Chapter 14

The Birds

I never really listened to my mother when I was young. Well, I mean, I heard the words she said but kind of figured she knew nothing about being young. Not listening to her advice mostly just resulted in heartache –

“I told you she was wrong for you.”

“Gawd! I know. Okay. Get off my case.”

“I told you she was too old for you…”

“Gawd! I know. Okay. Get off my case.”

“I told you she was nuts.”

“Gawd. I know. Okay. Get off my case.”

“What in the world where you thinking there.”

“Well…”

“Shut-up.”

But then again – happily ever after wasn’t my angle in my youth.

This weekend past, however – my mother told me, the wife and the toddler not to turn right out the garden gate.

“Don’t turn right out the garden gate.”

“Oh. Why?”

“Because there’s a swooping Magpie! He nearly got me. I bent over to tie up my shoe and he went right over me.”

“Good to know,” says I and promptly grab an umbrella with which to protect the wife and toddler from the rain and a potential Hitchcockian event.

Myself and the wife follow our marching toddler across the wet back-garden as it sings the Old McDonald farm song.

“Turn left out of the gate,” came the warning voice of my mother as she called from the back step.

“Gawd! I know!”

At the gate, the wife and toddler turned right.

What rebellion is this?

“Oi, you heard mum, swooping magpies be that-a-way.” Then I spot the golden gumboots on the toddler – “oh hell no.”

“It wants to jump in muddy puddles and the best puddles are across the bridge in the bush.”

“But that means we’re turning right and we’ve been warned not to do that. Bugger what it wants. Let’s go this way.”

“It wants muddy-puddles.”

“I want a bunch of stuff I don’t have. Like money. Do you remember that stuff?”

“Da. Muddy puddles. Da. Please. Jump in muddy puddles.”

“Toddler person – there are swooping magpies that will carry you away. They will eat you, like that Moose you were upset about in that doco your mum showed you.”

“Don’t tell her that.”

“Muddy puddles! Da, let’s find muddy puddles.”

Like the moron I am, I raise the umbrella and steer my family to the right out the garden gate. For me to hold an umbrella is a big deal as some of you will know. But there I am, dutiful da, holding a banner of protection over the toddler should any feather-pecker want to mess with it on its search for muddy puddles.

The muddy puddle search yielded bugger all. There were no muddy puddles in which the toddler could leap about in. But whilst on the subject of muddy puddle jumping – it is worth mentioning the concentration – nay! the dedication, focus and insight the toddler puts into jumping into a muddy puddle. I’ve seen Olympic athletes win with less preparation.

Puddle jumping should be a sport. There is the arrival to the puddle. The puddle is checked for depth, muddiness, puddleiness and I believe splashiness. Then the feet are brought together at the very edge of the puddle and the knees are thus bent, elbows should be brought back and tucked into the body. Then – there’s a moment that passes between toddler and the soon to be conquered muddy puddle, before the toddler launches itself a full inch-and-a-half into the air to land with a slight splosh and a massive grin. It’s a thing to behold and for some reason makes me stupidly happy. Then the whole ritual is repeated at each puddle. This can go on all day after a good bout of rain. All. Day.

So – without all of that going on, it was just a small family of three searching a scraggy bush path with nary a muddy puddle.

“Well, let’s go the market,” suggests I.

The wife and toddler were in agreement. We began to head back and then it happened! I got swooped and bitten by a frigging Magpie. I saw the hate writ large on his feathery face as he circled back to finish me off. I man-squealed as I grabbed at my missing ear and the wife lost her damn mind she was laughing so hard. The toddler – well the toddler just kept asking, “what happened mama, what happened?” as with all my manly strength I hustled the wife (carried the wife) and toddler across the little wooden bridge as I fumbled with the umbrella to get them safe and under cover. Graceful like a gazelle.

Once safe, I examined my poor throbbing ear. The wife couldn’t breathe as she was still laughing too hard. I kept touching my sore ear and making the ‘ouch’ sound – which made her laugh harder which in turn made the toddler laugh.

I tried to listen to my mother, I really did, but I got steered wrong.

“I told you to turn left.”

“Gawd! Okay. I know.”

INT. KITCHEN – MORNING

Da cracks eggs into a bowl. The toddler wanders in making an odd squeaking sound. It’s as though its hips need oiling as it climbs up on the stool I made for it. It rarely uses it as a stool anymore now that I made it a ladder. It climbs to the top of its ladder-stool and plops its bum on the kitchen bench to swing its legs over the side. Then it squeaks again.

“G’Day.” The toddler says as it munches on an unknown rubber teat that is the cause of the squeaking.

Da pauses in his egg cracking to extract the rubber teat from the toddlers head with a pop. “What is this?” I ask as I turn the thing in my fingers.

“G’day,” the toddler says again with a grin.”

“G’day. But you need to say g’day mate.”

“day mate.”

“It’s g’day mate.”

“day mate.”

“Close enough.”

The toddler looks into the bowl of eggs.

“No like yolks da.”

“I remember.”

I start to spread the butter on the toast and catch a glimpse of the toddler with its foot in its mouth. It’s gnawing like hell, like a dog with a bone. Its wild eyes meet mine across its foot and it appears to be tying to bite a toe off.

“What are you doing?” I get in for a closer look to see it gnawing on its toenails. “Would you like me to trim those for you?”

It answers with a grunt as it keeps on chewing.

“I can put a couple of clippings in the eggs if you want to keep chewing on them.

The toddler shakes its head and drops its foot. “No thanks da.”

“Where are you going?”

“Go watch Daniel Tiger.”

I physically shiver.

“Ciao,” it says as it leaves the kitchen.

Ciao?

Just when I think the toddler can’t outdo itself – it hands me its sippy-cup, pulls up its nappy and says “you look here now, da”.

Those of you who know me, know I have certain issues around the areas of umbrellas, things with tentacles and anything gross. So when the toddler goes searching in its head for something elusive, then pulls out a lump of what it thinks is gold, I have to fight to stop myself from spewing. However, when it pops the tasty morsel in its mouth and smiles – I lose my lunch. The wife actively encourages the toddler to hand me its boogers; knowing full well I’ll have a fit and flap my hands as I try to fly away from the incoming contaminated finger. This is something the wife finds great amusement in and of course now the toddler thinks it’s great sport and the game of, wipe a booger on da, was thus born. This is a game that is played at any time in any venue, be it in the living room when da is handed a perfectly shaped booger that has been kneaded, or simply has a surprise slimy one wiped onto his pants as he watches telly. I do not like to play this game and scarper anytime I see the toddler start a search within its head – as I now know, no matter how much hand flapping and neck tensing I do – I simply cannot fly.

Gross stuff aside – the toddler and I have been on a winning streak of late. It wakes up, then wakes us by announcing “it’s morning!” and that it wants a “nana” and to watch the “nana’s “. But, of late, it has been more considerate and tells its mother “you rest mama, da will make me breakfast.”

Da does make it breakfast. Even though there was another 30 minutes until da’s alarm was set to activate, he uses this time to bond with the toddler, grunt, try to read Twitter through blurred eyesight and ignore the banana detectives song on the TV.

Da delivers the toddler an egg white – uncooked toast (yes it’s a thing), a banana that has been peeled without any stringy bits left, cut perfectly in half and served on a plate with a fork and a freshly-filled sippy-cup of water.

The toddler surveys its breakfast and if it approves, gives a simple “thank you da.”

Lately, I have been invited to sit beside it as I have my own breakfast. We sit on the couch and either watch Banana’s in Pyjamas or just chat.

“What you having da?”

“Black coffee and two eggs.” A few moments roll by. “How’s your breakfast?”

“Good.”

“Excellent.”

“Da.”

“Yes darling.”

“Where’s mama?”

“In bed. It’s very early.”

The toddler accepts this.”

“Da?”

“Yes darling.”

“Peanut butter sandwich?” as it hands me its plate.

“Sure.”

I go and make its sandwich and consider having another coffee as it wanders in after me and climbs on its jungle-gym stool. It’s little arms grab me and it says “I really miss you da. You go work today?”

“I do go to work today.”

As the blond head hits my chest and it gives me a hug, I catch our reflection in the kitchen window. I ignore all but the awesome small human hugging me, putting all its weight into me.

“You play Duplo with me?”

It looks into my face and the things like responsibility and always being that guy are the first things to surface. But then there was another voice…

“Sure. Let’s play Duplo.”

So we did, and we made a house on a farm where the rabbit got to drive the tractor and the toilet was on the roof. I then went to work happy, with a dozen kisses I had to catch as I was making my way out the door and one final hug.

“Have a good day da,” said the toddler.

I had a bloody great day.

FUN FACT: Magpie bites hurt.

Adventures with the Toddler

Chapter 12

(It’s learning)

Skynet became self-aware a lot later than the toddler did. Just putting that out there as they both have the same destructive force when suitably annoyed.

The amount of words it now has in its vocabulary and can construct into a sentence has left me impressed. The swearing was funny when it was innocent, but now the thing is a bloody parrot and will repeat anything, and I mean anything. So divulging secrets to the toddler, even unwillingly, is a no-no as it’s a great way of getting found-out.

The toddlers rapid grasp of language and its ability to now tell a story makes me very proud. I was regaled just the other night about how it came to have a bump on its head. It didn’t simply walk into a wall, there were at least dozen events leading up to the incident where the bump occurred, and I heard them all. I can also have conversations with it now and it’s honest when quizzed – “did nannytier let you have that elastic or did you swipe it?”

