I can hear you now in the living room - shouting, jumping and as excited as ever! The day you've been anticipating all year is finally here & you are 3. I'm sitting in my room, listening to you telling daddy - " I'm 3 now! 2 is gone daddy! I'm 3! Dillon had his birthday already. Now it's mine daddy." I know your daddy is so happy - he was up decorating that living room just so he could see that reaction this morning

 



 

 

 



 



 

 

Oh Morayo-Hope! How can you be 3 already? I remember crying everyday in the run up to your actual birth! "Where is this baby??!! Why does he / she not want to come out??!" I had become an emotional wreck. Meanwhile there you were enjoying yourself on the inside - taking advantage of the full 2 weeks they allowed you to go over the due date. Sigh. If I'd known in a blink of an eye you'd be screaming "I'm a big girl now!", I might have held on tightly to you in my tummy. Treasured those last days of us being truly inseparable.

Now as each day passes, I'm understanding why we were taught that good parenting is equipping our kids with the tools they need to leave. Because one day that's what you will do.
I'm watching as your baby chub slowly disappears. Your once round feet and hands are taking shape. Your little face is looking less like a toddler's and more like a little girl's. Trying to hold onto you, too keep you this way, is like chasing vapours. For now I'm hiding in my room desperately holding onto you as my 2yr old for a few more minutes....

 





 


My prayer for you today is that your life lives up to the names we gave you. Morayo: "I have seen joy" - May your life always be characterised by Joy. May those who see you know what true joy is & declare "I have seen joy!". Hope - and may they know the hope that Joy brings. Anashe - "one who is with The Lord"- May you always know that God is with you. (Psalm 23).
I also selfishly pray that we will always be friends. That you will never tire of our spontaneous dances in the kitchen & of our made up songs. That you will will always think I'm "the best cooker in the whole wide world!". That my jokes will still make you laugh even when you're 30. That you'll always need me for something nobody else can give - no, not my milk, seriously you are 3 now! (Stop trying it - it's been 2 whole years, get over it!)



 



 

 

I hope something about me being your only mum will keep you coming back to me. I love you.

 

 

oh yes!! it's that time of year - birthday season is upon us! i am so excited as i am going to be 3 this year! as i am a bit bigger and can articulate myself vocally - (as you know i was born already writing) - i have been dropping hints here and there about what i'd like for my birthday. well, not so much what i want for my birthday. just what i want generally. it turns out that mummy is smarter and has asked the girls in nursery to tell her what i enjoy doing best during playtime and cross checked it with her own observations at home. from there she has come up with a list of top contenders for my gift.

1. a scooter

everytime we go to the park i stop and stare at the little kids on their scooters longingly. mummy finds it very upsetting and it takes her back to the days when she and my uncle really wanted bmx bikes but my sekuru (grandpa) had bought them some bikes from India as kids. they had to manage those bikes well into their teens. they were frequently laughed at but my sekuru was never one to cower at peer pressure. thankfully my mum hasn't got such strong resolve and is already eyeing up this nifty little scooter because she's a sucker for the prettiest of them all. she also says she likes that it has 3 wheels making it easier for me to learn to balance & she's read great reviews about it. pah! she's a sucker!

available from john lewis - click here or from Mini Micro Scooter - click here

2.  a dolls house

as some of you may know, earlier this year i was admitted to hospital. during my time there i was confined to my room & my favourite thing to do was playing with a dolls house. at nursery i also spend a lot of time playing with my friends in the dolls house corner.  mummy never had a dolls house growing up. infact, she stopped playing with dolls prematurely as one of her aunts said she should move on from that at the age of 7. i reckon she secretly wants this for herself!

