During my undergrad writing degree, I had to set up a blog space for a third year journalism course. Deciding on a domain name took far too long and for the life of me I’m not sure why I didn’t settle for the obvious: donnawaters.com.au. In fact, it is evident in our family that the bleedingly obvious is our go-to. My second daughter Jerusha loved her stuffed dogs when she was little. Her favourites were black-and-white puppy, brown puppy and white puppy. She carried around brown baby for a while. Her younger brother Jaran followed suit and referred to his favourite thing in the whole world as Blue Ted. So perhaps I chose blueted.com to preserve it for Jaran when he is older. Or perhaps to keep him alive when the real Blue Ted is retired to the top of the cupboard along with my husband’s Growly Bear and my own stuffed cat, once loved in childhood.

Blue Ted is a knitted blue teddy bear approximately 30 cms tall whom I consider my fourth child. This particular one is actually Blue Ted version 2. My son Jaran turns 10 in early December. When he was one, we visited a cool little shop that existed in Mt Saint Thomas, a leafy suburb of the Gong, that sold groovy kids clothes, expensive toys and locally knitted stuffed toys. Jaran bum-shuffled his way across the floor and pointed up to the first version of the gorgeous royal blue knitted bear. It was love at first sight. And taste. Jaran adored that first bear so much he ate his ears and sucked, chewed and loved the rest of him away. Fortunately I managed to source another one almost the same, except this blue teddy had a knitted striped jumper. That jumper was abandoned early on and Blue Ted became very much entrenched into the Crawford Waters family life. He went to day care and Mandy, the best day care mum in the world, has fond memories of hunting for Blue Ted to soothe a distressed Jaran. Blue Ted went shopping, enjoyed car trips and overnight stays. He also went on our four week adventure to Alice Springs, Uluru and back. This was a big decision for Phillip and I. To ensure the safety of Blue Ted, we decided that the last thing we did before we left a place was to take a photo of him. This would (hopefully) minimise the chance of leaving him behind and consequently traumatising our then 7 year old son, and by default the rest of us. Happily, Blue Ted had a wonderful trip and returned home safely. Blue Ted is still very much an extension of Jaran and he is delightfully unselfconscious about it. I’m sure this won’t last forever. While Blue Ted continues to be much loved by my almost ten year old son, he is also looking very tired. He is literally falling apart. I’m hoping Jaran will consider Blue Ted’s retirement soon. That, or else we will be in need of a very good darner.