“I swiped it.”

“Why?”

“Need it.”

“For what?”

Silence.

“What do you need it for?”

“Need it.”

“For what?”

Silence – “da! Watch Daniel Tiger.”

Swiping stuff is a real skill the toddler has. It has got things past me and shop keepers without any of us noticing until I see it playing with the new item. It’s little things like a chili from the supermarket or an elastic-stretchy-exercise thing from my mother; so, nothing major like cash rolls just yet, but such things can be taught. It did try to get away with a vase once, but due to the fact the vase was bigger than the toddler, it was nabbed fairly quickly.

What really gets me in the old heart strings about the toddler is the empathy it has for all living things. I don’t know where this comes from, so it fascinates me. The wife has taught her to respect nature and not to hurt plants and to be careful with animals, but her connection with living things goes deeper than this. We went down to our local last weekend and the plants in the beer garden were dying. They were all withered and dry and the toddler noticed this, and it upset her. It looked at the issue and poured some of her water into one plant, so it could have a drink and then checked with it, asking if it was happier. She then asked for her cup to be filled and proceeded to give the rest of the plants a little drink. I was beaming like an idiot as I watched the toddler tend to the plants, asking them if they were feeling better and shaking its little head in sadness at the state of one plant. She’ll never get to be a member of the LNP with that kind of attitude.

Empathy for plants is one thing but her love of the moon is quite another. It got really upset with me when I told it we couldn’t bring the moon inside. It was worried the moon was cold and that bringing it inside would be the right course of action as it stood in my lap staring out the window at the moon – sad as can be.

“It’s cold da.”

“It’s bloody freezing,” replies I.

“Please da? Bring moon inside.”

“If I could, I would, but I can’t. It is very far away and very big.” The little face begins to quiver and da thinks oh shit, “the moon is warm though. The sun is shining on it.” It seems to think about this and da scrambles for more, “that’s why we can see it! It’s reflecting sunlight.”

This seemed to work – for a bit.

“Moon is sad da.”

Then it started to rain, and she started singing a song about the rain going pitter-patter.

Speaking of singing, we were at the park yesterday and it was just the two of us. Donkey and da day as it’s called. Me being da. I was looking forward to today all week. With the toddler on the swing it kept asking to go higher and higher. I pushed that kid for a full hour and a half and it sang the whole time. All the songs it knows came rattling out of the tiny head much to the merriment of the others in the park. It was a hit. We also had to hide from a big blue rawr that kept coming to annoy us. But we had to hide in the cubby house which is built for toddlers. So da squeezing nearly six and a half feet and well over a hundred kilo of pure man into the small cubby house – was crushing and embarrasing. I sat there folded in half, waiting for this creature of the imagiation to get bored with us and bugger off so I could unfold myself and put my spine back into place. Crushed into that tiny space I now know what it must feel litle like to be packed into Tony Abbotts budgy smugglers.

The toddler is very confident (also very demanding). It has a real independent streak that I don’t want to crush, but at the same time it needs to know the world has rules. Yesterday it decided it would walk down the stairs of the apartment by itself and not hold da’s hand. Of course, this filled me with the terrors as I projected every scenario of what could go wrong.

“Well, you need to hold onto something.”

“I hold onto this,” it says as it grips the thin metal rods of the stair rails.

Da puts out a hand to catch the toddler should it tumble down the stairs but is promptly slapped away. “Away da. I do it.”

My mouth was dry by the time we got to the ground floor and headed off to the park

We spent the entire day together swinging, going down the slide, playing in the sandpit and taking selfies. It threw its arms around me and pressed its head against my chest and said, “I missed you da.”

“I missed you too.”

The toddler can get the hump with da if he isn’t around and as it happens, sometimes da has to work overnight on a shoot and there was a week where that was what he was doing. By the third day of da sleeping well past 7 in the morning (an hour in bed by this stage) the toddler was firmly pissed off. I got up for a Jimmy Riddle and met the toddler in the hall who cracked the shits and ordered me back to bed.

“To bed! To bed!”

The toddler was that furious with me that I wasn’t up and playing with it that it was sending me back to bed. So, the next day when I arrived home to the sunshine, I walked in and the toddler was awake. I took it, peeled it a banana and we watched Banana’s in Pajamas together on the couch. Within 15 minutes I was drooling on its head as I’d fallen asleep. I woke up and the toddler was still seated beside me, eating the banana with a fork which is its thing. I wiped the drool off its head.

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay da.”

It looks up at me and grins, then rests its head on me – “I love you da.”

“I love you too Donkey.”

“Miss you da.”

“I’ve missed you too Donkey.”

We sat like that for a good while and all the promises I made her when she was a just a few days old as we sat on the same couch came flooding back to me. She was asleep and tiny as I held her through the night to my chest whispering to her as we worked our way through Father Ted. Two years had already flicked past.

The wife got up and I went to bed, filled with joy and pride for this little human. What a sensitive little soul I thought as I fell asleep.

I woke to mayhem an hour later. The toddler was flatly refusing to put a nappy on, or any clothes. It had made the choice that today it would be naked only. I tried to help, believing the connection we had shared earlier whilst watching Bananas in Pajamas was still there and da had this. But I didn’t have it. If the wife can’t control it, my chances of gaining respect is slim to none at best.

The toddler screeched at me like the Alien and ran off in a flurry of “noooooooooo.”

I looked at the wife and I took the easy road. “I have to work.”

I slowly closed the bedroom door under the gaze of the wife and toddler and crawled back into bed, to listen to the ensuing mayhem outside the door, and I laughed.

Adventures with the Toddler
Chapter 11
Toddlers; who’d ‘ave ‘em

Da is out of favour at the moment for a reason he does not know. Anything he attempts to do for the toddler is shunned and the call of “no! Mama do it!” rings through the town.
“Help me with your peely egg.”
“No! Mama do it!”
“Let’s get your pants on.”
“No! Mama do it.”
“Strap you into the car seat here,” as I’m kicked in the eyeball.
“No! Mama do it!”
“Let’s get you out of the seat.”
“No! Mama do it!”
Up until last week she would help me make breakfast. It was one of our things.
“Want to crack that egg?”
“No! Need mama.”
“Mama’s in the shower. We’re making breakfast.” More howling.
“Need mama.”
“She’s only 10 feet away.”
“Need mama.”
“Give the poor woman 5 minutes to herself.”
“Need mama.”
The call for the last week.

Weekends are gold for me as I get time with the toddler, but lately she forbids me from doing things.
Example. I place it in the shopping trolley and give it its free Woollies banana as the wife takes full advantage of her freedom and vanishes among the shelves. After delivering the fruit to the toddler, I become obsolete and deemed unworthy to even push the shopping trolley. If I touch the trolley I am shouted at with the cry of “no! Mama do it!”
There have been occasions lately where the wife has found the toddler and I in the same place she deserted us, as da had his hands slapped away anytime he touched the shopping trolley.
.
The toddler and I also had our first real disagreement today as the toddler went back to its default setting of ‘no.’ The ‘no’ thing isn’t amusing any longer. What is amusing however, is how it talks in its sleep. The wife and I have stared at it as it converses with whatever creature is prancing about on its forehead.
On Friday morning, I was quietly getting my socks out of the drawer in the dark. It’s one of those moments where one is trying to be quiet as can be so as to not wake the ‘womens’ of the house. So, there I am, knees and back creaking. And as I pluck a pair of socks from the drawer – the toddler sits bolt upright, opens its eyes and looks about in the darkness, before its gaze settles on its naked da, half squatting with socks clasped between thumb and forefinger as he stands frozen, breath held, knees groaning and balls gently swinging. We lock eyes and it stares at me for a full 3 seconds before saying, “fuck it” and going back to sleep.

It has an imaginary friend called Henry. Henry is a tiny ‘rawar’ – as in dinosaur, that lives under the grass blades. Henry is friendly. There is also a spider that appears in random places who is also friendly. The friendly spider thing makes da the killjoy by explaining to the toddler that she’s Australian and Aussie spiders on the whole aren’t friendly. There is also a massive blue rawar with blue spots we need to hide from. But big rawars are afraid of da, which makes me feel like a king as I lift the toddler into my arms to protect her from the thunderous blue monster menace by throwing it my best blue steel look.
Now – let’s be honest. I have tripped-balls in my time. I once thought I was a cartoon character with swivel-hips like a lego person that survived by plucking butterflies out of the air as I lay on a grassy hillside beneath a green cloud that gave me water. That was cool – I could have stayed there – but I would love to hang out with a tiny dino that lives below the grass. Although – there was this one time I…

On a more serious note. We had the toddler into the Children’s hospital last week with suspected measles. How that could be a thing floored us as all her shots are up to date. We believe in science and herd immunity. The Children’s hospital are amazing and there were kids there much sicker than the toddler. But she got a government tacking number due to them thinking it could be measles. They took swabs and let us out of the isolation room to go isolate the toddler at our home. No one could figure out what this illness was. I found myself wondering if the tracking number would flag the toddlers Dutch passport and have her file slapped on Dutton’s desk. Anyway, turns it was a viral infection of some description no one could identify and not measles. But getting panadol into this kid is like putting boxing gloves on a cat. But we’ve covered this before.

