Sultanas under the carseat

Raising a toddler’s an exercise in letting go. Perhaps raising children fullstop is an exercise in letting go (just that when you’re older, you have to finally release that self-indulgent idea that you’ve always cherished that your children are your ticket to immortality by being EXACTLY LIKE YOU BUT BETTER).

(If you love them) you let go of your attachment to what they look like, what you look like, what your house looks like, and what your car looks like. You learn to live with rocks in your doona, fried noodles in the carseat, and tomato sauce on your jeans (plus something else that’s brown and could be alive).

This morning, Tiggy and I fought over clothes again, and I had to do some more letting go. She’s big on the language of transactions and aleatory will, and she’s big on the idiom of feelings.

‘Well, Darling, you have to wear something. It’s cold outside and Daddy doesn’t want you to be uncomfortable.’

‘What you choose? What clothes you choose?’

‘Let me give you a choice. You can wear [holds up one outfit, fetching cargo pants and orange T] this, or [holds up other fetching outfit, composed of cargo pants and rainbow T] this. Which would you like?’

‘Which you like?’

‘I know which one I like. Which one would you like to wear?’

‘Oooo! Pony’s in the washing!’

‘You’re changing the subject, sweetpea. We have to put some clothes on.’

‘Noooo! [throwing herself face first into an unfolded but clean towel] I’m a little bit upset. I can’t wear any clothes.’

Eventually, growing a little tired of the deft non-sequiturs designed to throw me off my train of thought, and the neatly-timed clambering over the washing basket and box of books in the spare room, I resolved to grab her. It’s like holding smoke, wrestling a python and playing with a live fire-hose all at the same time. I tried to slip one foot — just one — into the leg of her cargo pants, but to no avail.

We collapsed, me exasperated, and she with big fat tears brimming from each sad-looking eye.

‘Would you like to wear a dress?’

‘Yes! A ballet dress!’

Ballet is a selling point to Antigone. I reckon that if I started calling much-loathed lasagne ‘Ballet Food of Champions’ then it would be woofed before you could get her a glass of watery apple juice. There’s a whole line of related ideas. Ballet bath, ballet car, ballet washing…

So we settled on red and white striped leggings and (contra the season) a short-sleeved red and white stripy dress, with red and white shoes. Luckily it was a relatively balmy, and even though she had bare arms, I made sure there was a singlet on underneath.

We were so happy that we’d reached a concordance that we belted out ‘Where is Thumbkin?’ together with more gusto than an entire Aussie pub the hour before closing.

So, provisionally, here is a list of things that are mega-irritating to Antigone, 734 days into her eventful life:

• sleeves rolled up
• sleeves rolled down
• jackets
• coats
• tops
• denim
• denim
• denim

Once we’d dressed, we locked and loaded the nappy bag (vegemite sandwiches, carrot sticks, kerclack, kaching), prepped the balance bike, and drove on down to Steamroller Park — the coolest park this side of Disneyland — with its old repainted steamroller and Valhalla-grade play equipment (that’s a funny thought: imagine Vikings in a playground).

We were avoided by a pair of alternatingly distant and micromanaging mums (and a dad whose interaction with his daughter was grunting from afar through grim puffs on a cigarette):

‘So anyway, Sue said that she’s not available this weekend - yes, I am watching darling - but I don’t know if I really want her there anyway, and Andrew’s being so difficult… [marches over] Put that down. Get off that. No, not that way. No, you can’t get up there. That’s yucky. That’s not for you. Come over here. Put that down. Come back. Anyway, as I was saying…’

After which we collected the balance bike and rode down to the ‘castle’ (a sandstone structure that’s crenellated to resemble battlements and is often used as the location for wedding parties) at the bottom of the hill — my castle, according to Tiggy.

‘Shall we drive up the castle’s ramp?’

‘Daddy’s castle, daddy’s castle! Daddy lives here!’

And we saw the coolest bug ever, kind of like a boiled lolly that someone had sucked for a while then dropped in cotton wool.

So it pays to let go sometimes — especially about clothes — even if it’s only so you get to see bugs that look like a hairy Fisherman’s Friend.