Infectious Brotherhoods

Wow! It’s been a while since my last post. It’s been a wild set of weeks. First the babies got sick with colds that morphed into chest infections, then they got infected with the coxsackie virus (hand foot and mouth disease) for which they were misdiagnosed at first and thanks to lovely fellow mums and persistence the doctor admitted to having being flummoxed by the symptoms (thank God I did not give the steroid treatments). Then my mummy came home from a double knee surgery and all in the middle on that I am trying to work on a very yummy project.

this is a familiar scene... on good days

All through the storms of the last few weeks one thing has come out clear. Brotherhood is a very tight and intimate relationship that starts very early. Lately, little man wants to share all his food with his baby brother. He bites into a grape and offers the other half to his 4 month old brother. He gnaws one end of a bone and offers the other to his little brother. Baby baby is now able to reach out and grab so I have to be uber alert incase he grabs onto the stuff his brother is offering and puts it in his mouth like he did with his brothers Monkey aka ‘ankii’. Clearly the sharing is more than just food and toys… its infections too, I have learnt that whatever infection little man has, I should be ready to handle baby baby as well. Yes I can do the whole pediatrician trip and process with my eyes closed. Even my taxi guy is known to the parking attendants, they thought the kids were his.

That takes me to another thing, what happened to doctors who can give you advice over the phone? Any little thing is ‘bring the child in’ then they force issues on at least 1 lab procedure, usually blood, then tell you ‘oh it’s just a common cold, we will treat it symptomatically and …. ‘by then I’ve zoned out in anger. Kwani a lab test is needed to diagnose a cold? So I got into a cab, sat in traffic with 2 sick kids for at least 2 hours, for them to be pricked for blood, and then told its just a cold!? I think I am shopping for a new pediatrician coz my current seems more interested in tormenting my kids for the pay than ensuring their health and comfort.

Of Stretched Babies

When little man was born, my grandmother was at home and spent the first few months with little man and I. There were a lot of little nuggets and jewels of advice and information dropped here and there but one story stands out for me until today.

One day I left little man with her for a few minutes and when I came back she had quite the long face. I asked her ‘Mwaitu (a respectful term for mother in Kamba) why the long face?’

She responded in Kamba (I don’t remember the exact words in Kamba) ‘my baby doesn’t have good clothes for growing!’

I dress my babies in growers, you know the overalls that are like body stockings? They cover from the neck down to the foot with a zip or those clip-ish buttons all the way down. Now grandma’s problem was that the feet were enclosed and therefore they had no space to grow. A valid problem. I tried to tell her that there are bigger outfits that the baby will fit into when he outgrows what he was currently wearing. She just got angrier and threatened to cut off the bootee part of the grower. She was really concerned. She elaborated that I was making her child uncomfortable when growing itself is such painful and hard business.

She said ‘you know there are special times when God comes and stretches the baby, it's a painful affair so God doesn’t do it all the time.’

I laughed it off.

9 months later, I have a slightly feverish boy, cranky and no other signs of sickness. His blood work comes out clean. His pediatrician tells me, ‘it must be growing pains that come with growth spurts.’

Apparently at 2 weeks, 3 months, 6, months, 9 months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months… and so on children literally grow taller overnight and this can be painful. (Growth Spurts)

Shock on me!

My grandmother told me when little man was 3 months old and I laughed it off.

Children And Joy

These children that are mine make me happy! Everyday! The happiness starts in the morning. Little man sleeps in his own room. He always wants to wake up before his daddy leaves for work. You would be amazed at how sharp those ears are. Even when you whisper, he will hear you and call out. On the days daddy is less than quiet, at 6:30 you will hear ‘Daaaaaddey! Daddy! Daaaaaaaaadey?!’ it’s a sing son summon. If Daddy doesn’t respond, it graduates to a lower ‘Mummy! Maaaaaaaaaaammy! Muuuuum! Mummy?’ says none of us responds, the guy starts telling stories in his semi intelligible 2 year old babble! By this time we are giggling and trying not to burst into laughter… it’s not 7 am yet and laughter is already rambling in the house.

