I’m 14 weeks!!

My name is Melina. I’m 14 weeks old. You probably know my mum. She gave me that pet name but I don’t like it much. Not that I like a lot of things though… For starters, I don’t like medicine. Sweet or not, it makes no difference, I just hate the taste. I also hate it when someone tries to wipe /clean my neck. I know I’ll stink if someone doesn’t do it, but that’s not the point. The point is that wiping someone’s neck is just rude.

I’ve come a long way though. I remember back in the day when I didn’t like taking a bath. I would cry and cry and cry. And then my old lady convinced me that as a girl, I either like it, or I like it. Left with no choice, I warmed up to the idea of taking a bath every single day. But that does not mean that I have to like dressing. Rest assured that I’ll raise a ruckus if you try to dress me. Cloths suck!

Recently, my mum went back to work. She leaves me alone. Ok, she leaves me with aunty. The bad thing is, I really miss my parents when they are gone. The good thing is, I have my aunty twisted around my little finger and she does whatever it is that I want her to do. For instance, everybody knows that being held while someone is seated is not so much fun. Fun is when someone stands and sways you from side to side. Now that’s what I like. Aunty does that very well. Not that I give her a choice.

I’m sleepy now, but I’ll be telling you a lot more about the things I love like pooping, and eating, and crying.

Did I tell you that farting is really painful? Well, it is. And so is sleep.

Meet Melina

You know how you meet someone you last saw like 10 years ago and you have no idea how to start a conversation without making a fool of yourself, well that is exactly how I feel. So much has happened since we last saw each other.

Remember the bun that was in the oven, it cooked already; I have the most amazing 9 weeks old daughter. Melina is her name. Not her real name though. Melina is the closest I could come up with seeing that her African name means honey, and Melina is its Greek equivalent.

Going through with pregnancy, giving birth and watching the young one grow is nothing short of a miracle. I remember people asking how I felt when I was expecting. Does is feel heavy? Are the kicks painful? Do you have any cravings? Are you scared of the labor and such and I always gave the same answer.

You see, one is pregnant for a whole nine months. The sickness, cravings, tiredness and even getting bigger all happen gradually. This gives the body time to get used and appreciate the new, though sometimes very awful, feelings as the new normal. I totally forgot how normal used to feel like. How it was like being able to tie my own shoes or eat beef or onions without puking my guts out. And now that all that is behind me, I barely remember how it used to feel like being pregnant. Heck, I even stare at the pregnant women the same way people used to stare at me with questions on their faces.

When the 40 long weeks were over, my body did yet another amazing thing. It endured the most unbearable pain it had ever been subjected to and brought forth a beautiful baby girl.

And here are answers to some of the questions I’ve been asked time and time again.

How did you feel when you realized you were pregnant?

I’d say overwhelmed. No matter how ready you are for a baby, the reality brings with it a rollercoaster of emotions. One minute I’d be crying, the next I’d be so happy, the next I’d be scared shitless, and the next I’d be laughing hysterically. It’s all so weird. The men on the other hand are more terrified, but better at hiding it. Boyfriend looked totally composed. I only learnt later, way much later, that he was more terrified than I was.

Any Complications?

Every woman is different. Mine was rather smooth. But I’d be lying if I said that the first three months weren’t a nightmare. Everything smelt bad. Perfume, beef, pilau, onions, samosas… And the normally nasty smells like sweat smelt 100 times worse. I was also so tired. This is attributed to the fact that in the first 10 weeks, the placenta is not yet ready to take over its tasks which means that your body does all the work. I’d relate the feeling to how one feels when on acute malaria medication.

Then there’s another uncomfortable feeling you get in the stomach every 30 minutes. Like when one has amoeba. This requires one to eat constantly. I carried bananas everywhere I went.

How does it feel? Heavy?

Like I said, you don’t wake up one morning and find your stomach has extended to your nose. It happens slowly and is therefore not as bad. Sometimes you feel heavy though, mostly after sitting for too long, but most times I barely felt the difference.

I’d say that sleeping was the trickiest part. And you can only sleep on your left side. Woe unto you if you get tired.

Cravings?

I did not crave anything in particular, but I liked ripe bananas, omena and Tusky’s loaf.

How bad was labor?