Now back to our disagreement. The toddler threw cornflakes on the floor tonight. I asked her to pick them up and she refused. She then asked for “Bananas in Pyjamas” to be played and da refused.
“Pick up the cornflakes and you can watch nanas.”
“No.
“Then no nanas.” Discipline right? I got this.
“Nanas.”
“Pick up your mess.”
“No.”
“Then no nanas.”
This went on for an hour and it still has no resolution. But I find myself admiring her determination not to back down while being slightly pissed that I suck with discipline.

She’s gone to bed without seeing her nightly “Bananas in Pyjamas” and the cornflakes are still on the floor. I want to leave them there until she accepts she needs to clean up her mess.
I could be waiting a long time.

She also wouldn’t give me my cuddle or kiss goodnight. That one broke my heart. I live for those cuddles. But it’s obviously all a part of growing up and going through things. Perhaps she still feels like hell getting over her illness and just wants her mum. I get it. Some days i feel like hell and only want Jack Daniels. It’s another wave on the ocean of toddler-hood.

A great movie quote has been rattling about in my brain. “No one can eat fifty eggs.” I have held this to be true, until I met the toddler. But that is for the next installment.

FUN FACT: She loves animals and really wants a guinea pig. She asked me for a guinea pig. Which means I have to get 2 so it has a friend.

I’m buying guinea pigs aren’t I?

Adventures with the Toddler
Chapter 10

There’s a new thing the toddler has adopted.
I don’t understand it.
I don’t agree with it.
“I just don’t like it” to quote Pauline.
That new thing is the toddler wants to walk around with a swishing brown tail in its nappy.
“Say what?”
“True story”.
It’s hanging onto it’s turds as if they were gold. The fight I had with this creature on the weekend to get a steaming nappy off it’s body and it’s toddler cheeks into something clean, was an eye-watering test to parental patience. For a full 15 minutes we were both saying “no”. The toddler of course started the ensuing madness, and me being the delightfully daft prick that I am, decided to go along on the journey. It kicked me in the chin as I tried to wrest the swinging mass from its nethers, whilst it screamed with all it had.
I managed to calm the toddler down after a bit and the game of “no” thus began. She said “no”.
Then I said, “no”.
She said “no” with a pout.
I said “no” with a frown.
She said “no” with a side-eye.
I said “no” with a foot stomp.
She said “no” with a grin.
I said “no” with a turn.
She said “no” with a smile.
I said “no” while folding my arms.
She said “no” was a kind of question.
I said “no” with a flourish.
– and on it went and on it went with all the many ways to say “no”. The game became fun. Which was my angle. Get the beast on my side. Use misdirection to get my goal. Confuse it and ultimately defeat it. Hahahaha.
Thinking I had regained the trust of the toddler, I tried the nappy change again to be met with a scream combined with a fart that sounded like a rusty screen door opening.
My powers of negotiation are pretty good at times. Usually the idea of getting a couple of bucks out of a guy I find totally pedestrian, but on high-ticket items, I usually get a guy down to the price he was willing to let the thing go for….
Toddler negotiation however is filled with traps and I fell right into one. I had gained its trust through a shared game and now, to the toddler, I had betrayed it. We were playing fine and now I wanted to burgle it’s turd. I could read it’s eyes, “you bastard. You total bastard.”
“Darling, we need to change your caboose”.
“Nooooooooooooooooooo!”
“Jesus save me.”
“Nooooooooooooooooooo!”
“You can’t keep a swinging turd in your nappy.”
“Yes!”
Then it tried to escape off the change table. I grabbed it as it squirmed and kicked and howled at it’s God to destroy me.
Lucky for me, it’s God ignored it.

The wailing went on for some time, as did the swinging nappy. My humour had left a little while before and my patience was tapping its watch. I found myself wondering what kind of weight was hanging in that nappy for it to swing so. Usually the only thought I give to a nappy is to get thing off fast and have it destroyed.
I finally won and got the nappy off it. Yet, winning wasn’t my first thought when I looked at the horror within.
“Holy Jesus! Did you get into my Guinness?”
What lay before me was destined for hell.
It took a dozen wipes to get rid of that one and a dozen beers to erase it from memory.

We have all taken to watching a thing called slow tv. When I say “we” I of course mean myself and the wife. The toddler hates it. The toddler thinks it’s for old wankers. The toddler is correct.
Slow tv is basically someone mounting a camera to the mundane so the rest of us can stare at that mundane in a kind of odd club of the mundane. It can be a really long train ride, or a river cruise or a merry fire burning in a hearth, or some knob trying to catch a fish for 8 hours – you know, basic stuff that is so ball-numbingly boring that you go back to searching for midget porn or watching lawn bowls or darts.

However! We liked one particular fire called Birchwood and turned the 65 inch super ultra high def, (usually locked to kids shows), telly and turned it into a virtual open fire. It’s a pretty cool thing to watch on a cold night if one is depressed, hung over, married or looking for a virtual open fire they can play on their telly. All it really needs is the virtual bearskin rug and it would be fully twee.
George Ford is the filmmaker and must be laughing his balls off as he goes to the ATM. “I can’t believe Netflix paid me for this. I can call myself a filmmaker now!”
George, and I love George’s movies, has set-up a camera in front of some logs within a hearth and hit the record button as the logs burn. I imagine he enjoys a snifter of sherry as he giggles to himself and signs the talent contract. There’s a slow fade at the end after 1 hour. That’s all we get. 1 hour. Shot on a DSLR and edited in iMovie. ‘Edited’ – as in a title placed at the front and a slow fade out at the end. We’re fans of George. He saw a market and he won. So much so we tried his other 2 fires that Netflix has released. Not as good as the original I must say. Logs weren’t set up as well, fire didn’t take hold on the front logs, cheap consumer lens was set to autofocus and kept dropping out with the light changes (damn L series lenses), daft music in one episode that I guessed was meant for Christmas. In fairness to the filmmaker, I believe those might have been his earlier work as he was reaching for the ultimate one-shot, one take, fire in a hearth opus. But George has 5 IMDB credits as a filmmaker. He’s released more commercial content than me and I respect him for that. Setting up his DSLR and making a fire for us all to watch is awesome. Selling it to Netflix for the world to watch is pure genius.

Fun fact: The toddler freaking loves miniature railways. We took it to a miniature railway on Sunday and it lit up like a billion Christmas lights. So much so, I got my ass in that tiny train so I could be among the wonder that kid was going through. I wish I could see the world through her eyes.

It also loves waking on walls. I’d still walk on walls if the terror of flashing my hairy ass to the world didn’t keep me in my place.

Adventures With the Toddler
Chapter 9
A most momentous day

It’s a red letter day folks! The toddler can say it’s own name now. The wife called me on the car phone, and I heard the toddler say its name. After months of fun asking “who’s Donkey?” and getting much merriment as it pointed to itself; it can now say it’s name properly. There has been much cheering in the apartment tonight.

It also has a gnarly skill of being able to spot a dog hair from 20 paces and remove it from carpet, vinyl, my bald head, things that resemble fur and seemingly – thin air. I’m very impressed with her dexterity as I have never been the most dexterous fella. I couldn’t walk in a straight line until I was 23 and I didn’t grow up until Wednesday of last week.

Despite all the cool stuff it does. There is still the annoying and downright weird.

Three nights ago I woke up to the toddler tweaking the tip of my ear. I don’t know why this was happening, but I remember climbing my way out of a nice dream believing there was a spider munching on me. Gasping awake, I realise it’s the toddler lying beside me tweaking my ear.
“Oi! Stop.”
It stops for a second. Then starts again, tweaking betwixt thumb and forefinger – as I’d seen a dog judge do many years before when checking the testicles of my show dog when I was a child. To this day it still makes me cringe – as does the word ‘entire’ when used in relation to the rattlers.
“The dog was entire.” Meaning – the dog had both his balls. He was ‘entire’. He was the mutts nuts, the terriers testicles. You get the point.

You now know far too much about me that I was once upon a time on the show dog scene.

Once I’d told the toddler to “knock it off”, she huffed and went back to sleep – for a bit. The next thing I know, I’m wakened by a small foot pushing its way between my ass cheeks.
“What fresh hell is this” cries I, as I throw my hips forward to avoid the invading foot. Another few millimeters and there would have been a big toe against the halo.
“Do you do this on purpose?” I enquire.
The toddler rolls over and tweaks the wife’s nipples only to have the kibosh put on that. Ya see. We are going through the weaning.
The toddler had pretty much weaned herself before we went overseas. But the travel and unknown sent the little beast back to the comfort of what she knew, and that was right back to the boob.
If anyone reading this ever wants weaning advice. Do it before the thing can speak properly. Listening to a tiny human cry and saying “please, please; I need it,” like some milk junkie – well, it breaks the hardest of hearts.
Anyways. The toddler finally goes back to sleep and so do I – kind of. It’s only 47 minutes until my alarm will go off. Even though I set an alarm, it very rarely goes off as I wake at least three hours before it’s meant to ring. What then follows is entering a sleep of paranoia. Knowing I have to get up soon, but wanting a little more sleep, sees me in a state of misery and feeling harassed by my own brain.
So, is this state of harassment – I enter the paranoid sleep – for what I feel is about four minutes – until I get the ear tweak and a big toe in my date.
“Christ on a hover board!” I cry. Will you please knock it off?
“Duplo “
“What?”
“Play with my duplo.”
“It’s 3am you nut. Go back to sleep.”
I roll over and shut my eyes.
“Duplo”
“No”
“Duplo”
“No”
“Duplo”
“NO!”
“Duplo”
“Christ.”
“Duplo”
“Sleep.”
Silence. Then the ear tweak.
“Oh sweet Jesus why? Why the ear?”
“Da. Duplo.”
“Da needs sleep. Da has to get up for work soon.
“Poor da.”
“Yes, poor da. But it must be done. So sleep.”
Silence.
“Duplo.”
Fuck me gently.
“Burglars stole the Duplo. We were burglarised.”
Then the alarm goes off and I groan.
I lie there for a moment then notice the toddler is asleep. The wife is asleep.
For a moment I consider allowing the alarm to continue for a bit, but alas I’m not a bastard. I was awake, harassed and not well rested.
I rose, showered, dressed, looked in the mirror and regretted doing that; made my coffee and looked out the window at the dark morning.