Usually daddy will pick little man up from his cot on his way out. Now little man loves going with daddy so little man goes for his shoes and sits with Daddy to put them on. Meanwhile I’m just waiting for the wail of disappointment when daddy says ‘bye, I’m not going with you today,’ that wail is like an alarm for baby baby who wakes up wondering where that noise is coming from. So I pick him up and we do the morning thing. Suckle-diaper change-play- cuddle-back to sleep. On a good day this takes an hour. That’s when little man has rediscovered doggy and thus has no interests drawing him back into the house. Its only logical, doggy wants to play and which two year old doesn’t want to roll around and play at 7 in the morning?

There are the days however that once daddy is gone, Little man remembers baibeee and comes running up the stairs screaming ‘BAIBEEEEEEE’. And his brother stops whatever we were doing to his brother a look that you just have to see. I can’t describe it well enough. Baby baby looks at his brother as if asking ‘what madness is this?’ soon enough it turns to fascination as baby baby tries to join in his brother antics. See baby moves his head and expects the rest of him to move. By this time little man has turned on the radio and is dancing wildly around the room. He could also be trying to climb up the window, or jumping up and down while counting… you get the picture. All this time mummy is laughing so hard, she might be wheezing in laughter… way past the rib ache phase.

These are my mornings, I wouldn’t give them up for anything! So if you are looking for me, look for me after 10 am. My 5:30 to 9:30 are reserved for happiness J.

Pamper rash aka Premium Diaper rash

Pampers… Pampers pampers pampers PAMPERS. These guys spend a lot of time and money promoting the brand but it seems everything else they use is not only cheap but bad for baby’s delicate bottom! 

The first time I got a baby I thought pampers is the best… that’s why the hospital even gave me a pack to go home with. The hospital (a ridiculously expensive for nothing place… never again) from my point of view endorsed the brand. So as a young and new mother, I figured, if doctors can endorse this, there’s something good. WRONG! Within a few weeks I noticed little man was red sore and cracking in his sensitive parts…. I thought ‘I must be doing something wrong, so on came the creams and powders but no change.

Just in time, someone sent me Kruidvat. All little mans drama disappeared. The Kruidvat ran out and I was advised the next best is Huggies. And that is how I am a Huggies and once in a while a Kruidvat mama.

Now, recently a niggle alongside a convenient lack of Huggies gold. The niggle, niggled me to niggle myself a pack of pampers premium. I rationalized that after more than 2 years of widespread complaints about the product in the region, any manufacturer would make some changes. And there are some changes… new cartoons, a softer feel… but now baby babies poor bottom looks like what the great lakes region must have looked like when all the volcanoes were active! Poor baby is red and sore and terribly uncomfortable. This is 2 diapers in out of a 72 pack. 

This is the end of the road for me and Pampers, no matter how many times they change the graphics on the diaper, re-parfume it, re-package it. Something is very wrong with their standards management and I’m out of that experiment, done, finished.

And to my dear Kruidvat angel, Thank you.

Breastfeeding Abnormal?

So there’s a movement in the US to normalize breastfeeding! My, don’t African mothers have it good! Remember earlier this year a young lady was ostracized for breastfeeding at her graduation in the US and it was all over the internet. It seems that for a mother to breastfeed in public in the US is more un-natural than soft porn. If you haven’t been following up what’s happening way out over there check this out>> THIS.

I can’t imagine being told not to breast feed when my baby needs it. Where doesn’t matter, what matters is that my baby needs to nurse and boobs are actually made to nurse little human beings… not amuse big human beings.

Now Kenyans being Kenyans those who believe to be ahead of things and on the cutting edge of social trends are starting to look down on public nursing. Try nursing, without a cover at the village market food court. Its not bad, on the whole, nice mature ladies will smile your way but every so often a supermodel looking girl will give you ‘the look’. This ‘’look’’ seems to say ‘’have some decency’’. As if breastfeeding is indecent. After that experience take a matatu ride with your baby (not for the faint-hearted though) or go to a public health facility (the Westlands maternal health clinic is my favorite, don’t look at me funny, I’m not paying I don’t know how many thousands of shillings for non-child friendly immunizations or adding a zero to the thousands for the child friendly ones. In public health facilities it costs between 50 bob and 300 bob). Should baby squeak as if to cry, everyone will tell you to give the baby what is baby’s… i.e. the breast. Trust me it doesn’t even come out lewd… its actually as loving as a Kenyan stranger in Nairobi will get.

