(Late) Letter to a 24 Month Old Potential Best Friend

My darling Tricky,

Lo you are Two.

This makes me want to sit very very still and gaze off into the distance for a good hour or so.

And also do some heavy sighing. Two. Yikes.

There’s a sense of graduation here, a lot of the how to baby books I inherited when you were born seem to be finished with you and your ilk. Your kid’s two years old already? Then we’re done, move along, nuthin’ to see here.

You’ve already been moved along in Target. Instead of fruitlessly searching Baby wear for clothes in your size that are not emblazoned with trucks, rockets or The Wiggles, I now get to extend my pointless and endlessly frustrating quest amongst Boy's wear.

And of course there’s the potty, use of which really sorts out the tots from the men.

We introduced the potty in a fairly ad hoc manner, by which I really mean: lazy but cunningly disguised as being casual about where you chose to put your wee.

In our laid back, Gen X way, we were all: ‘sure you can sit on the potty if you want but like…it’s cold…and boring…and you’re wearing nappies anyway, why wouldn’t you just wee in them, god knows we probably would if we had the choice.’

But you, you of the two years of age and of the driven, environmentally aware Gen Zeds, you’re all: wee in the potty, wee in the potty, wee in the potty… and frankly that was hard because we found the whole thing very cold and very boring, even with all the stickers I bought to decorate your potty whenever you managed a little offering.

You would sit at stool, but then you would get up to inspect the three drops you’d managed and when we tried to praise you fulsomely and encourage you to get dressed and let us go back to the computer already you would fix us with a look of distain and announce: “more wee wee”.

This can’t be good for his bladder I would mutter to your father and then try and body tackle you as, for the tenth time in as many minutes, you got up to stand at the toilet and rest against the porcelain and proclaim grandly: wee wee in the toilet! But there was no wee wee in the toilet and so after a minute of cold resting it was back to the potty to sit it out.

There were times, I have to admit, when both your father and I even forcefully removed you from your beloved plastic throne and attempted to attach the clean mumpy (your version of 'nappy') to your shrieking writhing body and both those times we broke and took it off again and let you sit back down and concentrate on the business.

And both times you came up with the goods and we felt like mean, impatient, bastard parents and now we’ve learned our lesson and if you need to sit there then fine, sit, and I’ll get on with my reading. Or sort the washing. Or have my shower. Or write my second book.

This past month saw you make a very long and arduous plane journey full of tears and teeth gnashing and extreme discomfort. Oh wait no, sorry that was me. You had a fine time. And once we got to Perth you threw yourself into the coffee culture and fine dining and fish admiring and all that comes with a visit to Gramma and Papa.
You are fearless, a trait you share with Naughty Nephew the 2nd, and unfortunately we have fed the fire by giving you the plastic push round motorbike for your birthday.

Love is not too strong an emotion for the affection with which you greet the plastic motorbike each day. During the first few nights it even had to be placed near your cot at night where you warmly wished it a “Doodnight Moderbike”.

Riding the motorbike has also extended your vocabulary you now say “Go Fast!” which is both an observation and a demand.

You also say “Go Down The Hill” which is both a demand and a cold gripping vice like hand upon my heart

Now that you are Two, you are also developing a certain formality in the way you address us.

Yes the old imperious command is still there, but there is now nuance in your commands which I put down to you realizing that actually we are people too. People whose glory days may well have been back in the eighties but people nonetheless.

I casually mentioned to you one day, somewhere between watching an old episode of Seinfeld, playing Twister and humming a classic Duran Duran song (Girls On Film if you must know) that though we, the motherperson and the fatherperson, are your Mumma and Dadda, they are not actually our real names.

And…it’s not my preference at all but I have to admit it is very cute when now and then you call out: “Nessa!” “Tisstafer!”

Although it loses its appeal somewhat when you follow that with: GET UP! CHANGE MUMPY, WEE WEE ON POTTY.

Current fave book is Duck In The Truck which Aunty AJ gave you and which you seem to have mostly memorized and Raven which is a book that Gramma and Papa brought back from Canada and is about tricky old Raven who wants to bring the sun to the poor people who live in the dark and the cold (obviously waiting for their toddlers to finish on the potty) and so impregnates the Sky Chief’s daughter in the form of a pine needle (same old same old assisted reproduction in indigenous mythmaking etc) and then when reborn as a toddler, is given the sun to play with… ahem. You love this book which you call: Waven.

Green Eggs and Ham, (Gineggsahum) also, still kicking goals.

This morning, when you got into the Big Bed with us, as you do every morning, we had a good old rave, you and us, about…oh…why we have snot in our noses and why we don’t kick people in the face or do wee in the bed and why we should have lots of cuddles and kisses and how the puffing billies are waiting at the station and where is the moon when the sun comes up.

That’s what I notice most about you and Two. We’re speaking the same language. I mean, we’re even on a first name basis now.

I just need to get you hooked on a bit of New Romantic music and watch some Seinfeld together and I reckon we’ll be best friends forever.



So Much Love (No really!)



Your very own
OvaGirl (aka: NESSA! WEE WEE ON POTTY! GET UP!)