Angel turns four

My baby girl turned four about two weeks ago. She had been rattling about it to everyone about her happy birthday (read cake). As I sit down in the silence to reminisce about the last four years I get overwhelmed.

I discovered am pregnant in Nairobi hospital in December of 2008 while trying to get an x-ray done on my back to try and figure why it couldn’t stop paining despite my several physiotherapy sessions. I insisted that this time before I went for a session that I had to have the x-ray done. I also went ahead to tell the general practitioner how everything seemed to smell so bad. Thank God for his experience for insisting that I do a pregnancy test before the x-ray. I thought he was wasting my time and trying to make more money off me. So after several minutes back and forth I agreed in fact to piss off the guy I did a blood test. Those days you would do the test in the lab and they would ask you to deliver them to the A& E .On my way I decided to open the envelope and yes: Test –Pregnancy-POSITIVE. The rest is history.

From there it was preparation galore. I hunted down all books I could get my hands on the subject. Heidi Murkoff of the “What to expect series” must be proud of me. The clinics began and the growing as well. My stomach seemed to be in a rush to reach the ground. Pregnancy comes with its own special privileges(unfortunately most women abuse them-(for heaven sake don’t go spitting everywhere-) I could get away with comfortably eating a burger from chicken in at midnight, eating sugarcane in the office, wearing doll shoes full time and requesting for a toilet in the middle of nowhere. It also comes with its down times sleeping is an absolute nightmare, you are susceptible to colds, fatigue and a myriad of other issues. But as my doctor reminded me at every visit” pregnancy is not illness”.

Two extra weeks after my due date, one Friday evening one Angel was born. It was a nightmarish three long hours. And at this point I remind you all who think otherwise-I have never ever forgotten-but I will skip writing about the three hours as it is gut wrenching. The girl was well and a total of 3.6kgs. There was a sigh of relief a number of people present in the hospital knew I was reaching my threshold of patience before she suddenly come. The pretty bundle of job was and so was I. Our mother daughter love affair began.
 

The first few months are confusion galore. When to feed, clothe, bathe……the works it was all too much. And sooner than later I had to go back to work so we had to wean the girl. No allergies there. In the beginning she refused feeding using a bottle-it was such a hard task- to imagine she later used them until she said one day”sitaki munyonyi tena” The girl learnt to roll and tumble. She once fell out of the bed to the floor. My heart stopped as tears run off my eyes, frantically calling my mother for direction on what to do. The girl survived. After chasing Gina Ford’s Contended little Baby(CLB) book so that we didn’t have trouble sleeping and feeding(Can you believe I had the audacity to have it shipped from London By book point?) only to realize that this ladies experience is from an averages of all the children she has nannied and not necessary helpful to children who are outliers.

My girl never put on much weight after that but she was as healthy as they come. And I am eternally grateful to God for that. In her first year she was so calm and docile. The child you went to church with and who kept quiet during the entire service. She grew her first tooth when she was one year and one month and in a record two months she had the entire set. We turned two and the dynamo in the girl was released. Church services were no more. Curiosity got the better of my daughter and all the calmness came to an absolute complete end. I remember once in St Paul’s Chapel during mass seated at the tents outside my daughter and another child kept quiet for more than three minutes straight. I knew there was trouble. The mother to the other girl had carried some Delmonte tetra packs and put them in her handbag. The two girls were lying down under her sit drinking them. She wore my heels and kept falling in them and didn’t care she had to look like Mummy. The new angel was now as tough as nails. She could climb anywhere that needed climbing, screaming, shouting, and talked all she wanted there was no going back. She was just the bomb.

In her third year she joined school. That was the beginning of new frontiers. She learnt testing my parenting skills to a new limit. When I caught her doing something cheeky before I could open my mouth she could tell me “Stop it Wanja before I beat you” mimicking my very own self. She learnt to sing and dance and even call me Baba to diss me sometimes. And though her energy is enough to turn the power generating turbines at Kindaruma she still comes in the tiniest of packages but with the hugest of personalities. And then she looks at me in the eyes and asks “kwa nini unaenda job kama sisi tumefunga shule? Mimi nataka kwenda job pia .” And in this year she learnt that the crown of a woman is her hair she agreed to be having her hair made without the fuss of tears, threats, coercion and soothing but it had to be by one Eva and Eva alone. No negotiation.

As we go through the fourth year on this journey my dear daughter, please know I love you like the wide world and over again. No one else makes me proud and happy like you. My heart is filled with glee when you smile and when I tickle you and you roll am filled with emotion. You might be little but I think you know where you and I have come from. You who came into my life and changed it. You made me change my patience limits and thresholds, made me more disciplined, more principled and careful. Whoever said that marriage makes grown up of children had not the experience of being a parent. Even after all the reading and browsing on parenting I discovered the most important secret is total prayers and counting1- 100 backwards and very slowly. I pray and work hard at being a good parent to a good child.

Happy 4^th Birthday. God keep you and I safely for the next century to ensure we enjoy many more together. I love you.

Sojourner.

Am grateful to all those who have accompanied us on this journey. God bless you.

P.S I will purchase a shot gun when you turn 16.