Tuesday, 16 December 2014

Zoe slept all night and even slept in a little bit, which was nice, given her late night.

I thought that given it was a nice day and the tide times were well suited for it, that we could go out to Wellington Point again, and walk out to King Island. I suspect the school holidays are going to be a bit of a "best of" things that we've done throughout the year.

I whipped up a quick picnic lunch after breakfast, and we made it out there in good time for low tide. We didn't end up walking all the way out to King Island. Zoe had a great time looking at all the baby crabs running around and went fossicking for shells instead. After a while doing that and not making a lot of progress towards King Island, she'd had enough, so we turned around and had a bit of a play in the park, which included some climbing on the big climbing tree. Zoe wasn't particularly confident this time around, and was resorting to shimmying along the tree, which wasn't terribly compatible with her choice of clothing.

After that, we pulled out the picnic blanket and had a lovely picnic in the shade. The weather really was beautiful today. Not a cloud in the sky, not too hot, and a nice cool breeze.

After lunch, we went back to the playground, and Zoe had another go climbing the tree. This time, after I pointed out that it was just like the balance beam at Tumble Tastics, she veritably charged up the tree walking upright.

She was actually a little too confident, and once she reached the trunk headed up the higher branch running perpendicular to the long low one. I lost my nerve once she got about 10 metres above the ground and out over the concrete and picnic tables, and asked her to come back down. She was doing fine, but I was more worried about how she was going to turn around, and if she was going to lose her nerve and get stuck up there.

I was glad when she made it back down safe and sound. I'm proud to have such a confident and capable daughter, but sometimes it's hard being a free range parent.

We headed home after that, and did a spot of grocery shopping for dinner on the way home. Zoe wanted to go to the park, so after we got home and unpacked, we biked back to the park for a little while, before biking to our haircut appointment.

After that, it was dinner and bed time. I'm hoping we'll have another good night's sleep.

The screws had pulled out of the door frame on the bottom hinges of Zoe's door. I'd found a pretty straightforward looking Instructable on how to repair the situation. As I had a lot of dowel left over from when I built a couple of clothes lines for Zoe, I cut a few short pieces from the long length I had.

Unfortunately getting an exact length was impossible, so I had a bit of dowel sticking out that I needed to sand down, so after Sarah dropped Zoe off, we headed over to Bunnings to get a small drill-mounted sanding disc so I could sand them flush with the door frame.

After I successfully fixed the door, I thought we should go visit Bryce, since it's been quite a while since we've seen him. He wasn't feeling up for an outing, so we just visited him in the Masonic Centre at Sandgate and took him some mince pies.

Since we were relatively close to my parents, we dropped in on them for lunch afterwards, and we watched the photo slideshow DVD that Zoe's Kindergarten had given me on her second-last day, and flicked through her "yearbook" and portfolio.

Zoe napped in the car on the way home, and based on some behaviour in the morning, I figured she could do with it, so I let her nap a bit longer and we drove into the city to pick up her lunchbox from Biome. I probably blew the benefit of shaving on shipping by using their "click and collect" option by paying to park in the Myer Centre, but Zoe was certainly perkier after her nap.

After that, we went home, and I made a quick dinner. I wasn't going to attend my final Thermomix branch meeting because I had Zoe, but I decided in the morning, that given it wasn't a "school night", and the meeting was closer to home than usual. that I might try getting her all ready for bed and bringing her with me.

Fortunately I still had her Trunki all packed with amusements from our US trip in July, so I brought that with us, and that kept her sufficiently amused. She came up for a few cuddles at various points, but was otherwise happy to play quietly at the back of the room. She was really well behaved, and my Group Leader again complimented her on how well behaved she was.

That made for a bit of a late bedtime, but she did well. The nap in the car definitely helped.