available here

3. a play  kitchen

my favourite thing to do is help mummy with the cooking! she lets me have a plastic knife and chop mushrooms and sweet peppers. i also help her to stir the food in the wok - away from the stove ofcourse! at nursery i spend much of my time in the cooking corner.  mummy is keen to harness this passion i have for cooking. she said she was able to make simple meals at 10. this was mainly because she had an aunty who stayed with them who constantly went on and on about how well her younger cousins could cook & how at the age of 8 one of them was cooking meals for her entire family. one day mummy flipped and shouted "THATS BECAUSE THEY LIVE IN THE RURAL AREAS!!!!".  You could have heard a pin drop. (the girls older sister was staying with them at the time so it was extra inappropriate.) mummy's aunt said "WATI CHII??!!" (you said WHAT?!!). Feeling extra recalcitrant mummy opened her mouth to repeat herself when she noticed that one of her aunt's arms was  reaching for a wooden spoon. she sprinted out of the kitchen, her aunt hot-footing it behind her spoon in hand, and her cousin following screaming "please don't hit her!".

mummy ran across the seemingly never-ending front yard and leapt over the gate. she spent the rest of the afternoon sitting by the gate till some visitors came to her rescue. she loved visitors. as mummy knows she could be arrested if caught chasing me with a wooden spoon, she's decided  to make me love to cook and save herself some future drama!

she currently loves these two as they are neutral colours & non stereotypical! judah will cook!

available here

or

available here (a new little shop we've discovered thanks to our facebook fan - thanks Kirsty!)

mummy is obsessed with wooden toys as she is becoming more passionate about recycling.  she also loves toys that both judah and i can play with and enjoy together. phew - i'm off to be a very good girl because i'll be soooo happy to have any of these!!

morayo-hope

xoxo

I'm sitting on a bus at 7am. I should've been on it at 6:30 but that's part of the joy of being a working mummy. You can have all these plans of being somewhere impeccably dressed and a half hour early but instead pitch up breathless with a whiff of milk lingering around you & a piece of Lego in the pouch your lipstick should have been. This morning I was up at 5:15 and thought surely today is the day I will leave before the babies are up. As I got on with brushing my teeth I wondered how Kola would handle MH's hair & wondered if I should do it whilst she slept...hmm. Then I remembered I still needed to sort out Judah's stuff for the day so I decided he'd be fine. Feeling excited that I was going to enjoy getting dressed in front of the TV, I bounced out of the shower & was greeted by 2 giggling little people snuggled up to their dad in bed. No. It's 5:45! I was so unamused. Judah started whimpering for me as MH yelled out "say good morning to me mummy!". I immediately knew 6:30 was out of the window. Breakfast in London was out of the window. Cereal bar and a bottle of orange juice were probably as good as it would get. I carried Judah about as I got on with stuff and began to feel increasingly emotional. I didn't want to leave him. I didn't want to leave with the sound of his scream ringing in my ears. I wanted to cuddle him a bit more. Take him to the park and play on the swings. I want to sing to him and watch him finally crawl for the first time.   Everyday I ask myself why I have to work, why i have to be up at the crack of dawn after very little sleep. Why I have to spend my 40 minute journey from home to nursery to work getting the baby lingo out of my head and practising sounding like an educated human being. yes yes yes.... it's for the very same people I want to stay at home with. For that house with a garden that we so want them to have & grow in and blah blah. For that school they can go to and that future they could have. Siiiiiigh. Ok fine, so i do enjoy the dressing up. And the lunch hour i can spend by myself, with that delicious sound of....nothing! Oh my - I can catch up on my magazine subscription from the last year - all still in their plastic wrap - #truestory.   Some mummy friends who had the option to choose to press pause on career and  did so have loved it. Others in that same camp are full on encouraging me to get back to work, citing various reasons for why they'd have gone back if they knew what they know now. Some working mum friends feel like I do, and wish they could be with their babies. I certainly look on with envy at mums pushing strollers in town. It's like they are there to torment me. I want to throw an egg at them.  Other working mums couldn't be happier. Full time mummyhood is no mean feat! Work is easier in many respects - top of the list being nobody is following you everywhere and making you pee with the door open. (if they are, speak to your HR manager- that right there is harassment). So as I now arrive at my destination I know I must pull it together. Off come the trainers, on go the heels. A quick look in the mirror to ensure I don't have panda eyes. Another quick look for that lipstick I know I put there.....nope, its gone. Oh well, I'll hold onto this piece of Lego...... and remember I'm doing this because I love them. just like  all mummy's who've made the decision to do whatever it is they're doing.

