From 2 to 3

Time seems to be simultaneously flying and crawling, or, at various intervals, coming to a complete stand still before long-jumping over whole weeks. Somehow, it’s early July. Kieler Woche is over, the season of summer is cruising along instead of being a promise just around the corner, SG’S birthday has come and gone, my parents are due in town in two weeks, and we’re a month out from this baby getting here. Sometimes, just sometimes, we say, ‘can you believe she’s almost here? Wasn’t it just yesterday we were telling people in Sydney?’ But most times, we say, ‘could she please hurry up and get here’ because by this point it feels like she’s already celebrated her second birthday in there. I don’t ever recall a time I actually wore pants with a button. Or got off the couch with any shred of elegance.

People often say to you, before the baby gets here, ‘enjoy the time. Get some sleep. Enjoy it being just the two of you.’ So, in in between the waiting and the impatience and the daydreaming of ‘what is she going to be like?’ (and the doctor’s appointments and bureaucratic appointments and the final birth preparation class and getting things done like, you know, her room and car seat installed) there are pockets of time in which it’s just us two and it’s quiet in a manner it won’t be for a long, long time.

But even these pockets of time, quiet and lovely and enjoyed as they are, are laced with this Christmas Eve type anticipation. These moments of just the two of us are thoroughly attended by the third one of us. Watching Wimbledon, I outline my plans for coaching her to Grand Slam glory. Watching the soap box racing last weekend, SG said if they build one together, he’ll put an engine in her soap box car – which revealed a hitherto excellently concealed competitive streak I never knew he possessed. Obviously I put the kybosh on the engine in the soap box, similarly to how he warns me she may not want to play tennis (Häää?). Going for walks, we look out for playgrounds, comment on routes to take when she is here and ensconced in her pram. Cramming in our final degustation menu at the International Food Market, we discussed how next year there’ll be a ten month old in tow, and how she’ll have to try the lamb snags from the Australian stall. She isn’t here, but she is.

The time we are enjoying as just the two of us is enjoyed even more so because we know that soon, all things as they should be, it will be the three of us.

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