you have an old phone, like I did, the battery is completely shot anyway, so never unplug it from the charger.
• Be ready to explain crude language — as well as unpleasant discussion on unexpected topics. It's important that the protesters don't water down their anger or message, so it's up to you to prepare your child for what they see. Part of it is not freaking out when someone starts a chant calling the American president a fucker. And part of it is just explaining that they're being crude. And another part is telling them how you'll explain it later when it's not so loud – which buys you a bit of time to figure out how to put the explanation into words, or them to stop caring.
• Have cuddles ready — people don't look for kids, so they'll get hit in the face with things. But they're resilient, so a heartfelt cuddle is usually enough to get them up and going again. Likewise, be ready to stop for while when the kid's had enough. Near a lamppost or other barrier is ideal, so you don't both get trodden on.

All in all, the people at the march were amazing. On the bus trip down, the balloons made for an excellent conversation starter with several Are you going to the march? introductions. R got friendly enough with the people sitting behind us that she turned the conversation on fighting for liberty and freedom into explaining in great detail why she likes Ahsoka Tano (from Clone Wars) so much. All through the march people were just in good spirits and had nice things to say. It's been so long since I've been in such a crowd in London that wasn't a commute I forgot what it was like to just be easy going and nice to people. For that alone I'm glad we went.

R gave up just before the march got to Trafalgar Square. She'd just had enough and wanted to go home. Or to a park. But mostly home. Barring the trip to the loos for L on the way, getting home was uneventful. We watched a few Rebels episodes and then R went to bed pretty quickly, all properly tuckered out from the day.

Three, a review

The girl is about to hit four so now's as good a time as any to go through the past year. Every child is different so none of this is likely to apply to anyone else. This is more of a general note since I've hardly blogged at all here this past year.

The biggest event was her starting nursery. She really liked all the books and toys and playing with other children. It made me feel less guilty the lack of arts and crafts I did with her at home. On the other hand... It's not the physical viruses that went around at nursery that were a problem, it was the memes. Princesses, fairies, Frozen, gender, bad grammar and cockney accents. I'm hoping once she starts real school the latter two will go away. But I suppose the rest will get worse over time.

The other affect of nursery was having to change her bedtime. Before she was in bed by 2130, but when she dropped her nap plus being at nursery at 8, meant moving bedtime back to 1930. Rather more traumatic since it meant dinner at 1730 or so. It was really hard at first to get dinner so early. It'd mean stopping work at the most productive time and figuring out what to make that she would eat. Which was always changing. Eventually we just had to give up eating together altogether and we'd just do child dinner and parent dinner 3 hours later. At least it meant us adults be able to eat food we liked again. And now the girl could eat fish fingers and sweetcorn.

A couple of weeks before she turned 3 she suddenly became insolent. It was a surprising personality shift where suddenly she'd be argumentative and refuse to listen or do things. Before that everything seemed so exciting to her. I suppose at 3 she realised what she didn't like and had the language to say so. She must have started to notice there were boundaries and that she could push them.

This was the part that drove me the most mad. This all happened before she started nursery so I can't blame this on other kids. I don't know why it started but I hope it ends with 4. Or at least changes to something more manageable. Otherwise I might end up with blog posts all a variation of Today we argued about something she'd never explain what. She'd just say Stop doing the thing I don't want you to do.

Three was also the year she stated asking for a brother and a sister. It's hard to explain to her that were perfectly happy as a trio. And impossible to say out loud that her behaviour is ensuring she'll be an only child. So instead she'll just pretend she's got invisible siblings around her when we go out and about.

The best parts of 3 were all the conversations. She's now eloquent enough to express what she's thinking and has come up with some really witty things. Pretend play was more exciting. We'd pretend to be at cafe (she even picked up the bill once). Or pretend we were fairies with magic wands transmuting things into other things. Or we'd build a Lego spaceship and take her toy animals into outer space and back. She's reconciled fantasy and science fiction in her head and is happy saying fairies are from fairy planet and aliens are from Jupiter.