In short I love that this breast feeding ‘issue’ is not in Kenya (except maybe in bougie Kenya) and would love to welcome young American families to invest in Kenya and use their energies on other things away from defending your right to be what you were made to be. Seriously though, I feel for young mothers out there trying to bring up children in a very unfriendly social and even legal environments (no one is going to tell me how to discipline my baby let alone take my babies away from me for trying to provide for them and for caning them every so often… that to me is nonsense. My mama beat me and dang she beat and pinched wherever was necessary to teach me a lesson, I’m not dead so my babies won’t die.)

Beautiful just the way God made it!

As I finish, when little man was about 5 months old, we took our first matatu ride to the clinic. I was shy so I pumped and put milk in bottles for him to suckle in the matatu. Now little man refused to have the milk in a bottle, the more I tried to force him, the more he wailed. The conductor in the Nissan 14 seater got tired of the racket and said ‘Mungu hakukuwekea matiti ndio unyime mtoto, mpatie mtoto haki yake!’ (God didn’t put breasts on you so that you can deny your child, give the boy his rights!)

Of Pens And Pencils

Little man has homework!

Little man today came running out of his playgroup çlass-room’ literally flying waving an exercise book in his hand. I wasn’t very amused because my understanding of playgroup did not include homework or anything so academic. His teacher explained to me that since he seems to be more interested in what the older kids are doing in Kindergarten 1, they allow him into the kindergarten class when he wanders in and gave him a book for ‘homework’ just like the older kids to boot. His teacher/minder reasons that if he is interested, why not. So he has daily ‘homework’ which is mainly to scribble.

So we get home, play and shower and settle down for homework before dinner. Out comes the book, out comes his snack box… out comes his extra set of clothes. There is no pen or pencil. I know I bought pencils recently, and crayons. I look all over the house. No pen, no pencil, no crayons. How now does a whole house with 3 adults and 2 children lack a writing implement? Exasperated I ask the house-help if she may have seen any writing implement as she does her cleaning.

‘Ángalia kwa mitungi’, she says. We have these 20 litre containers where we store water in case of a water shortage. Many homes in Nairobi have some sort of emergency water storage or the frequent water shortages that plague our so called modern lives. Anyhoo, looking into the mitungis lo and behold, broken pencils float near the top and long sunk pens with tell-tale ink stains are at the bottom. Fragments of crayon are all around and inside the mitungis. Was sure I had pens, pens, pencils and crayons. Now that I know where they have ended up, I can’t help but wonder how little man is strong enough to break the pencils and how he managed to separate the pieces of a pen.

Meanwhile, the star of this piece, little man, has found some color pencil somewhere and has done his homework… on the wall.

Best Job Ever.... I Think

People tend to think that being a stay at home mum is like a long boring vacation where the stay at home mum has lot of time. I know this is something that we talk about a lot on so many platforms. Fact is as a stay at home mum, I have to fight myself from aggressive job hunting and remember why I chose to do this. Yes this is a choice a woman has to consciously make and reinforce every so often. This is because from where I sit, the pressures of a regular office job and the demands look like holiday. See, I’m that girl who started cooking real meals for the first time in her life while in 3^rd year. Not out of necessity but rather out of embarrassment. All the boys in my crew could cook and so much better than me. I could easily have lived off take-aways and strategic visits. My mother tried but I was more interested in my bike and the everything else far from the kitchen so do not ask what kind of mother I have… she really tried. 

Any hoo the point is, I am not particularly good at this keeping house thing. I am trying to figure it out a husband and 2 kids later. At least now I know my cooking won’t poison anyone but sometimes I just wish to be back in that high pressure newsroom. It’s so much easier than overseeing everything in the house. That’s everything from construction to gardening to house-keeping and of course the kids.

Today little man didn’t want to go to school. First he woke up late, then He didn’t want to wear his clothes. Had to bribe the guy candy by candy to get him across the road to school. Then start him off at the playground so that he can remember how much fun playschool is. 