Then the call came.
“Da! Da!”
I scramble to the bedroom and there’s the toddler with arms outstretched.
“Tuddle Da. And a tiss “
I got my cuddle and a kiss and went out the door feeling like a million bucks.
I threw the tool bag in the truck, pulled the beanie down and drove into the dark morning off to pick-up my team make. Another bloke that is soon to enter the world of fatherhood for the first time. He asks me questions and I tell him stories – and boy, do I have stories.

Fun Fact: Tonight, she asked to watch a documentary and not Peppa Pig.

Adventures with the Toddler
Picture Edition

Today the toddler decided she was coming to work with me. So she got a bag and packed an old pair of shoes, gum boots and a toy lobster. She put them beside my tool bag and lunchbox, convinced she would be heading out to work. It broke my heart having to tell her I couldn’t take her and it broke hers that she couldn’t come.

I assume the lobster was lunch.

Adventures With the Toddler

CHAPTER 8

Happy Birthday!

Tomorrow the toddler turns 2. It has gone like a flash – as though the great animator plucked out my cell to project me onto this timeline within a second of her birth. Two years with this little person who has given me so much laughter, tears, heart-stopping terrors and questioning expressions, have been the most fulfilled of my life. Sure, if it was just the wife and I, we’d have cash, but then we wouldn’t be able to play that game “hey, remember when we could afford to eat at that place?”.

Seeing her born was the most powerful and beautiful thing I have ever witnessed. I’m not going to lie to you, my role in making a human I am more than fine with, I like the work; but being able to make another person must be pretty awesome and mothers are Gods.

When the toddler was born, the midwife lay the squishy alien on the wife’s chest – she opened her eyes briefly for the first time and looked right at me. I was the first thing she saw in this world. It would’ve been the equivalent of looking at me through a greasy wine glass – but I lost my heart to her for all time. From that moment on, I had my best mate. I cut the cord and she has the perfect belly-button because of me. I gave her that. Yes I did.

The toddler and I have started a tradition of late. The wife goes and stands on her head or something of a Saturday morning, so the toddler and I go shopping. The purpose is usually to get croissants, but the toddler insists on buying carrots. She won’t eat carrots, but she buys them. She’ll saunter over and take one despite me protesting, “not another bloody carrot. I don’t need a carrot.” Sometimes she’ll grab two, nibble the ends and voila! Da now owns two carrots he didn’t want. Potatoes and chilies are another favourite the toddler grabs and refuses to let go of. The chilies were the first thing she did this with and she did it because ,she knew I loved chilies. So. she’d go grab chilies and when confronted she’d say, “for da”. I mean come on, what a champion.
There was an occasion there were 3 beans I placed on the counter at Toscano’s. I answered the quizzical look by putting the blame firmly on my toddler, “she wanted them” I said as I nodded at the anxious child that was waiting to get its beans back. They gave me the beans no charge. I handed them to the toddler who looked as though she’d been handed the entire world. She also enjoys riding in the supermarket trolley these days, kicking back and eating a banana, “da, na-na.” It doesn’t matter if I’m there to buy two apples or spend a thousand bucks, she wants her trolley ride – which leads me into one particular story.
We were at the supermarket and I just needed 2 items and forged ahead with toddler in tow – shuffling along beside me singing her version of the Wheels on the Bus. I enter the supermarket.
The toddler doesn’t.
I notice the singing has ceased and the toddler is outside the automatic doors pointing at a trolley.
“I need two things.”
“Trolley.”
“We’ll be fifteen seconds.”
It stomps its feet. “Da. Trolley!”
“Jesus help me.”
With the toddler now planted in a trolley and munching a na-na – I head into the supermarket to get my 2 items. Then of course the weird mash of chemical interactions that control this toddler thing, mix in a different order and change its operating system.
It decides the banana is shit and that it’s better off walking.
“Da. Down.”
“You only just got in – you know what, bollocks to it.”
I set the thing down and it proceeds to grab things I don’t want and throw them in the trolley. My fifteen second shop turns into 25 minutes of negotiation and ultimately giving up and taking stuff out of the trolley (I’m not smart enough to abandon) when the toddler is distracted by another object or a human that thinks it’s cute.
Then comes the ultimate insult. I arrive to pay with the toddler, the shopping trolley I didn’t want and the two items I came for.
The serving guy looked at me the same way I would look at someone with 2 items in a trolley. I could see the inner-dialogue flash across his brain in a second – ‘that’s a very big guy, looks strong enough to carry that onion and jar of pasta sauce’.
I judged myself through his eyes and felt I needed to defend myself as my internal critic called me a wanker.
“My daughter like to ride in the trolley,” I volunteer.
He nods – ‘sure, sure you lazy bastard. I bet you’re going to want a plastic bag for these too.’
⁃ Fuck me gently, I didn’t bring a bag. He’s going to think I’m an even bigger asshole now.
⁃ The toddler is watching the exchange like there’s going to be something bigger happening than what is occurring before her. Like Mick Foley and The Undertaker are going to have a rematch in the Kew Woolies, kind of cool.
“Cheers mate.”
“‘ave a good night.”
I wheel the trolley into the cold night and feel my scrotum retract, more from an odd shame than the cold wind. I take my onion and pasta sauce and look at the toddler who is gazing up at me, blinking in sweetness, a smudge of na-na stuck to a cheek.
“Thank you da.”
I smile, and we walk home together, and I recite to her some Hamlet. She responds with “wow, wow, wow.” Whether she understood any of it – I have no idea, but she was responding as though she was impressed. But I know there’s a lot rattling around in that mind of hers. Her mother has played her classical music since was in the womb and I covered the rock and roll.
Reciting plays and poetry to her is something I have done since she was tiny. I would wear her in a carrier and we would head-off to the shops when the wife was back at the gym or standing on her head. She’s probably heard most of Hamlet, King Lear, a lot of Macbeth, a few sonnets and plenty of Yeats, Keats and Banjo Patterson and a thousand other plays. Oscar Wilde is another favourite to recite to her.

So, each Saturday morning, the toddler and I go through the ritual of nappy-changing, getting dressed, avoiding Peppa Pig and head into the world. Only over the last couple of weeks, the toddler insists it is far too important to walk and must be carried everywhere like some Princess.
“Da Up!”
“No. Walk.”
“Up.”
“But you love walking. We sold your pram because you thought all other forms of transport were for wankers.” She sniggers at that one.
“Up Da. I need up.”
So, da picks the child up and carries it, all the way to the shops and back again. Carries the toddler and the shopping. Then today, I made it walk up the stairs to the apartment and oh boy did it put on the struggles. It’s huffing and puffing and climbing the stairs on all fours. Has a look back to me to see if I’m going to offer to carry it.
“On you go. You’re doing well.”
It sighs and huffs. Reaches a hand to the next step as though it’s carrying a brick.
“Adz, knock it off. You climbed all the way to the top of Rockamadour without missing a beat because you wanted independence – so three flights of stairs in an old apartment block in Kew, doesn’t register.”
It seemed to understand.

Another thing the toddler and I (well mostly me), has introduced, is collecting little toys. She likes cute things and has taken to dolls and that’s fine as she also loves cars, garbage trucks and bulldozers. I’m onboard for whatever it is she’s into as she finds her way. So, I buy her a new little present each time we go out on our adventures to the shops on the weekend. These have been all manner of different things. As my time with her is so limited, I like to be a part of something that she likes, and at the moment she has taken to these little dolls. They have a chart with the common ones, the rare ones, the ultra-rare ones and the limited edition. The wife might be correct in that I’m more excited than Adz when we pull a rare from the pack and you know what – last weekend we got the limited edition and today we got an ultra-rare. The toddler and I fist-bumped over that one.

The wife and I swear a bit. Not to be uncouth, but sometimes one needs to get a point across. The toddler is smart enough to know when and how to use swear words and I don’t care if you believe me or not. She knows when and how to use please and thank you. She knows when and how to say sorry (or pardonne as she still says in her cute French). So, when she points out the car window and yells “da! Knob-end!” at some wanker swerving into our lane, she doesn’t get reprimanded because she’s right. That guy was a knob-end and should be publicly spanked. She knows the bad words and she so rarely uses them – but when she does, she’s uses them in perfect context.

Peppa Pig has become a freaking obsession. The toddler blanks out to the world over Peppa Pig. It’s as though she’s receiving a download when she watches it. I’m becoming convinced big pharma started Peppa Pig as there are so many references to taking medicine. The other thing about Peppa Pig, without the visuals and simply hearing it – the voice-over can sound sinister. I imagined an entire horror story listening the voice over today as the toddler watched it on my phone.

