Friday, 14 March 2014

We had a pretty busy day today. Sarah dropped Zoe off at around 8:30am. I reminded Zoe that she'd forgotten to give Sarah her crown that she'd made at Playgroup the previous day, so she gave that to her.

After Sarah left, I let Zoe watch a little bit of TV while I finished getting myself organised.

We drove to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class today, because I wanted to go directly to the Planetarium afterwards.

Zoe's BFF Megan came to BJJ class today for a trial class. Zoe was very excited. Megan picked everything up really quickly, and the girls had a good time. She didn't want to wear her uniform today though. I managed to get out of her later that she felt it made her sweaty. I told her it was probably all the running around that made her sweaty, not the uniform.

We went out for a coffee with Megan, her Dad and her little sister afterwards. We found a little take away shop around the corner. Not quite the place that did babyccinos unfortunately, so Megan's Dad very cleverly got a chocolate milk and split it three ways with the girls and called it a "milkshake".

I've realised that for Science Friday, I've pretty much been doing solely chemistry so far, so I wanted to throw in a bit of astronomy this week. The Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium had just recently reopened after getting a spanky new projector because 1978 called and wanted theirs back.

Unfortunately, they weren't showing Perfect Little Planet today, but the slightly more specific Black Holes: Journey into the Unknown. I wanted Zoe to see something in the auditorium, so I thought we'd give it a shot anyway.

I think we got to the Planetarium at around 11am, and the next show was at 1:30pm, so we had a bit of a look around the foyer for a bit, which Zoe quite enjoyed. They had a life-size model of Neil Armstrong's spacesuit, and a scale model of a Saturn V rocket. Zoe quite enjoyed both of them. I'll have to dig up some Youtube footage of a Saturn V launch.

We then headed over to the cafe in the adjacent Botantic Gardens, and had a reasonable lunch. After lunch we wandered around the Botanic Gardens to kill some time, so you could say that today's Science Friday also included a goodly amount of botany as well. We went into the Tropical Dome and looked at the fish in the lily pond, and toured the fern garden, before heading back.

We timed it pretty well, and got back to the Planetarium with about 10 minutes to kill. I'd prepped Zoe for the presentation, and told her that she needed to keep quiet, and if we had to leave we wouldn't be able to go back in again, and she could whisper to me if she needed to. I have to say, she was so well behaved. She sat through the whole 45 minute presentation and the projected tour of the night sky.

I guess the presentation was sufficiently visually interesting to hold her attention for the duration. There was certainly a lot of "wow" out of her. I was so proud of how she went that I had to go and buy her an ice cream as a reward.

After that, we went for a drive around Mount Coot-tha. I pointed out the TV towers that we can see from our balcony, and then she fell asleep on the way home.

She didn't wake up particularly happy from her late, short nap, when we got home, but once she got herself sorted out, we baked the cookies that we'd made yesterday. They came out very nicely indeed. Once they were all baked, we dropped off a dozen to Megan's place, and then came home to have dinner.

Bedtime went pretty well. I hope she has a good night's sleep, as we have a big day tomorrow.

Zoe had Playgroup this morning. We had a little bit of time to kill between when Sarah dropped her off and it was time to bike over to Playgroup, so we went for a little walk to the post box to mail a letter. It was a beautiful morning, so the walk was nice.

We biked over to Playgroup. Today I learned from the mother of the boy who was causing issues last week, that he was extremely allergic to everything. They couldn't use egg cartons for their craft activities, for example, because he was allergic to eggs, and even the empty cartons would cause a problem, apparently. That's quite the allergic sensitivity. I'm glad Zoe outgrew her egg allergy.

Zoe wanted to do the craft activity first up, so she made another crown, this time for Mummy. I helped roll scraps of crepe paper into balls, and she very carefully glued them onto the points of the crown. She seems to really enjoy mucking around with Clag glue pots. I'll have to get a bottle for home. It reminds of my early primary school days.

After that, we just generally mucked around for the rest of Playgroup. She loved the dress up pink lacy skirt again, and wanted to fool around on stage for a bit.

One of my ex-co-workers has an occasional yum cha or laksa lunch with a bunch of his ex-co-workers, and I was invited along to laksa at Super Bowl. I figured that since Zoe loves any opportunity to use her chopsticks, and generally loves a good noodle soup, that this could be something I could bring her along to.

So straight after Playgroup, we biked over to the Bulimba ferry terminal, locked up the bike, took the ferry across to Teneriffe and jumped on a City Glider bus to Fortitude Valley.

We ended up getting there about 30 minutes earlier than everyone else, so I just ordered Zoe some wonton noodle soup and let her have at it while we waited for everyone else to arrive.

We all had a BBQ pork laksa, which I personally found a little bit too spicy for my liking, but it was doable. Lunch went well. Zoe was really well behaved, so I'll definitely bring her along again. The next one is supposed to be yum cha, so I think she'll enjoy the selection.

Zoe was looking pretty tired by the end of lunch, and we reversed our way back, and biked home from Bulimba. Once we got home, she practically put herself to bed for a nap. Since she was napping pretty late, I didn't let her nap for too long, and she woke up happy.

After her nap, I thought we'd do some baking. I wanted to try and make some oatmeal cookies like our friend Bri used to make, so I found a recipe and adapted it to the Thermomix, and we got stuck into it.

The joys of having a small child help is that not always do the ingredients wind up where they're supposed to. We had to mill a cup of raw sugar down to white sugar, and I had the cup's worth of sugar in a bowl and asked Zoe to tip the sugar into the Thermomix bowl. Unfortunately, she didn't line up very well, so some of the sugar made it into the Thermomix, but about as much went all over the Thermomix, the counter, the floor, the Guidecraft kitchen helper, everywhere.

I've become quite good at taking these sorts of things in my stride, and didn't bat an eyelid. I was actually more bothered by Zoe asking me if I still loved her.

After I reassured her I still loved her, even if she accidentally spilled sugar everywhere, and we cleaned up the sugar together, we continued to the point where I realised the dough was supposed to chill in the fridge for at least an hour. This would have meant the cookies wouldn't be ready to hit the oven until right around when Sarah was due to pick up Zoe, so I figured we'd just leave the dough in the fridge and bake the cookies tomorrow.

Zoe watched some TV while I cleaned up the kitchen, and then Sarah arrived to pick her up.