Oh Poo!

Yesterday Yaasier came home early and we decided to take the kids to the park. We went to the nearby Kingfisher park because it has a huge open field where the boys can kick ball and play rugby. Unfortunately we stayed at the park for a shorter time than it takes us to get everyone out of the car! They should rename the park Dog Poo park. There wasn't a single spot of grass that the boys could safely run or tackle or roll around without the risk of landing some part of their anatomy in dogdie doodoos. So we left and went to the much smaller park at the library. No I have no problem with dogs or their owners, but I do think having one as a pet is just as much a responsibility as deciding to have a child. They require lots of love and attention, they need to be fed, they are often reprimanded and will eat anything that looks or smells even remotely edible off the floor. And if your kid is like Sumayah then they also both love eating shoes and rubbing their gums on the corners of the furniture! Yes, I did just compare my child to a pet dog!

You also need to provide both a place to do the smelly deed. Now to continue my comparison, if I go out with a baby, nappy bag in tow and baby does a skunk manoevre that cannot be ignored if death by intolerable fumes is to be avoided, I would whip out my handy changing mat, find a reasonably decent place to clean and change said nappy, and then... Now here is the key part... I would pick up the nappy and throw it in the nearest bin! So it really erks me when dog owners fulfill their rightful duty of taking their dogs for a walk/run/play in a public park meant for everyone and do not oblige to same decency. In the UK you will get fined if you get caught leaving your doggy doodoos lying around. They even have special doggie doodoo bins in all the parks and even provide little handy disposable poop scoops and packets in case you forgot yours.

Tell me fellow dog owners, is this an unreasonable request?

Wordless Wednesday 25

Walkies walkies

So Sumayah has decided to become vertically mobile! And like most experienced parents will tell you, now is when you really know the meaning of the word 'hectic'! She had been showing signs of walking for a while already... cruising along surfaces, getting from sit to stand without holding on to anything, standing on her own for long periods, etc. But whenever we tried to get her to walk she would laugh at us, get down onto the floor and crawl. So even though we knew walking was imminent she still took us by surprise. See with Sumayah it wasn't a gradual process. She took 4 steps one day and then refused to do it again, until last Friday when I visited a friend's house. When I arrived I put her down on the floor in standing, expecting her to sit down and start crawling around. Instead she just started walking toward my friend as though she'd been doing it all along! So there was no 2 steps then 4 steps then 10, then off we go... no it was no steps at all for almost a month and then suddenly off we go! The funniest part was when she was walking and patting herself on the chest and clapping her hands as though congratulating herself on her achievement. Guess that is rather characteristic of our little Sumayah even with the whole coming into the world thing... she will do it on her own terms thank you very much!

What not to say when...

We flew to Cape Town recently and encountered the same problem we have with Bilaal everytime we fly. Because of the loud humming sound inside the plane, Bilaal tends to lose all ability to control the volume function on his voice box. We have to constantly remind him, "Bilaal we are sitting right next to you, you don't have to shout." He tones it down a little, but the volume slowly increases back to a shout. Of course it doesn't help that he is such a chatterbox. We are convinced that he sometimes just says random stuff simply for the sake of saying something.Who can blame him, both sets of grandparents will give testament to the fact that Yaasier and I have got exactly what we deserve, because apparently we were both just as bad as kids. But I digress.

Recently we have been reading Bilaal alot of stories about the different prophets. Naturally, the book starts with the story of creation and of Adam and Gouwa (Eve) and their descent to earth from heaven. This of course brought up questions about heaven and so forth. So anyway here we are sitting on an aeroplane getting ready to take off and Bilaal starts shouting at the top of his voice, "Daddy, when I go to heaven can I ask Allah for aliens?" (he is more than a little obsessed with Ben10 alien force) So we say sure Bilaal and remind him not to shout. Not much longer and he has moved off the topic of aliens and for some reason remembers something from the movie 'Speed' that he wants to ask his dad about but can't remember the name of the movie, so he asks, again at full voume, "Daddy, what's that movie we watched where there's a bomb on the bus?" Yaasier and I looked at each other thinking the same thing... with a name like Bilaal, utterings of going to heaven and bombs on buses should not be used when sitting in an aeroplane! At least now that the CIA and FBI didn't swoop in on us, we can joke about it.

There are also things one shouldn't say when entering someones home for the first time. We've been going on a few house viewings recently and on one particular viewing the family was home. The minute we walk in and greet the folks Bilaal chirps up, "Mommy the house smells like...(please don't embaress me, please don't embaress me)...vanilla" (shew!) That was a close call, but I definately explained to Bilaal that he shouldn't make comments about the way people's houses smell... at all! Of course that was too specific an instruction for Mr Pedantic. I didn't include all clauses into the contract of appropriate behaviour with regards house viewings. So the next time we view a house where the owner is home, we hardly step in to the house and Bilaal asks rather loudly, "Is this house also too small mommy?" and when we step into a room that's a bit cluttered, he says "oo! there's alot of stuff in this room".

Then there is the situation with the car guards. I usually give the car guards some change if I had been parked for a long time, but sometimes I have absolutely no change, maybe only a 5 cents in my purse. I also don't give them anything if I 'd been away from the car for less than 15 minutes. Ashamedly I usually try to avoid all eye contact with them and make as quick a getaway as I can to avoid feeling guilty. So the last thing I need is Bilaal asking me just when we are approaching the car, "there's the guard mommy, are you gonna give him money or don't you have change again?"

