It is hard for me to imagine the freedom days, I mean the days before I had a baby and yes I shamelessly call them the freedom days because those were the days when going for tea with the girls was no big deal and going out with friends till the wee hours was no big deal. This dear friend of mine and I had the time of our lives during my freedom days, but our escapades would make for a different story. Who knows maybe my next one will be about her.
Anyway, as I was saying, it is hard to imagine those beautiful glorious days not so long ago. I was probably one of those women who were annoyed by most things baby related. I am sure that seeing someone with 2 spots of liquid on their tee shirt made me sick, how was I to know that as a mother myself I would one day forget my breast pads and find myself rushing to the bathroom just before someone noticed the embarrassing creamy extracts deposited on my chest. Don’t these things just happen to the best of us.
I am almost certain that before I had a baby I was just sooo annoyed by the noisy crying babies in church. Not to mention the naughty toddlers standing on chairs and cheering the pastor on! Well, boy, wasn’t I just in for a surprise. As a baby my boy slept through most of the service, then he got to an age when he was too small for Sunday school and big enough to crawl. Those are the days when I would sit in church with a straight face and pretend that I did not know him. What options did I have? Me, who had cursed the naughty, ill disciplined toddlers as I called them. Me, who had vowed that when I had a baby I would teach them manners. Ha! TJ was not having any of it. He crawled, he screamed, he terrorized other babies. I remember very well the day when the little girl sitting behind us suddenly screamed at the top of her voice and hid her face in her mother’s chest. Apparently TJ had made a face at her. Boy was I not embarrassed to be the mother of a brat. The kind of brat that before I became a mum, I would have told my friends about and we would have all agreed that people just don’t know how to raise kids anymore.
No, I refuse to remember those days, at least not in that way. I just fantasize that before I became a mummy, I was a kindhearted woman who felt sorry for other mothers and even offered to carry their babies. I refuse to remember those days because I have learnt my lesson. I should never judge! And just because kids will do and say certain things does not indicate failure or triumph on the parents’ part. Children are a gift from God, and how they good they turn out is all the grace of God.
Now, let me try fixing this remote control that my sweet son threw against a wall…
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