Day 13, early start, Kindergarten and messing around with a hot glue gun
I had an early start today. I set my alarm for 5:30am, and finally got going a bit after 6am, and knocked out a 10km run. It was my first 10km in about a month. It wasn't pretty, but I was looking for accomplishment, not achievement.
Sarah's doing a work training course that had an early start, so she asked me if she could drop Zoe to me early and have me take care of Kindergarten drop off for her. Zoe arrived at around 8am, and I put some sunscreen on her and we jumped on the bike.
I had one of the smoothest drop offs I've had since we've been back in Australia. Megan was already there, and after we got settled, the two girls started building with some large wooden blocks, and Zoe pretty much gave me a hug and a kiss and sent me on my way. She didn't require any handing off to a teacher, wasn't clingy or anything. It was wonderful to see.
Today was supposed to be my Debian day, but I've got something like 3 tax returns to do for two different countries, so I got stuck into collating records instead. After lunch I allowed myself to get sidetracked with trying to figure out the Google Drive API, because I'm trying to directly scan documents to Google Drive.
Then it was time to do the Kindergarten pick up. Both girls were fast asleep when I got there. I tried rousing Zoe without much success, so I went to try and wake up Megan. She was also pretty heavily sleeping, so I left her with one of the teachers to try and wake her up and returned to Zoe. She took a lot of work to wake up, but woke up happy.
I was expecting a couple of packages today, and the first one was being delivered by Australia Post as we got home, so that was pretty good timing. The second one was delivered while we were home, so that worked out pretty well.
For this afternoon's activity with the girls, I thought we'd make peg dolls. I've been stockpiling craft materials for almost as long as I've been back in Australia. I bought the big IKEA EXPEDIT 5 x 5 shelf, and have the bottom two rows set up as Zoe-accessible craft materials, reminiscent of the "bin wall" that the TechShop had. I've been getting stuff from Riot!, but I've also found that there's lots of good stuff to be had for cheap from Overflow.
So today's activity I think came from Riot! It was your bog standard wooden clothes pin, but the kit included a conical wooden "sleeve" that I guess was supposed to be a "dress". I thought I'd take things to the next level by hot-gluing a styrofoam ball on the top of the peg, and then hot-gluing eyes and a pom-pom nose on. The girls decided on their own to glue orange cellophane for hair, and got me to draw on eyebrows and a mouth. I had a couple of sheets of felt, so I cut holes in the middle of them and used the conical wooden sleeve to hold the felt dress in place. Pipe cleaners made the arms and they were finished. The girls seemed to enjoy making and playing with them.
It was the first time I've used the hot glue gun, and I wasn't sure how it was going to go. I explained to the girls that the tip was hot and to stay away from it, and let them use it under close supervision. Unfortunately Zoe learned the hard way that the glue is also very hot after it's been applied to the surface that it's going to be used on. Hot glue was definitely the way to go for a quick project where we didn't want to be sitting around waiting for PVA glue to dry.
After that, the girls watched a DVD for a little while and then Megan's Dad arrived to pick her up.
I started dinner a bit late, I should have started it while the girls were watching TV, so we didn't sit down to eat until later than usual. Bedtime went pretty smoothly, but also ran a bit late. Here's hoping Zoe sleeps well tonight.