It is a long weekend in the land down under - it’s apparently Australia Day - and to celebrate we have indulged in a great Australian tradition, a swing set in the backyard. The swings are for Little Miss for her third birthday, but they had to be put up this weekend for some reason, even though her birthday isn’t for a couple of days yet.

I think the main reason it had to be put up straight away is because it is hard to hide a 3.5m long box that is full of 70kgs of metal and plastic, even from a toddler than can be distracted for hours with the promise of a piece of chocolate. A special thank you here to wife who boldly decided that I would easily be able to pick it up by myself and then lug it up a driveway with a 35 degree incline at home. But that’s ok, it only took an hour to drag it to the back yard and my legs had started functioning again by morning.

The next day was full of fun and excitement as Little Miss and I set about setting up the swing set. I say swing set, but it is more like and entire outdoor adventure system consisting of 4 swings and a slide. There was quite a bit of construction involved and I am a little nervous that we didn’t get a planning permit from the local authorities before we put it all together.

In a touch of adorability Little Miss insisted on helping with the construction of her new home entertainment system and a great assistant she was, check out some of my personal highlights from the ‘toddler help’ file:

• Asking “Is it ready?” the second the box was open and then every 30 seconds until she was in bed (note I said ‘in bed’, which may actually give you an idea of when it was finally finished).
• Me getting so tired of the question that once the main frame was in place I put together the easiest of the 4 swings so that she would shut up for two minutes while she had a swing - big mistake.
• Insisting on being pushed on the swing at any given moment regardless of what I was doing at that time. In the end we reached a compromise position which was basically me pushing her whenever she demanded it and her allowing me to keep putting things together with my spare hand.
• On the rare occasion that I did ask her for help we had the following conversation, Me: “Honey, can you give daddy a hand”. Little Miss: “Of course dad”. Me: “Pass me that piece of paper?”. Little Miss (applying toddler logic after surveying the situation). “Ohhh No daddy, my hands a full” - what they happened to be full of were the handles of the swing she was currently riding on. I think we had this or a similar conversation at least 20 times over the day.

So that was the duress under which the project was undertaken. I will admit that all the ‘help’ did delay the completion of the project just a little bit. The last screw was put in at 1:00am the following morning, it would have been sooner but I allowed myself to stop for a coffee. I can be selfish that way.

I would say it was worth it just to see the smile on Little Miss’ face when she woke up in the morning looked out the window and saw her now completed swings and slide.

Or maybe what really made it worth while was when I asked her if her new play ground (as she calls it) looked good, and her reply was ‘It’s not good, it’s perspect’ (toddler for perfect).

But that would be a lie, because that didn’t make it all worthwhile - not even close. I would rather have had my Saturday back and been able to watch the cricket while lying on the couch!

Oh, and Little Miss has a new trick. When you are out of the room she will start wailing and crying and when you race into the room to find out what all the drama is about she will suddenly spin round, break into a huge grin and say ‘Just joking’.

Also, just so Wife doesn’t accuse me of favoritism yet again, there is still a baby floating around the house somewhere.