We have to watch Peppa and her mates on You Tube. This is fine until a commercial comes on and the toddler hits the roof. She detests commercials. Anytime one comes on, it’s as though the world is ending. It doesn’t matter if it’s a commercial her da is actually in flogging something he doesn’t even remember doing – commercials to her, are the damn devil. The toddler and Bill Hicks would relate so well.

Something that is very apparent in the toddler is her empathy for all living creatures. She is so considerate and thinks of others. One example is wanting to move her toys, so her mum wouldn’t trip on them. That was the thought process with her. She saw a potential danger and wanted to eliminate it.
She loves animals and plants and enjoys finding worms in the garden. The care she takes not to hurt anything makes me very proud of her and the sheer delight she gets from feeding the magpies at her Nannytier’s house, makes me believe the world will actually be okay, (from her sheer selflessness and all the utter wankers currently in charge, dying.)

Her manners are simply beautiful. She will thank me again, days later for something I have given her. Just today, she told our friend Dave Macrae, “thank you for my book.” He had given her a present for her birthday and without any prompting to do so, she said those words. However, she also stole my peanuts out from under me the other night while the wife was out hustling pool. She took the bowl right off the table and sat down in her chair and ate them.
“Can I have the nuts back please?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Mine.”
“They’re mine.”
“No. Mine.”

So – perhaps she’s not that perfect. But every time she says “da”, my world gets that much brighter.

Fun facts: The giraffe, is her favourite animal and tomorrow she turns 2.
(2 fun facts for turning 2.)

Adventures with the Toddler:
CHAPTER 7:
Puddles and Stuff

Well – it has been an interesting few weeks. I’m back working full-time hours on a moovie – which is nice. Working with awesome humans, many of whom I have worked with before which is a real plus. So – my days have pretty much been – get up, eat, go-to-work, work, come home, kiss the wife, tell her about my day, eat, go-to-bed and repeat – so my interactions with the toddler have been limited as she is asleep when I leave and has gone to bed before I get home.

I’ve missed her terribly.

Even though the days of driving ride-share mainly sucked a fat one for the sheer suckage of no income protection / insurance / wanting more from my life / paying GST without collecting GST and at times being an exercise in wanker gathering – I had the choice to say “fuck all ‘y’all” and go hang with the toddler when I wanted to or go to the pub. Doing that kind of work – as Fortune decreed I shall due to the insecurity of the Australian “filum industry” and the fickle freckle of investors (yeah I got 2 mil for ya) – it at least let me feed my family and pay the bills. The real advantage to it was being able to log-off whenever I wanted to or when I cracked the shits with humanity.

Ride-share is a terrible idea for anyone with an artists soul that has to do it full-time; especially a writer. Self-employment when I was a full-time writer was awesome – I lived to get up and smash the keys like a pneumatic drill and lose 5 years of my life to World of Warcraft on my breaks. But self-employment in wanker-gathering, I’m not a big fan of.

However! Driving ride-share has been some of the funniest times of my life. I have met so many cool people, had great financial advice I wished I had 25 years ago, made friends, met far too many rich people, got great hugs from drunk blokes (always blokes putting on the hugs and kisses and wanting to stroke my beard) and made crazy good money. But no-one has ever topped the two drag-queens I had in the back of the car singing Whitney Houston songs in my first week. They were singing, I was singing, we were all singing – then it was over. Over far too soon. They disembarked in all their glory of sequins and feathers and I drove away to pick up three drunk wankers on their way to the races. I peaked way too early.

But – this isn’t about me – it is about my mini-me.

There is a light in this tale of super dad and his work. The toddler knows how to use FaceTime and when she’s missing me, she calls! When I see the wife’s name on my phone and the FaceTime request, I know it is the toddler on the other end. Sometimes her mum knows she’s calling, sometimes not. (This also upsets me as I don’t know how to use the i-pad as well as the toddler does). However, in the last week, she has taken to waking up when I am about to leave the house. I always come in to kiss the wife farewell and get my instructions (that I’ll instantly forget) of what to bring home on my return journey via the supermarket. But in the last few days, the toddler wakes and asks for a kiss before I leave. Luckiest dude alive! Kisses from two beautiful girls before the day begins and I walk out the door feeling as though I could conquer the world.

It makes up for how my You Tube channel looks these days. There was a time it was filled with rock, alternative and heavy metal videos. One would be hard-pressed to scroll through it without seeing Lemmy, Shane, P.J, Janis, Stevie, Ozzy, Amy, Dani or Shagrath looking out. Now however, all of my suggestions feature the Wiggles, Peppa Pig, cartoon cows and the frigging Farmees. I get alerts on my bloody phone when a new Farmees video “drops” and it makes me sigh when I see it. Not a happy high sigh, but more of a deep – what have I become? sigh. The sigh of a man who knows he should be playing his child far more Led Zeppelin and Queen.

The weekend was spent visiting Inverloch to see my mum or “Nannytier” as she is known to the toddler. The toddler loves coming down to Inverloch as she gets to play on the beach, harass the dog and move soil from one side of the garden to the other without being asked or if the action is needed. But Nannytier takes it all in her stride and is always smiling – even when the toddler pours the soil onto the strawberry bushes or pokes the dog in the asshole.

Whilst all of this was going on – I was doing some work for mum such as cutting the hedge, digging ditches, putting up new fences, changing the roof, using big power tools and generally being really helpful – the wife heads off to buy a couple of things for dinner. I’m working like a third-world-donkey and a couple of hours later I realise the wife isn’t back and it’s been ages. She’s only gone and taken the opportunity of being toddler and husband free – to piss-off to the bloody pub! Fair play to her, I would have done the same thing if it was her on the end of a power tool and me with a smirk on my face – but I wouldn’t have remembered the groceries.

A beat —

We bought the toddler pink gumboots on the weekend. She wanted red ones. I promised her red ones.
“Da, red ones.”
“Yes love. We’ll get you red ones,” as the toddler and I were buying croissants while the wife was standing on her head at yoga. (I don’t understand the attraction.)
“Red ones.”
“I’ll get you red ones.”
“Da! Red ones!”
“Yes. Red ones. I have my orders. Red ones.”
She was satisfied with this. She trusts me.
But Aldi only sold pink and yellow and yellow wasn’t in her size. Holy shit! What was I to do now? I’d promised red and have just shot myself in the foot. But I caught a break. Just the fact that she had gumboots was an awesome thing. I was soon to find out why.

The toddler wanted to jump in muddy puddles. Yes, you read that right. Muddy. Bloody. Puddles. It took me a good six-and-a-half-seconds to figure out where I had heard that phrase and where this daft desire came from. With a trembling angry finger, I firmly pointed it at Peppa Pig. So, muddy puddles were now a thing. Muddy puddles! We live in the flipping city.
“Da. Muddy puddle.”
“I can get you a gutter with a little rain, dead dreams and urine.”
“No da! Muddy puddle.”
“Jesus.”
“No. Muddy puddle.”
“The fuck I’m going to find that?”
“Red gumboots.”
“I’ll get ‘em.”
“Muddy puddle.”
“Christ. Okay.”
“Da.”
“What?”
“Red ones.”
“I’m on it.”

Gumboots are a great idea.

Strapping the toddler into a pair of lovely new pink gumboots – we went on a muddy puddle hunt in what is effectively the bush by the beach at Nannytier’s place. The Toddler, the Wife, Nannytier, Nannytier’s dog – Jack, and yours truly; ventured into the cold black afternoon on a muddy puddle search. It was cold and stupid and the dog was pissed-off as the poor bastard just wanted to have a walk before lying in the front of fire and farting loudly. I felt his anguish as my goals were the same.

After much looking and plenty of talk of muddy puddles and what actually constitutes a muddy puddle to the toddler – a muddy puddle was found! The toddler approved of the muddy puddle and after several seconds of preparing itself, it leapt in. Then! It instantly freaked out that its nice new clean gumboots were now dirty. Jack then freaked out at the toddler freaking out and the rest of us laughed our tits off. The toddler went to ground in a frenzy and furiously went to work cleaning her muddy gumboots and Jack howled at the sky. I thought to myself – “self, what happens when the day comes that she wants you to jump in a muddy puddle like daddy-pig does and make it vanish?” Myself thought about this for a moment –
“Well, I think banning Peppa Pig might be a good thing.”
“But that would make us a right-winger wanker and fearful of the world and all that is different to us.”
“But you wouldn’t have to jump in a puddle.”

A beat.

If she wants me to jump in a puddle like daddy-pig, then I’ll bloody-well jump in a puddle like daddy-pig.

Fun Fact: She can count to ten.

Adventures With the Toddler
Picture Edition.

Da. The Toddler. The Beach.

Adventures With The Toddler
CHAPTER 6
The loss of stuff:

I’m no longer permitted to sit on the couch. This is official as of 5PM yesterday. The toddler has annexed it and screams if I try to sit down. The call of “no” rattles through our suburb, scaring bird, bat and the Uber Eats guy that always seems to be standing in the foyer looking lost.
“Where can I sit then?” I stupidly ask.
It points down the hall to my office “you go work da. Go work.”
“But I’ve been working all day” I daftly respond, as if I’m talking to some kind of boss.
“You work. Da.”
She’s probably right though. But I’m not so dumb to leave this thing alone long enough as it will do something stupid. But, having said that; I’ve never seen it step on LEGO, set off the smoke alarm while cooking, cut itself with the big knife or fall down the stairs. All of those things that happen to me on a regular basis.