Things that impress

At every stage of life there are things you have in common with people in a similar stage that are foreign to those who aren't. Like when you have a long term boyfriend/partner/spouse and you bore your single friends to death with your rants and raves about partnerdom. Or when you are pregnant and you lose all ability to converse on any other topic and suddenly it becomes okay to discuss perineum exercises and the state of your cervix in front of all and sundry.

So naturally when you have children you tend to speak about them to anyone who will listen (even if we don't realize it). But what never ceases to amaze me is the type of things we in the world of parenthood find amazing and wonderful and wonder why others look at us strangely with a sarcastic 'o-k, that's gr-e-a-t!' expression. For example the first time baby rolls over or lifts its head. Or the first time baby can burp on its own or makes his first single syllable gurgle. And how happy we are that baby's poo is the right colour, quantity, smell and consistency! Then they start growing into their little-personness and then we really can't help bragging about the fact that they can say 'ta' or 'dada' or have 4 teeth!

But I guess babies being cute and all, some non-parents often do share in the cuteness of these little milestones. I find I now have a growing child and the things that I am proud of can seem very insignificant to the non-parent. For example Bilaal has recently mastered the art of tying his own shoe laces. It didn't take long and I remember how he came running to me so excited and said, 'look mommy I tied my own laces' and I was bursting with pride. Or how impressed I am when he can write simple words. I can only imagine the state I will be in the first time he dons his grade 1 uniform!

wordless wednesday 24

Bye bye baby, Hello toddler!

I can't believe it's been a year already! It feels like yesterday that we were rather impatiently waiting for the arrival of our little Princess Fiona. I call her that because she aint your regular classic fairytale princess type... no she's more your modern day kick-ass I-know-what-I-want princess type. Yep that's our Sumayah. She has this bib that is so perfect for her, it reads, "what part of princess don't you understand!" So it's the night before her birthday and i find myself reminiscing about this momentous night one year ago.

My gynae was so convinced that I would go into labour at 38 weeks, but that just made the wait much longer because we were anticipating her birth any moment for 2 weeks. My actual due date was Monday 29 June 2009. My mom arrived Friday, 26 June and Yaasier's parents and sister surprised us with a drive up from Cape Town on the Saturday, while my husband's grandmother had been staying with us for 2 weeks already. So we were a pretty full house, all... waiting! So due date came and I visited the gynae one last time. I was so convinced he was gonna tell me that I was dilated and that labour was imminent because I had been having 2 weeks of pre-labour  back pain. But alas! that was not to be. Funny how my first thought was, 'oh no! my mom is only gonna be here for 2 weeks and they only induce after 10 days overdue so she might miss the birth!'

Fortunately, doc put my mind at ease and said that he would book me in for an induction the thursday morning in the event that I didn't go into labour naturally before then. So D-day came and went as did Tuesday and finally Wednesday last chance for au-naturalle. Of course by now every morning when I crawled out of my cave after a very uncomfortable night of no sleep in an upright position, I would meet with a house full of loved ones and inevitably someone would ask, 'no baby yet?' And everytime I so much as paused in a sentence or went a little quiet my mom would anxiously ask me, 'are you having contractions?'

But wait! Wednesday morning was different after all! I certainly was having contractions at very regular intervals and they were getting stronger as the morning went on. I knew it wasn't rush to hospital this instant kind of contractions, I could still have a decent conversation and you know... breathe (those of you who have gone through natural labour will know what I mean). But nevertheless I was pretty convinced that this was it. So at about 9am Yaasier and I said our goodbyes and received our well wishes, packed the hospital bag in the boot and off we went. The strangest thing, I was having contractions all the way to the hospital (only about 10 mins away) right up to the second they put the monitor on my belly... and then everything just stopped! I was quite annoye lying there actually wishing for the pain because at least it would mean we were in business. But when the nurse came to check there was only 1 stong contraction in the whole hour that we were there. So we were sent home. It was about 10.30am and Yaasier and I decided to go and have breakfast before having home. You'll never believe but we stopped at KFC! I had a most delicious zinger burger for breakfast and then we headed home. Imagine the disappointment when we walked in the door with no baby! Bilaal of course couldn't understand why we didn't bring home the baby. I hadn't explained to him the natural birthing process so he was under the impression we went to the dr to have the baby taken out (I showed him C-sec pics in a magazine).

I don't remember much else about that day, probably because I was a bit distracted? It was about 6pm and we were all downstairs getting ready to have a light supper. I had been feeling the contractions again and they were definately getting strong enough for me to hold onto something while waiting for it to pass. So the loved ones convinced me to go back to hospital. So off we go again and find ourselves at the hospital again at about 8pm, and as I feared the second they put the monitor on the contractions slowed down and weren't very stong at all. Two hours later the nurse told us that as I was due for an induction the next morning and needed to be there at 4am I could stay there to wait it out or I could go home and relax, maybe have a hot bath to spur things along. Since we were only 10mins away i decided I wanted to go home and bath in my own bath with bubbles. The minute I got into the car the contractions were back again, but I decided to go home anyway. Once again we strolled into the house... with no baby. Yaasier ran me a hot bath and the minute i got out the contractions came strong and fast! I got dressed, but when it got to putting on my shoes I couldn't even bend! So back to hospital at about 11.30pm. I think the whole anticipation and false alarms was just so unbearable that when we pulled up to the hospital I just burst into tears. The poor security guard was so concerned. He brought me a wheelchair and quickly pushed me into the maternity ward while Yaasier parked the car. This was it! This was really really it!

And at 1.30am on the 2 July 2009 our precious little girl, weighing in at 3.4kg and 49cm long, was born.