Even playing Frozen was fun at first... until she literally didn't stop for 8 months. Now she just occasionally plays Rapunzel, but often conflates it with Star Wars. Well sometimes spar with inflatable Light Sabres and she'll say I cut off your head. But it's ok. I've replaced it with Rapunzel's

On that note we get to play Star Wars a lot. My parents gave her some of my old toys. It gives us something we both like to do together. She enjoyed it so much she wanted her 4th birthday party to have a space robots theme (she loved the R2-D2 cake)

She's still reserved in some ways but still rather outgoing at the same time. She's happy being on a stage (real or makeshift) and singing at the top of her lungs or telling a story. But she won't ask another child their name to start taking or playing with them. That said she does still find smaller kids on the playground and take them all over the place.

So that was 3. She'll be 4 in 2 days. I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like and how things will all change all over again. And I'll just try to keep up.

Trying a new hope

Today I introduced the girl to Star Wars. She's a little younger now than I was when I first saw it, but I know many of per peers have already seen it and enjoyed it, so I figured it was time.

I tried her on Star Trek last a fortnight ago, but she was having none of it. At first she was It's got rocket ships! Yey! and then she realised it was people standing around on a spaceship talking to each other, which made her very bored and she demanded I turn it off.

That made it much harder to convince her to watch Star Wars. She refused at first, saying It's not for children. I want to watch something for children

It is. Don't you remember all the toys you played with at my parents' house?

Those were toys. I want to watch something for children. Not something with Grrr Argh at the end.

That's Firefly. Star Wars is very different. I'll show you.

I put up a still from the Clone Wars cartoon with R2D2 and a number of other droids. There's robots?!

Yes. And aliens.

Ok. Let's watch it

The movie had the right combination of action and exposition to keep her entertained throughout, as I suspected. Fortunately I remembered all the bits I found confusing has a child and was able to explain things before she hit bewilderment. We also had the advantage of being at home, not a cinema, so I could answer all the many many questions she had.

They're called Jawas.

What are they doing?

They're doing their job

Carrying robots?

Collecting. They collect robots.

What are they doing with them?

You'll see soon.

Are they aliens?

Well, sort of. I mean they don't think they are 'cause they live on that planet. But, let's just say yes, they are aliens. For us.

Unfortunately the sister-in-law already ruined the big reveal of Luke and Leia and Vader. The girl kept mentioning how she'd seen them as kids living together with the black thing in the book at her auntie's house. Oh well. Jeffrey Brown!

Some other selected highlights

Every now and again while watching she'd pipe up with the random punctuation of You have that toy!

She kept calling Chewbacca Chihuahua. Eventually she gave up and just called him the fluffy thing. You have that toy too.

I'd forgotten how surprisingly reasonable Leia is as a female character for a sci-fi movie from the 70s.

This. This is the kind of princess you can emulate.

How old is she? I think she's 10.

Ummm... about 20 I'd guess. About the same age as Luke, but she's clearly done much more with her life.

But she's bigger than Luke in [auntie]'s book.

That book is a bit... hyperbolic.

Yes his name is Jabba, not Jawa. He's not a Jawa. Not the same thing at all.

What did yo like most?

Running. jumping. running jumping.

What did you not like?

Stormtroopers.

On seeing Alderaan destroyed: Oh no! Her planet broke!

On the Mos Eisley cantina scene: That's an alien. And that's an alien. And that's an alien (repeat × 8)

What's the empire?

They're an evil political organisation that keeps the population in line using fear, intimidation and violence. Kind of like Tories.

All in all I think we both really enjoyed the experience. I think I'll try her on some of the other films. And probably some of the less intense episodes of the Clone Wars series as well. I'm mostly looking at it as something I liked from my childhood that I still like that we can both enjoy an get excite about together.