Are you a mum / dad? Do you face this struggle too? How have you learnt to deal with your "tug of war"?

**images are by tauyaz vision photography

this is my best friend Jadon. he was born 5 months after me(he arrived 1 month early as he couldn't wait to meet me!). he was so tiny i gave him a little pinch to check he wasn't a doll!

we do everything together - and he's the one person guaranteed to put a huge smile on my face when i'm not in a good mood.

 

In our early walking days, Jadon made it his business to chase me around and kiss me. i wasn't so keen on his advances and made my position clear. mummy pointed out to me that Jadon was the sort of boy i'd be fancying at 14 & passing notes around for. i gave her that "speak for yourself mum" look. after all she was the queen of teen crushes. she once did fancy a  boy the spitting image of jadon and took up a keen interest in my uncle's midweek football just to be around him. let's just say her then buck teeth were not his cup of tea. then there was the boy she fancied for the longest time in zim. he finally asked her to meet him after school and she was on cloud nine! she arrived for their rendezvous smelling as fresh you imagine those roses in the Estée Lauder advert smell. he shifted nervously from foot to foot trying to get the words out of his mouth & she waited patiently whilst rehearsing a calm "yes, i will be your girlfriend" in her head. he finally looked up as her heart sped & said "tanaka, I really need you..."

"WHAT?!", mum thought, "who knew HE NEEDED ME? yes! a thousand times yes!". she was grinning like a cheshire cat as he landed "i need you to help me ask belinda out."  say what?!! she kept that smile frozen on her face like a freshly botoxed essex girl and nodded a little over enthusiastically agreeing to aid her crush in getting the girl every guy was queuing up to date. she cried all the way to her besties house my uncle in tow probably happy that mummy wasn't going to date anyone just yet.

so, knowing the tragic love story blood line i was born into (trust me there's enough to inspire a few Toni Braxton hit singles) i've decided to try and be nicer to Jadon. a hug here, a kiss there. now, the boy is feeling fresh. hmm. i hear he's started at a new nursery. i need to go and walk around so people know what's what. mummy says i could carry a boom box blaring Brandy & Monica's "The Boy is mine!". ooh kaaaay mummy, chill. after all, i have daddy's teeth. it's all good.

mummy is back at work. the first few days were the toughest for mummy. she was so tired all the time and found herself eating constantly to stay awake. the second week she had her wisdom tooth removed and felt a bit sorry for herself. the third week was a more settled week and she is getting into a stride and is much happier.

when mummy gets happy, she sings. in all her jobs she's been known for humming away whilst she works and this has sometimes annoyed a few co-workers who couldn't quite hear her so she sounded more like an annoying buzzing fly. usually she was humming some current top chart hit or some 90's r&b - based on the current state of her love life: toni braxton's "he wasn't man enough for me!" featured regularly as a feel good song.

this last week, mummy was about to introduce her new team to her humming tendencies when she tuned into the song playing in her head. she stopped in her tracks as she heard "no more monkeys jumping on the bed!" playing along happily in there! What?!  she was glad she hadn't sung that out loud. a few moments later she was bouncing along to another tune in her head: "dora, dora, dora the explooooorer!" woohoo! by the time "walk like a robot, ooh ooh ooh, walk like robot!" came along mummy realised that perhaps she'd been watching a little too much cbeebies & nick jr. rastamouse theme song , dr ranj theme song and peeeeeeeppppa pig all featured in there. mummy says the guillotine is fast coming down on what we watch. she wants to rebalance things so she can join in adult conversations at work.

guess who jumped up and started shaking her booty like a pro as soon as "ra-ra the noisy little lion" came on?  she said the tune is just too irresistible. a-ha. whatever makes you feel better mum.

Anyway, here's what we wore yesterday to church:

i wore:

top - primark

skirt, tights & shoes - zara

hair clips - h&m

 

judah wore:

colour block shirt - babygap 

chinos - babygap

 mummy wore:

jeans - topshop

jacket & bag - zara

top - reiss

shoes - kurt geiger

necklace - h & m