Someone once described giving birth to trying to pull your lower lip over your head. Painful, right? Well, wrong. I’d watched delivery videos prior to labor so as to know what to expect, but I was surprised to find out that compared to labor, pushing is simply a walk in the park. Labor was so painful that when it came pushing, the pain was barely there. And when I saw my baby, I forgot completely.

It’s crazy that I now ask boyfriend, ‘Did it look that bad?’

And the answer he gives tells me that he felt more pain than I did.

But I must say that it was a lot better than I expected.

How’s motherhood?

Breathtaking

Melina fills my heart with so much joy that I cannot even begin to explain.

There’s this feeling you get to have the absolute responsibility of someone so tiny that they cannot even tell you what it is that they want. How good it feels watching her trust that you’ll meet all her needs, learning to understand her language, and being ready to do anything under the sun to make sure that she’s happy.

P.S. Boyfriend is now Hubby; I call him that coz it makes me feel young.

Hormones

A friend of mine was wedding last Saturday and I easily convinced boyfriend to accompany me. The wedding was nice and all but come lunch time, the plates were not enough for all of us. Other than wait and queue with the rest who included small kids, we decided to go buy food someplace else. Boyfriend was a little a lot hungry and his ulcers were getting the better of him. Either that or I was imagining my own things. Bottom line, one minute we’re standing at a French fries stand and the next we’re having a heated argument about, well…, French fries. The details of that argument are not important, but the bottom line is, I did something that surprised even me.

I’m normally very good when it comes to winning arguments. I’ll take a very light argument, make it personal, argue like my life depended on it, get angry if I have to(which is basically most of the times) and finally stop talking to whoever am arguing with like any mature person would do. This is especially worse if we’re arguing about gender balance. Let’s not even go there.

So this day I’m so angry I want to throw the fries that I’m carrying away. Then without warning, I start crying. No, not weeping softly into my handkerchief, no. I’m talking about wailing loudly while tears and all other unmentionable fluids roll down my face.  I’m wiping my face messily with the back of my hand while I tell boyfriend rather loudly exactly how I feel. People are staring and I don’t care. He’s taken by surprise. He apologizes. I’m not even listening. He now thinks it’s funny and starts laughing and I cry a little bit harder and a little bit louder…

That has now been my life since boyfriend and I decided that we wanted to have a baby. I now do things that would make me cringe on a normal day.I’ll tell you all about that in coming posts.

And talking of boyfriend, I thought about replacing that word with a better one like say ‘baby’s daddy’ or ‘husband to soon be’ but he went and did something that made me change my mind.

I was in the kitchen eating (I do that a lot lately) when I heard him laughing from somewhere in the house. The polite thing to do would have been to ask what was funny, but I knew better. Knowing him the way I do, I knew that he’d have said that he just remembered a part in ‘How I met your Mum’; a part he’d probably made me watch like 17 times. And then he’d tell it to me all over again, and when I didn’t laugh he’d think that I’m not getting the joke. And I’d try to explain that I got the joke alright, and in fact thought that it was totally hilarious the first three times we watched it but after the 13^th time hearing about it, and the 9^th time watching it, the joke sort of stopped being so funny. I’d end the explanation with the classic line, ‘Maybe it’s just me…’

You see, it’s too much work. And who needs to go through that? Seeing that I was ignoring him, he laughed again, louder this time round. Before my mind could even remind my mouth to not say a word, I heard myself ask him whether he’d like to share the joke. He did. What followed was not funny at all.

Him: I was just reading your last blog post. How come you’re so funny on the blog and not funny at all in real life?

I thought he was kidding and expected him to wink twice when I looked at him. But when I did, what I saw was an innocent face staring right back at me. His expression said that he was waiting for an answer

I happen to be very good with comebacks. In fact my mind was spinning.

I could have told him to get off my blog and go read a particular one I felt would be appropriate for him at http://www.youarealsonotfunnybutyoudonthearmesayingittoyourface.com, but I didn’t.

I could have told him, ‘But look who’s now stuck with me for the rest of his life. You still think you’re so funny?’ But I didn’t.

Or I could have taken the high road; tell him to shut up while I ran away crying, but I still didn’t.

Instead, I had a smile on my face as I thought,’ Forget the cute names, I’ll continue calling you boyfriend on my blog.’

