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

Eating out

When you have a child, summer is a special flavour of madness.

There are six weeks between the end of the school year and the start of the next, so it's kind of enforced family holiday time. Even if you don't take a holiday, most of your child's friends will disappear. The side effect of this is that not only do you have to figure where the child can physically be for those extra 6½ hours per weekday, but they need activities as well, or they go crazy. So the lack of the normal playmates just means the entire time is spent following one long map from event to event to event.

A lot of those events for us ended up eating out.

Between my parents visiting for R's birthday, R and L meeting me for my lunchhour at work. Meeting up with visiting friends, and our actual holiday, we found ourselves going to restaurants more often than we had for a some time.

Eating out with a child is risky.

A continual problem is that she doesn't understand that what she asked for when she orders is what she's stuck with for the rest of the meal. We try to mitigate things by ordering for ourselves things she might like. So if R doesn't like what she gets, L or I can share parts of what we get with her.

Best case, she ends up with something she likes and eats all of it.

Next best case, she eats until she's full, then L and I eat the remains. It helps in restaurants with small portions which don't fill up an adult.

The worst case, she refuses to eat anything. Not her meal. Not L's meal. Not my meal. And, of course, when we get home she asks I'm hungry. What's for dinner?

We had dinner. It was at the restaurant. That was it. We told you it was dinner and to eat at the time. It's bedtime now. You can eat in the morning.

It usually ends up with her delaying bedtime for uncomfortably long while eating some hastily prepared rice cake and something sandwich. It's not like we have loads of snacks and easy to prepare foods around the house. Because they are snacks and easy to prepare — they just disappear.

It doesn't end with just food choices. You never know when you make meal plans if the child is going to be in a mood or not. Or, if there are other kids, if one of them moods out, then that will just be contagious, and it's all grumps and I wants.

On the other hand, R does know how to handle herself in a restaurant, even if she forgets sometimes.

Dinner is always when a child is most tired and fragile. No wonder so many parents end up doing dinner at 5pm. It avoids the daily meltdowns. And also avoids family dinners with friends as well. Not at all ideal.

R and I used to play café when she was around 2 and 3. We'd sit on the sofa and pretend to order food from a menu, talk to the waitstaff, eat, and so on. It was fun, and it means she knows how a meal in a restaurant is supposed to go, even if she often gets distracted and forgets. However, when she gets in the moment, she is on it. If she's thirsty she'll hail a waiter and order a sparkling water. If there's no waiter in sight, she'll just walk up to the bar and order.

You'd be surprised how few bars will even talk to six year who is queuing with the rest of the adults

Often, at the end of the meal, when we start talking about getting the bill, she'll just get up and go up to a waiter and ask Can we get the bill please?

So while eating and interacting with us in a restaurant may be a challenge for her, dealing with the staff she seems to have mastered.

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.

Now we are commuting

Recently we found ourselves in a predicament. It was half term and L had a morning meeting ending at 930. I had to be in at work for 930. A small but awkward conflict. R had to be somewhere, and school, being out, was not an option. Leaving her at home alone for an hour or so – well, that's frowned upon in the 21^st century, so we couldn't do that either.

The solution was actually quite simple. L's meeting was a 3 minute walk from my office. So R would go into work with me and wait there til L was done, and then go home with her. It was a plan.

I got up R extra early (earlier than she normally does for school) and she was dressed, fed and ready in less time than it normally takes her and in a much more chipper mood. I don't know if it's the single early day during half term that did it, or the walking up to Björk videos, but she was in a good mood, and that always helps.

We went through my morning commute together. Walking to the train, picking the best carriage that is the least walk when we get off but still has enough empty seats so we can be comfortable. We sat together on the train and chatted the whole time. We discussed the commute, what it's like to take the train every day, and so on. It was the nicest commute in I'd had, and for some reason it was much nicer than most normal travel with R. It was nice to have the company and nice to just be in the pleasant mood.

When we got to the office, I introduced her around, then showed her to the sofa where she got comfortable and got out her iPad and started playing on it.

Not everyone was in when we'd arrived. Just about every person to come in after that, once they noticed her sitting there, made the joke Oh, it that the new starter?

Not very original, but in their defence, a person did just start that morning.

L showed up shortly after her meetings, did the hellos around the office, then went off with R to play in the nearby piazza for a few hours. All sorted.

As an aside, I take R into school once a week. It's a short walk but I often take the bus in, rather than the scooter or her bike. The bus stops right outside the school and saves a bit of walking. It takes actually just as long as walking does, so it doesn't really save time. L always thought I was odd for even bothering. The word "lazy" has been used once or twice.

In reality it's not that. It occurred to me when we last did our microcommute to school that it's actually more fun to take the bus. When walking to work, R and I are different levels, it's always about nudging her past distractions and just keeping us moving down the street. It's all about herding.

On the bus, we sit next to each other and talk. Talk about what we see. Who we see. What's going to happen today. It's nice. It's like the commute on the train in miniature. I like it.

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!

Horton Hears a Who Day

On the fifteenth of May, in the Jungle of Nool,
In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,
He was splashing... enjoying the jungle's great joys...
When Horton the elephant heard a small noise.

After a few months of searching, I finally found a copy of Horton Hears a Who. I'd been meaning to read this to R ever since the march in January. As you recall, I wanted her to understand that the more people who stand up to be heard, the more likely those in power will be persuaded to represent us.

R is very keen on the book, and has wanted to be read it every day since getting it. She pointed out to me that the book begins on 15 May. That's tomorrow. So I am going to dedicate Horton Hears a Who Day 2017 to getting out the vote for the upcoming British election.

One of the two most important things to take away from this book is that everyone has to take part in order to make a difference. It's only when all our voices are added together that we can finally be heard. I'm very afraid that with some many high-stakes elections recently, the British public are going to sit this one out. Rather than the usual voting doesn't make a difference it seems we've gone down a few notches to voting can only ever make things worse. Yes, the opposition may not be perfect, and might have done things you find personally questionable, but they're not actively trying to kill you or destroy your livelihood. Getting out to vote is literally the only way to possibly stop the Tories and the madness of austerity and other policies designed specifically to hurt.

That brings me to the other take-away from the book: A person's a person, no matter how small. Not only is everyone worthy of basic human respect, but it is our responsibility to care of those people who cannot manage it themselves.

On a final note, as my daughter pointed out, one of the things she likes the most about the book is that, despite all the trouble the kangaroo caused, when she finally heard the Whos and understood the trouble she caused them, she turned around her thinking and decided to protect them. And Horton didn't resent her for what she'd done – he was happy to accept her help. It's not too late to turn around and do the right thing.

8 June is pretty much our Boiled in Beezle-Nut Oil Day. I'm confident the people of this country want the right thing. It's just a question of getting everyone out and to the polls so we can actually be heard. So, if you haven't yet registered, then do so. If you can help anyone else to register, especially young people who've never voted before, then help them. If voting on the day is going to difficult then vote by post. Get out, get your friends out, get your neighbours out, get your relatives out, and get our voices heard.