Come back home to find baby is awake and his agenda is to play with mummy. He loves to watch mummy sing and dance for him, so she does as she changes his diapers and nurses him. He sleeps, the construction guys are here, with a long list of needs. Then the mother moment! Baby is awake, nursing construction guys need this that and some of that too, the water guy is here, he needs he wants, house-help is also demanding attention… these moment will occur at least 3 times in a day. The people may be different. The trash guy, the landscaping guy, the watchies, the groceries guy… name it. Before I sit to relax its time for little man to come home… if you have an active 2 year old you know the next break you have is when he’s asleep. But Baby is now fully awake… somewhere there hubz needs his time, supper needs to be made, served and fed, baby wants to coo and s mile with no one but you. Its 10pm the living room looks like 10 storms passed through it. I think baby might be ready for his bed now, might is the key word. I put baby down, everyone is asleep. I lie down in bed. I didn’t call… I didn’t visit my recuperating family, I didn’t get around to finishing this and that document, that other proposal is 2 lines long now, yey. Argh tomorrow I’ll try again to do everything and see how far we go.

See, the newsroom on an election day is so much easier, get your assigned story to follow, run like a maniac to get the hourly bulletin up on time for 8-10 hours at least there might be 10 minutes here for lunch, five minutes there for tea, a decent bathroom break. See? Lunch, tea, bathroom… luxuries in my current job description. Then I go out there and someone can barely hide their disappointment that you have no job or title beyond mum… jeez. For now, I will proudly be mum. 

The luxuries of a decent meal, a decent bathroom break and a relatively streamlined day will have to wait until I’m sure my babies can handle themselves for about 8 hours a day without me and can tell me all about it at the end of the day.

My Baby Grew Up

Little man went to school today. Well its playschool in a more regular and formalized manner than he’s done before. He is just shy of 2 years and 6 months. Why so early? He wanted to be out where he was hearing other children play. He’d go to the gate every time the play was especially loud and ask to be let out in his special language (He can’t really talk but we understand each other well enough). After about a month of that his daddy and I got the point. We figured that worst case scenario would be that he doesn't like it and he could always come back home seeing that the school is literally next door.

Well the point of this little write up is that its official, little man is going to school and I miss his noise terribly! There’s no one to alert me that baby is awake. No one to help me blend smoothies and fruit shakes by gleefully dropping the fruits into the blender. No one trying to ride the dog… the morning is quiet. I miss my little man. I think this is one of the hardest things about being a mom, when the baby grows faster than you are willing to let him… which is all the time, but milestones like these make it all too obvious, they are growing, and there’s nothing you can do to stop this growth as it inevitably leads to their moving out of home… before I turn into a teary momma wailing for her baby to stay home, I’m off to do something mummy like and productive… like I don’t know, bake cookies for him to carry to school tomorrow.

Meanwhile, thank God I stumbled onto this. I'm not crazy :)

Project Shower

Taking a shower with a newborn and a toddler is a long term project. Just putting it out there so that you know where I’m coming from. Also, so that you can politely ignore the fact that I may be a little ‘ripe’ or overly dry skinned when you come over.

It’s never the right time for a shower, even at 3 am in the morning. During the day, I can’t leave little man with sweet baby. Little man loves his little brother. So much so that he believes he must share everything with the baby. His food, read choke hazard; his toys, read impact; clothes, read smothering risk; the list goes on. So leaving the two unsupervised is a no-no. In his waking hours, little man is always around sweet baby. When little man is off to eat, baby is also feeding. Baby also doesn’t seem to like being left alone. If he’s asleep, he’ll wake up crying should he be left alone for more than 2 minutes. If he’s awake, well the minute I get out of his line of vision, that’s some loud desperate wails.

When one is asleep, the other wants mums total and full attention. When both are awake, there is risk in the exuberant love displayed by the older one.

Take Wednesday for instance. The idea was to shower in the morning after putting baby down for a nap and turning on baby tv for little man. As soon as I got to the bathroom door, little man had silently gotten up the stairs and was trying to ‘gotea’ his baby brother. Who woke up angry and wailing… no problem though. My ripe self will continue mummy-ing (nursing, changing diapers, cooing, burping, dancing etc etc) till they are both asleep. They both nap at around 2. So finally, I clean up little mans mess in the room, eat, take a breath of fresh air and eventually get into the bathroom. As I turn on the shower, baby man is awake and hungry/wet. So I nurse him, burp him, we stare lovingly into each others eyes for a bit then he dozes off. 

this is on a good day

Little man then wakes up and has a gazillion stories as he follows me to everywhere including into the loo… clearly the shower has to wait. Next opportunity is when little man is asleep and baby sweet is bathed and with his daddy. Daddy is too tired to stay awake. As the water hits my skin, baby realizes he is alone and his wails start getting desperate. I have no heart for it. I’ll aim for soap tomorrow.

