Three

Recently my eldest child turned three years old. It doesn’t feel like three years have passed, and I don’t mean that I feel it’s gone quickly. When I say my son has just turned three people say, “that’s gone quick”, but not for us, because we’ve been awake for most of it. One theory my wife has floated is that three years hasn’t passed for us because there haven’t been enough birthday parties in his life to make it feel like he is three. Milestone events, like birthday parties, create placeholders in your memory so I feel this theory has merit. 

My son was born in March 2019, and in 2020 we were gearing up to celebrate our one year anniversary of keeping a child alive when the whole world changed. We had gone out and bought decorations, ordered catering, bought stuff for party bags, and then a bat sneezed on a pangolin and the world was locked down before a cake could be cut. We had to cancel his first birthday, but the good news is you don’t need to horde for an apocalypse when you’ve cancelled a birthday party and have a room full of snacks. The world could be shut down until 2024 and I would still have boxes of Tiny Teddies left.

For his birthday this and last year we took my eldest son to a tourist farm. One of his favourite hobbies is to yell the name of animals at the animals. “Sheep!” I’m sure it knows. “Horse!” That’s right. “Cow”, that’s a camel but close enough. It’s a place where city kids can go and feed farm animals, milk a cow, and traumatise ducklings. My son loves ducks and chased a duckling around the pen trying to pick it up, it was like a good version of Rocky 3. 

My theory is that time passes differently when you have a kid, because the first few years your child changes constantly so it never feels like the same kid for long. One moment you can lay them on the floor and go to the toilet, blink and they’re slamming the door open while you poo. Next, you’re slamming the door open yourself trying to get the kid to the toilet in time. 

Everything is a phase – the good times, the bad times, the sleeping, even who your child’s favourite. For a long time, I just scraped into the top of my son’s five favourite things: mummy, grandpa, TV, cheese, me. Recently I’ve moved up the list – sometimes as high as the number two spot. Last night he asked for me to play with him, to bathe him, and read to him. Just me. We played the same game a thousand times, we sang the same song in the bath a thousand more and read the same book we’ve read every night for the last month a thousand more. Suddenly it was 9:00pm and it felt like no time had passed at all. 

Happy birthday, matey.