But back to the couch. What hurts the most, is that she now sits on my side. The side that was best for telly viewing. The side closet to the kitchen fridge and the beer. The side I rocked her to sleep on when she was first born and all squishy and weird looking. The side I sat on through a couple of long nights as I watched all the seasons of Father Ted so her poor mum could get some much needed sleep. The wife then took over for the next couple of years, but I sacrificed man. It was my side of the couch. Where I landed after a day on set and hassled the wife for a foot rub. A leg rub. A… you get the point.

I feel betrayed. I’ve already lost my telly to the toddler and now I can’t sit on my side of the couch! Having ones own side of the couch has always been an important part of my world and now it has been lost to a tyrant that hasn’t been in the world as long as I spent in frigging stage combat school. Yes. Stage combat school. One never knows when they’ll be called upon to hit someone with a sword or a large stick in the interest of film, television or theatre.

I have realised I am a living, breathing remote control.
“Da! Nannas! Da! Peppa Pig! More Peppa Pig! Da! More Peppa Pig,” and then follows the oink noises.
Dutiful Da switches channels better than any vision switcher in history. I don’t need to even look at the telly or the remote. My sub-conscious simply knows how to work my fingers as the toddler commands. I’m sure the toddler already knows what to do as she actively calls her grandmothers on FaceTime. She knows how to use the I-pad (somehow) so figuring out a remote must be easy.

Its latest oddness is refusing to put clothes on. Yesterday, the toddler decided it wasn’t quite ready for a nappy to be applied or her singlet. I’ve been here before and I know how to handle this, “all good, you just let me know when you want your nappy on,” says the all-knowing moron. It agrees and I feel as though we connected. I hold out my paw for it to take, thinking we just shared a moment. It thinks about it, laughs and drops into crawl mode. It then proceeds to crawl out of the bedroom and down the hall, naked toddler cheeks waging in the air like a sauntering cartoon cat.

One cannot force the clothing thing as all hell breaks lose. I give her choice over her choices and then try to circumvent the toddler’s choices by being sneaky – just like the LNP.

The toddler and I have spent the last 3 nights together as the wife is off doing her various acting things – at least that’s what she tells me she’s doing. She could be hustling pool in a Chinese dive bar for all the checking up I do.

The toddler has been told that come 8PM (if it isn’t asleep as it should be), dad is watching the State of Origin and Peppa Pig will be on the grill (oh no you didn’t). By default she’ll be cheering for The Maroons.

It’s running in circles at the moment.

Fun Fact: It runs in circles when it’s crazy tired.

Adventures With the Toddler
CHAPTER 5

So. The toddler and I have been hanging out together a bit of late as the wife is off doing her thang. I’ve realised that I don’t have a thang. Unless anti-social is a thang. I go to work. I come home and work some more. I go to bed. Rinse and repeat.

Speaking of the wife – I got myself in trouble yesterday. You see, the toddler and I were running around in circles on our toes. It had to be on our toes as that was part of the game, along with the hex-head drill bit we had to run around set by the nose of a toy Donkey. This was the toddlers game, she made it up and I was along for the ride. The toddler stops, looks at me as it grabs its hair and says “da cut.” So I did. I figured the hair was in her eyes and causing her discomfort. So I had at it with the kitchen scissors, the same ones I open the coffee bags with and cut the can in half with that time. It was tough going as only a small part of the scissors are sharpish. It was a bit of a hack job, but what did it really matter – she isn’t going to a formal yet. Right? Wrong.

Giving the toddler a haircut is off-limits. Never again am I to attempt to do such a thing and I was told such. The wife you see had been nurturing its hair for months so the toddler would no longer have its weird fringe, (that’s even weirder now). There was a plan in place that I set back by at least three months by making the toddler version of Billy-Ray Cyrus. I’d already had the side-eye that morning as the wife had got more fan mail from a foot fetish fan due to a movie we made some years ago where she gets her toes sucked. It’s pretty funny – I have no fans at all, so I’d be chuffed if someone took the time to write to me and tell me I had a beautiful something. But it’s a regular thing now with guys telling her how beautiful her feet are. The movie itself was a comment on how all of us are drawn differently – so it’s great folk are reaching out.

The toddler has a cold at the moment. Then it had some odd spots on it Google couldn’t help us out with. Then the next morning there was a rash on it, so a swift booking was made for the doctor down the road. The doctor I go to every couple of years asking “what’s this thing”? I like him. I know others don’t take to him, but he’s my kind of doctor. He’s dry as hell, smirks at my jokes and isn’t afraid to grab a scalpel and cut things out, or off me. His school report cards probably read, “doesn’t play well with others” as he is an odd roster. Anyway, back to the story. I’m at work, so the wife and the toddler see my doctor and neither quite took to his oddness. The toddler kicked him in the nuts and flatly refused to behave and is still referring to him as the “bad man.” There were several “puks” uttered and a fair amount of screaming I’m told. Turns out the rash is some virus and she has as ear infection which means antibiotics as it’s got a bit of a hold in the ol ear-canal. Getting any kind of medicine into the toddler is like trying to get shoes on a cat. It’s a liquid antibiotic made for children, so we tried shooting it into her mouth – which she promptly spat out. I then tried reasoning with the toddler on the next round, using her language that there were bad rawrs (dinosaurs) in her tummy and the milk-like looking stuff in the syringe was filled with good rawrs that would kill the bad rawrs and make her better. That didn’t work either, so we tried the old distract it and quickly squirt the medicine in its mouth method. I don’t recommend the old quick squirt method as she ended up looking like a performer in the final shot of a bukakee film. Today however, I put the stuff in some yoghurt and fed her most of it. I wish I could take credit for the idea but the wife figured that one out as the first option before any squirting was done. Me being a bloke however, realised she wasn’t eating all the yogurt and squirting it down her throat must be the best course of action. I was wrong. Yogurt delivery delivers more antibiotic down the gullet than the old bukakee method.

There has been talk of late of a baby brother or sister for her. This idea has been floated by various people (I’m not one of them). I’m quite happy forever struggling to support the little family I already have. The toddler however, loves babies and wants her mum to have one. She also loves cows, horses, bugs and Peppa Pig and does just fine without having any of those in the house. I’ve tried to explain to the toddler (purely from self-interest mind you) that it needs to go to sleep, stop climbing into the middle of our bed or get a hobby in order for mum and dad to be alone together long enough for this magic baby thing to happen. Too many quick knee-tremblers have had the kibosh put on them before a result is had, when the toddler comes ambling along demanding the “Bananas” be put on the telly or the call of “da, egg” puts the old block on. Dad has uttered a few “puks” himself during these events as he limps out of view.

Along with its amazing ability to block its dad at each and every turn – it has an annoying habit of picking at its toes and creating a hangnail. This leads to a call of “da, sore toe”. It then presents said sore toe with a face of such infinite sadness, it should be on a Radiohead album cover. I then have to cut off the hangnail with a pair of clippers, (that takes forever to find, because why wouldn’t they be where I last left them?). Cutting off these hangnails is precision work. One cannot just chop the top off – oh no! If one leaves even a skerrick of hangnail, the toddler is back at it, picking and pulling and showing me its sore toe. All of the bloody hangnail must be removed. All of it. This requires a very steady hand. I’ve had to stop drinking so I’m fresh as a daisy for when I’m summoned to the call. But I not complain. Sometimes I band-aid its big toes so it can’t pick at them. The cloth ones work the best as they stay on for longer.

I’m convinced the toddler saves the weirdness for when I’m left alone with it. For example. Last night, I caught it faking that it had fallen off the couch. Faking it. Lying there. Pretending.
“What are you doing?”
“I fell?”
“Off the couch?”
“Yeah”
“Really?”
Silence.
“Did you really fall off the couch?”
“Bananas. Da, bananas.”
(It hadn’t fallen off the couch – I’m a good father. I watch my child).

I’m now watching it try and eat uncooked coloured rice. The wife dyed some rice and made a garden for the toddler’s animal toys to frolic in. It’s a lovely idea and would be great if we had a toddler pit we could lower the thing into during playtime. You see, the rice was once contained to a large pan. Now that the wife is out and I’m left in charge – the rice is all over the living room. I know the toddler does these things on purpose. It knows it can’t eat the rice. It knows it shouldn’t. It knows it makes me rattled as it looks at me and pushes the crunchiness into its face and that’s why it’s doing it.

“Da. Egg!”
Here we go – and thus the evening begins.
I deliver to its gawping maw a lovely egg I’ve prepared.
She surveys it and waves her hand like some spolit Queen, “Da, away,” as she shoves the plate my way and I question my worth and reach for the remote.
“DA, NO!” It cries, as I try to watch something on the telly.
“But it’s my telly and I never get to watch it.”
“Da! Bananas!”
“No. I’m done with B1 and B2 and the daft rat always saying ‘cheese and whiskers.’ I want to watch a movie.”
“Bananas!”
“We’ll watch a documentary.”
Then it actually does a header off the couch and begins to cry.
We’re watching Bananas again.

Fun fact: I caught myself singing “banana detectives” yesterday as I showered.

Adventures With the Toddler
Chapter Four

The toddler blog has been lapsing of late, I know. I have been keeping notes of its odd behaviour however.