Food Glorious Food

Sometime earlier this year I was checking out the kindergartens in my neighborhood. Little man is 2 years old, the right foundation for his education is very important. I was looking for a place where children are allowed to play first and learn later. Do you know there are kindergartens that give homework and exams to kids in playgroup? That is too foreign for me to understand so I don’t want to deal with it.

There was one particular kindergarten that stood out thanks to an interesting conversation with the owner. After a quick tour of the house/facilities, she gave me the lunch menu as the apologetically explained that some items in the menu will soon be removed after parents complained. Before she mentioned that I wasn’t even looking at the menu, so now I looked to see what these contentious issues were.

She continued to apologetically explain that she was only trying to meet the children’s dietary needs the way the met those of her own children 30 odd years ago. She continued to explain how opening the kindergarten/daycare forced to get in with the times.

irio

So the problematic foods in the menu were Matoke, Ngwaci (sweet potatoes), Ndumas (Arrow roots), Njahi, Mukimo… even ugali was a problem food! Apparently, young mothers want their babies to eat pasta, meatballs, rice, fries, cabbages (yuck! You cannot pay me to eat that tasteless mass of fibre!) and other city foods. My gosh we are a lost generation – my thoughts as she was speaking. I left having kept my shock to myself.

Days later at a salon in one of the new fashionable malls near my neighborhood, one of the ladies working on my head exclaimed her disgust when she discovered her child in kindergarten was being given stewed sweet potatoes with traditional greens cooked in milk. She said ‘I escaped from the village and left backward things like those there, my child should eat like a child from Nairobi! I pay good money for that’. Her words, not mine.

It seems to be modern is to forget or ignore everything that is not ‘urban’. I felt somewhat silly as a mother because just around that time I was trying to introduce little man to grilled bananas with milk for brekkie (if this doesn’t sound heavenly to you, I am profoundly sorry for you).

I know that there are wonderful nutritional benefits in these traditional foods but I like my food to be yummy first and healthy later. I have enjoyed roast bananas and milk since I was a child, my relationship with Ngwaci is legendary, honey glazed baked pumpkin (which my house-help thinks is madness and steers far away from). Arrow-roots are a fairly new and I’m very choosy about it. More recently I have a yearning for Mukimo with fresh maize and nettle leaves (don’t know their kikuyu name) I want my babies to enjoy that food too. But when parents threaten to pull their children out of school for offering these delicacies, I fear my kids might dislike these foods out of peer pressure. I will try though to give them the same yummy magic my mummy gave me and hope they become traditional food ambassadors someday. Besides, these foods are so healthy, there’s no point discussing the nutritional value here. Its like trying to explain why gold is precious. The way things are going, these foods are getting as hard to find and as expensive as gold anyway so the comparison is quite appropriate. On that note, where can I find nice Ndumas? The ones that cook into deep purple.

Life that Is

Magic exists you know. It’s not some fantasy relegated to children’s stories and Disney like movies. Magic is as real as the air you are now breathing. It’s as elemental as the oxygen, hydrogen and carbon molecules that clothe the air.

You want proof? Every day living and breathing proof? Look at the magic that is procreation. That a human being with all parts inside and working can come into existence from literally nothing to a one point something foot wailing individual in 9 months. That’s three quarters of a year. If that doesn’t convince you of magic then look at a baby’s eyes. Eyes so deep and intense with the knowledge of a thousand ancestors as well as a thousand descendants.

Have you noticed how babies look as old as they are young? Maybe it’s the nature of an old piece of human consciousness or soul slowly slipping away as the baby slowly and troublesomely starts to get used to his new and young mortal body. You can almost hear a grumble in the air around a new born baby ‘It is rather limiting, this body’.

Watch a baby in its first few months of life. Surely there is magic there. An old elemental magic. I like to call it life.

Poor soul, that it should live so bound. Lucky soul, that it should have purpose enough to be granted a body to walk the earth. An identity with which to build, or destroy among men. There is magic. It’s as real as the air you are breathing now.