Hi all....am back

Well, it will not be a surprise if no one reads this blog at all, considering I haven’t posted anything in almost a year.
So what is my excuse for going on hibernation….I don’t have one! Yes it has been a crazy year, work and motherhood did take over, but procrastination is a big part of the reason for my silence.
Over the next few weeks I will be updating you on what TJ has been up to. He has really grown by the way, and turned 3 a few months back. Today, however, I will not go into detail of his exploits, but I only have one question….what do they teach these kids at Sunday school. Why am I asking? Well a few days ago TJ said his prayers before sleeping and it went something like this…”And Jesus, and crocodile(pronounced cocodyle) and a dinosaur, the water, and cocodyle, amen”
Needless to say, by the time he was done I was laughing so hard and he just looked at me like I was a mad woman! He was obviously shocked and could not understand why mummy was laughing! I mean, who says such prayers mmmmm? So somebody out there tell me…what DO they teach these kids at Sunday school? Just as well that Sunday school is free, otherwise I’d sue the teacher…..

Am I a bad mummy?

So I haven't been blogging for a while, its been a bit crazy with work and a million other things to do. Anyway, something happened the other day that I thought I just had to share with the world and get opinions on whether I'm a good mummy or not.

Now let me warn you, if you are a social services worker or a child activist of any sort, please stop reading because you will probably have me investigated or arrested and we don't want that do we?

I was scheduled to have this very important phone call on Thursday last week at 7pm. The time slot could not be negotiated any further and because of timing differences this was the best time. Even before this important phone call, I worried that TJ will just disturb me because I was gonna have it at home, yet I still kept my fingers crossed that by some miracle he would behave. You see the thing is we live as just the two of us and so I'm his main source of entertainment - I play soccer with him, I sing with him, I dine with him...get the point?

So what happened? 5 minutes before the phone call, TJ gets all cranky on me! He starts whining and demanding this and that, and I'm thinking maybe he'll calm down within the next five minutes before the phone rings....yeah right huh?

He then moved to the kitchen and started calling out for different types of stuff, and finally he pointed at the marmalade! At this point it was 7 on the dot and the phone would be ringing at any moment and I just did not want to seem disorganised by having a baby screaming in the background, basically I was panicking. So what choice did I have? I handed him the jar of marmalade and a teaspoon and said go for it!

The phone call came through and I sat there trying to sound professional while my heart sank lower each time a teaspoonful of marmalade went into his mouth. He fell asleep a few minutes later and that is when I relaxed and really concentrated on my phone meeting.

The question is what kind of a mother gives a toddler a jar of marmalade just to shut him up? It's terrible I know, but I realise that as mothers we sometimes have to do whacky stuff just for survival.
I wonder what other crazy stories are out there from other moms?

Judge not!

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…