Sadly, the need to make money has kept me from hanging out with the beast as much I’d like. After traveling with it and spending so much time in its natural habitat, I was able to keenly observe certain behaviour’s and dutifully report. This is such a pity that dads traditionally miss out on a lot of the mad and awesome things their children do through the need to make the readies to buy the stuff and pay the endless fecking bills.

So, to make up for the missed blogs, here are some observations.

The Danger:

The toddler has a knack for finding the most dangerous objects to play with. I had no idea we owned so many pens and pencils until the toddler arrived in our world and invented the running-around-the-apartment like crazy with-a-sharp-pencil-in-hand-game. It’s also good at finding razors, broken glass and dried dog turds. It’s latest haul was a pack of hatpins. Six-inch long needles! If it’s dangerous or just gross, the toddler will find it and the toddler will want it. But I’m wise to it now. I’m onto its mind-games. I know I can’t freak out anymore when it has something dangerous because that triggers the chemical dump in its little melon telling it it’s onto a good thing and to never give it up, that it must fight with all the strength it’s tiny body can produce to hold onto the dried dog poo that’s obviously of value if dad wants to take it away. So when it had the hatpins, my learnt non-reacting negotiation skills came out and I try to swap the hat pins for a soft teddy bear, which of course makes the toddler suspicious, which in turn made me go nonchalant, (while I’m in full panic mode) as I view it side-eyed, ready to pounce and stop it stabbing itself in the head.

Parent hearing:

I felt very lucky that I got a couple of hours of time to myself during the week to actually watch a movie. I wasn’t working or pulling a small child out of a tight place as it said, “I’m tuck. Da, I’m tuck.” Sweet freedom was upon me. So I poured a glass of wine (from a box, because with children one can no longer afford the good stuff that comes in a bottle unless one is a politician or owner of a religion) and settled into the couch for a couple of hours of just me, my wine and a movie. I choose the Michael Bay film “13 hours”, mainly because I hadn’t seen it and I know Michael Bay’s work is loud and filled with action and I can’t watch those kind of movies when the wife is around — and that was the kind of mood I was in. Excited as all hell, I settled in for 2 hours of mayhem on MY telly that for once wasn’t locked on kids TV. But, of course I was wrong. Wrong on the time I had, the peace I had, the having time to myself part mainly. The toddler and the wife came back home when I was 15 minutes and three sips of my wine into the movie.

It took me 6 hours to watch the movie. Ya wanna know why?

Well ya see, the wife had promised the toddler some TV time in a bribe to get it to behave at some other place and time I wasn’t a part of. So, this promise now affected me. Bu okay, that’s fine, I get it, I totally understand. When I was a kid I was constantly kicked off the television if I was in the middle of a show, so the 7.30 report or an endless stream of news could be played. So I don’t want that to happen to the toddler…hang on…the toddler is now kicking me off the telly watching my shows…WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!? I’M IN CHARGE NOW. AREN’T I? So, after what seemed like a hundred years of Bananas in Pajamas, it decided it wanted to go to bed, which was bloody magic to hear. It went to bed and fell asleep. Now, with time to ourselves, I turned my movie back on and the wife was on her computer doing her work while wearing my headphones. Bliss right? I had the film turned up nice and loud – because I love a gunfight. Love them. My favourite things in cinema are gunfights and car chases. Because why else make movies?

Anyway. I now have parent hearing, which means I can hear a fart over a gunfight. So of course I hear the toddler wake up in the middle of a series of explosions. Not only do I hear it, the wife has heard it over the explosions on the telly and the video she was watching through headphones. Toddler was awake and wanting company. So, another long break ensues for some more toddler time watching yet another episode of the Bananas. Argh. At least it isn’t the fecking Wiggles or that stupid lamb from the Farmees.

Anyway. WE get her to bed again (the royal we, as in the wife got her to bed again while I looked at Facebook) and I finally got to the end of the movie. While credits were rolling, the toddler wakes again. We eventually work out later that night that she has a new tooth coming through so has been restless.

Bringing her out to the lounge again however, I got to introduce the toddler to Fawlty Towers. Usually when she’s watching television shows we like to watch she yells for the Bananas or her Farmees rubbish. But watching Basil and all, she lay on the beanbag and absorbed it, she loved it, which made me proud indeed. We’ve also tried her on Black Books to the same result. I’m the world’s happiest man. It’s the Flying Circus next. If the kid can love the Pythons before turning 2, she’s going to be something special. More special than she already is of course.

I Have No Idea What The Following is About:

The toddler decided that today was a great day for the natural evolution of walking on ones knees. I know she’s Australian, but the LNP haven’t quite demanded complete obedience just yet, (it’s coming, Dutton is trying, but we still have the illusion of freedom). We were only going to the shops and decided a family walk would be a nice thing to do in the lovely Melbourne Autumn afternoon. The toddler however, figured, a walk to the shops on its knees was in order.

It took some time to reach that goal of shopping with the knee walking things and then it figured lying on its stomach and having dad yell “ready-set-go” every ten metres was much more fun and would slow us down even more.

When we finally got home, the wife told the toddler she would be having a night with dad and that dad would be putting her to bed.
“That means no boob,” says dad, trying to be helpful due to the weening we are going through. The toddler got upset that its mum was heading out and there would be no boob. “Daddy doesn’t have the kind of boobs you’d want”. Says I, thinking I was being funny.
“Puck”. Says the toddler. “Puck it”.

The wife and I lose our damn minds laughing.

Sooooo…Being left once again in charge of the small human thing – brings me to the last little section in this here toddler tale.

Choking:

As though walking on its knees wasn’t enough to upset its parents, tonight the toddler decided pretending to choke was funny. So, the toddler acts like it’s choking and dad loses his damn marbles. If you’ve never seen a 6’4, 300 pound man move like a lightning bolt; then friend, you ain’t seen nothing. I arrive at the infant with nothing but concern writ large on my face as I apply some swift taps betwixt its shoulder blades to dislodge the culprit of the choking. It grins at me. I’m first-aide trained, I’m an old bouncer, I’ve stemmed blood-flow, patched-up chefs chopping parts off themselves, breathed life back into a girl in a crowd-crush at a concert and I witnessed one of my actors actually hang himself for a shot – so I know that when one can speak or laugh while seeming to choke, air is getting through. I figure a little bit of rice may not have been swallowed properly and hand the toddler the sippy-cup to force the annoyance down it’s gullet. It drinks the water and proceeds to act the same way. What is the blue f—-k, thinks I. It snorts and a corn kernel pops out of a nostril to be readily shoved back into the nostril by an index finger, so the fun chocking sounds can be made again. Jesus H Christ! exclaims I. What is wrong with you? I retrieve the kernel from its head and then confiscate all food in a fit of righteousness and hand it a cracker.

It looks a the cracker and says “egg.”
“You want an egg?”
“Egg.” It repeats.
With a sigh and hanging my shoulders, I head for the kitchen.
It follows me in and I wonder what order it has for me now. But she hugs my leg and rests her little cheek against my thigh. “I ‘ove you Da.’
My heart explodes all over the kitchen.
“I love you too darling.” says I.
“Mum?” It asks.
“She’s with Jenn and the girls from GAG. They’re making another show. She’ll be back later.”
She looks up at me with those lovely blue eyes.
“Puck.” She says.

Then she turns and leaves the kitchen. I prepare her egg.

FUN FACT: She loves shoes.

Adventures With the Toddler
Chapter 3

So. It talks in its sleep. It’s official as both the wife and I have conferred on various things it has said during the night. This comes as something of a relief to me, because one night I thought devils were talking to me in a deep chant. Turns out it was the toddler doing a voice that mimics my snoring. So, you have no idea how thankful I was that nothing had shown-up to collect on the second mortgage on my soul.

It also wakes up singing. Which is bloody delightful when relating the tale across a lunch table, but being dragged out of a deep sleep where one is with the faceless lover, to be regaled with the toddler version of “incy wincy spider”, feels like devils turning up to collect on the second mortgage one has on their… Nevermind.

Sleep time, as sacred as it is, has no sanctity in this home as far as the toddler cares. Dad goes to bed early sometimes. Always after the toddler but mostly before the wife. Dad is kind of old, drinks a bit, gets bored easily and sometimes needs to sleep in the bed as opposed to passing-out on the couch where he may wake to catch the wife not performing the foot massage duties she reluctantly started. So… I get into bed and fall asleep. A nice sleep. A sleep where dreams come and the little voice that likes to whisper to me about bills, film investors and all that nonsense goes away. I’m dragged out of that sleep exactly 12 minutes later with the toddler waking, looking at the hunk of snoring fur on the other side of the bed and yelling “mama!” Which in turn wakes me in a snuffling mess preparing to fight whatever monster has dared enter the room. I imagine as a small human, waking to something like me in the bed that wasn’t there when she fell asleep, as her lovely mum put her to bed, must be a bit of a shock. Even though the toddler has known me all her life and witnessed me bent over of a morn searching for my pants – sans knickers; there are some things no one is ever quite prepared for.

Yet…the being awoken by the toddler talking, singing, kicking me, or farting loudly and giggling; pale in comparison to dad waking and needing to take a leak because he’s cold as hell. Ya see, the doona is sacred to the wife for her warmth and the toddler for her warmth. Dad doesn’t get a look in and the poor fat bugger is usually left to sleep balls-out in the open breeze, despite having started the night tucked up nice and warm. Basically, night time in the bed here is a turf war. A turf war between the Crips and the Bloods and the dumb elderly neighbour that refuses to move. I’m the dumb elderly neighbour in this scenario. However, the toddler hates the doona. She kicks it off as she likes to sleep out in the cold because doonas are for wankers. But as caring parents, the rules state to keep it warm and keep it fed. So, any time it looks as though the keeping warm bit is lapsing, one must act. But she’ll yell at my caring self when she catches my soft ass trying to tuck her in at 2 in the morning because you know — I love her and I’m awake because I’m cold and she’s been jabbering nonsense. However, she shuns the doona that by rights is mine.

They don’t give you much instruction when they hand the squishy, alien-looking thing to you at the hospital. Keep it fed, clean and warm are the basics. You need a license to own a fucking frog for crissake, but these baby things any idiot is allowed to have.

I’ve been woken so many times during the last week needing to take a pee that I was thinking I may need to see a finger doctor. (The dread and analogy of this I would love to write, but it probably belongs to another blog). Turns out it’s just because I’m cold that I need to pee, as the females in my life abuse me by stealing all the bed clothes. Consistently, I might add, steal all the bed clothes.

The toddler has asked to go to bed now. It’s in there with the wife, relaxing, mumbling against a boob. I have the telly on pause of course, because to finish the movie would be wrong.

The toddler said “daft bugger” this evening. I don’t know what the context was, but she was looking me in the eye when she said it.

Daft bugger. They grow up so fast.

FUN FACT: She loves helping wash the car and has her own sponge.

Adventures with the toddler
Chapter 2

The wife is out doing a voice-over gig, so the toddler and I are watching “Bananas in Pyjamas” and eating peanuts. It’s the episode where the Bananas make a movie to bail Rat out of trouble. I know you all know it. Right? Right?

A female friend said to me a couple of decades ago, “a man may be the head of a family, but a woman is the neck, and the neck will turn the head wherever it wants it to look”. That phrase came back to me with blaring trumpets tonight as I was left in charge of the toddler.

The evening started with me putting out the fire of her mum leaving. There was screaming and gnashing of teeth. I managed to settle the thing by putting on the telly. It was late enough so she (and I) could watch Octonauts. It’s actually a cool show and you learn about sea creatures so I’m cool with her watching it. Trouble is though, she is freaking obsessed with “The Farmees” on You Tube. The wife won’t let her watch it at all, but I’m a weak prick and will give her whatever she wants, as we’ve already established. The show creeps me out as I keep thinking of what Peter Jackson would have done to the lamb character if it appeared in “Meet The Feebles”. After five minutes of The Farmees, I want to do an Elvis on the telly.

Anyway, the toddler wanted me to cook it an egg so I made it one. It ate a little of it and decided it wasn’t up to scratch. This isn’t anything new as it is very fussy when it comes to eggs. So, it told dad to make another one. Which dad did. Mostly because he could escape the inane Farmee show for a few minutes and look at the gin he can’t drink — because you know, responsibilities.

Dad comes back with a freshly cooked egg-white and some other munchies, to find the toddler now perched on the arm of the couch. It was asked nicely to sit properly and of course it ignored me. So dad explains the danger of its current choice in seating position, hoping reason would win the day, as it did one time in the past.
“No.”
Shit, I thought.
Then I get the bright idea of turning off the television. Victory!!!!! No more Farmees and I’m teaching discipline and how the world actually works under an oppressive government. This act of course brings all the devils of hell crawling out of the shadows to lend power to the blond demon currently sitting on the arm of the couch staring at me.
I’m all cool with it. I’m discipline dad now.
“Hey. I asked you nicely to sit on the couch properly. Not sitting properly, means no television.”
Oh my God, the power I wield!
It thought about this.
It didn’t move an inch.
Now silence.
“So. No telly if you sit on the arm of the couch,“ says I smuggly.
It thought some more about this. Didn’t move an inch.
“So, if you want to watch the telly again, you’ll need to sit on the couch properly.”
It slips off the arm of the couch and sits properly. Of course I think I’ve won until it requests it’s dumb show is turned back on.
I could read it in its eyes, “check-mate, f****er.”
I had promised it the telly. I had no leg to stand on. If I didn’t do it, I could never be trusted.

If I could have stepped out of my own body, I would have publicly spanked myself. A trousers-down, bare-arsed spanking for my idiocy.

Yet, after what felt like an eternity of the same 3 daft songs on loop and my teeth grinding to nubs, it got bored.
“Do you want to watch the movie dad wants to watch?”
“No.”
“The Bananas?”
“Yes!”
So now we’re watching the Bananas and eating peanuts as we bond.

FUN FACT: Rammstein and Rob Zombie once calmed it down when it got upset. True story. I could rock it to sleep with Du Hast blaring.

Adventures With the Toddler

Chapter 1
(Maybe ongoing – I don’t know)

Well. Due to popular demand, (all 3 of you), I figured, with some coaxing from the wife, to continue the story of toddler-land. What’s the worse that can happen? So I’ve renamed the blog-type-thing as above.

Since we’ve been back the toddler is still running on European time. This makes nighttime and the gentle art of sleeping, a kind of stealth mission to try and get to sleep as fast as bloody possible. I mean, a deep, full snore-only-waking-from-apnea-but-no-idea-you-do kind of sleep. This is a skill that requires the right amount of gin and would be far easier if one could still buy Codeine over the counter. I have yet to master it however.

I awoke last night to the toddler in the middle of the bed slowly kicking me in the back and sighing deeply as it looked at the ceiling.
“Sup?” I asked when I met its gaze.
My reply was a large sigh and it promptly rolled over and grabbed a boob in its strong little fists, pulled and stretched it to its gaping maw, clamped on and sent itself back off to sleep in a slurping, gulping chaos. So, now that I was awake, I had the trauma of trying to go back to sleep while wondering what the time was and how long it would be before the toddler woke up again. Then there was the little voice reminding me about the bills that needed to be paid. You know, horrible adult stuff. When everything starts to become something other that what you believed it to be.

The toddler did have some mad moments yesterday where it decided it could only enter doors backward. On its bum and backward. I wasn’t even surprised by this. It felt normal. Today however, this behaviour has been forgotten or put away for a time. I have no idea. But it does like to say it’s pooed when it hasn’t. It’s an attention thing. But it’s easy to tell when it’s backing one out because the face changes to a state of betrayal and it needs to hold onto someone’s hand during the event. I’ve even seen it put its other hand on a knee during one particular tough one. It’s pretty funny to witness. But we’ve all been there.

“Puck”, is its favourite word at the moment. When it drops something it says “puck”. I keep laughing which only encourages it to say it again and then I laugh more – and so on and so forth. It’s funny because I know she’s saying a swear word but she isn’t actually saying it. She got it right on the Eurostar, or I thought she did. But her speech is clearer now so maybe I heard “puck.”.

Another one that sends me into laughter is when she says “oh tit.” That’s just funny for a bunch of reasons. It also says “balls”, if something goes awry.

Her mother says she has no idea where she gets this language from. <.< oh rly!!!

We are trying to get her to try new kinds of food as her palate is limited. But she can smash a punnet of strawberries in 27 seconds. It’s a thing to behold. A strawberry vanishes into that head at a staggering speed. It goes in like it’s on a conveyor belt and is mashed to a pulp by pure suction. I’ve never see it chew the things. But getting it to try new food is a work in progress. But hardly surprising since her mother only ate avocado, cruskits and caviar until she was 6.

Tomorrow morning, when she wakes bright and early, we spill into the car and head down the coast so she can see her nannytier. We attempted to go tonight but the screaming was going to shatter the windows along with my nerves. She decided that being strapped in a car seat was for wankers, and did her level best to escape and mind-melt me into a blithering mess.

FUN FACT: She’s now started to write. She can draw the letter ‘A’ like a boss.

Until the next installment…

The Travel Blogs

Traveling with our toddler.
PART ONE

Traveling with the toddler I knew it would be a bit of a challenge and I wasn’t wrong. But it’s also been hysterical.
3 days in Paris and the toddler already knows more French than me.
She is great at making friends with waiters and barkeeps which is very helpful. So many people kiss her that I’m kind of jealous.
In such a small room, it’s 3 to the bed, which means I get heel-kicked in the plums half-a-dozen times a night.
I’ve also been head-butted twice.
I’ve had a nipple tweaked before she realised her mistake of grabbing a man-tit and not her mum.
I’ve woken up to her staring into my face trying to pry one of my eyes open while repeatedly yelling – “awake!”
Shev loves saying “cheese” when her picture is taken which makes her look like some cute toothy blob-fish.
We had a conversation at 4.30 this morning about what we’d all have for breakfast before she got back to a blissful sleep and I stared at the beams.
She had a creepy little doll she called Bae that came everywhere with us. It was on the plane, the train, in the bed. It even ate with us. Bae mainly interacts with another doll called Abbey that is a Sesame Street Muppet and not creepy. I wanted to Punt Bae into the Seine so many times. I hated the stupid thing. Yet today we lost Bae to Paris. Don’t know where or when, but the creepy little doll has joined the other creepy critters of the city. I feel awful that she lost her best mate. I really do. I got sad. I considered going to look for it, but Christ alone knows where the fateful jump occurred and I’m sure God will judge me for my inaction. But I would give at least a couple of Euro to have it returned. 2 Euro – tops.