Who’s laughing now?

Guess What.,

Most of you have been writing to me, threatening to come to my house and light my cats on fire if I don’t post soon. And this is the point where I stand to say that I do not own a single cat, I swear. You’re welcome to do anything else to me though (like throw stinking eggs at my door), but am sure once I explain what I’ve been up to, you’re instantly forgive me. Hopefully…  :-)

You see, I’ve been busy, and tired, and sick (sort of) but mostly busy.

‘Doing what?’ you ask.

Well, ‘This and that.’

Especially this…

Yes, that’s a bun in the oven.

DIY Gone Bad

There once were two little bears. Though they liked each other very much, the cubs were both very competitive and selfish.

One day as they were playing in the ice, they found a big, juicy fruit. The only problem was that each wanted to have the fruit by himself. They therefore argued over who was entitled to the fruit until a fox came to their rescue.

‘How about you share the fruit?’ he suggested to them.

And they liked the idea.

So the fox split the fruit into two but when he was about to give it to them, he realized that one half was bigger than the other. Again, the bears started fighting over who’d get the bigger share.

But the cunning fox had a solution. He told them that he’d make the pieces equal by biting a tiny piece from the bigger fruit. And he did! But his bite was rather too big, making the remaining piece smaller than the initially smaller piece.

Again, the cubs started fighting and the fox offered to help one more time….

Long story short, the fox ate the entire fruit long before the stupid cubs even realized what was going on.

You’d think that am smarter than the cubs. Well, you’re wrong…

It all started like a month ago, I was in the salon consulting my hair dresser. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, since I realized that I know so little about hair. I didn’t know that treating hair with ‘protein’ makes it stronger, or that hair freezes at times, or that hair too needs to be moisturized! Who’d have thought of that?

Well, so I’m there explaining to him how I don’t like plaiting hair for I really hate un-doing it and he suggests something I had not thought of. ‘Why don’t you put on a weave for a few weeks?’

It sounded like a very intelligent idea, but I’ve heard that guys don’t like synthetic hair. I therefore asked boyfriend whether he’d mind my trying out the look. He told me that he’d be okay so long as the weave was not shiny.

I shopped for the weave in advance. For an average lady, it was, well… averagely priced. But not for me, I felt like it had cost me an arm and three toes. But not to worry, I was changing my look and looking good is all that mattered.

And that’s how Easter’s Sunday found me in the salon having my brand new hair fixed. The expensive ‘human’ hair did not disappoint. By the time I was back in the house, I looked like a million hundred bucks.

My hair had never been so long and beautiful and I kept telling anyone who cared to listen boyfriend just that. It’s not like I wanted to brag or anything, no, but the hair just found ways of coming up in every conversation; and I just could not help it.

We’d be watching the weather forecast and I’d go like, ‘You just don’t know how hard it is to have long hair on a windy day, it keeps covering your face….’

Or I’d see a detergent advert on telly and I’d be like, ‘I don’t know how I’ll be washing my clothes. You know when you have hair as long as mine, but never mind… you wouldn’t get it; yours is short.’

This went on the whole evening. I would tell boyfriend how awesome it is to have beautiful hair, and then I would look at myself in the mirror, then comb it , and then I’d look at it in the mirror before talking about it a little more.

Those who know me well will tell you that I have very itchy fingers that just want to fix things. There’s a medical term for that, itchiosis or fixialism, am not so sure. It’s basically a condition where your brain convinces your fingers that they can fix anything- including airplanes. (But don’t quote me.) This will explain what happened next…

After trying all the styles I could think of, a thought struck my mind, ‘How about I cut it a little, and I’ll have a new style all together.’

You have to understand that this was the very day that the hair had been made. Seeing the devilish smile on my face, boyfriend immediately knew what was going on in my mind. And the poor guy tried to stop me, ‘Look, don’t do anything tragic, I really like this look. So just keep it for the next two weeks and after that, you can cut it and have a different look. But don’t do it yourself, let the hair dresser do it. ’

And in my head I was thinking, ‘what does he know about hair?’ As it turned out, he knew more than I did!

The following day was Easter Monday and I was not going to work.  Bored from all the hair talk, I think, boyfriend left for the gym in the morning. I had the house hair to myself and the whole day to decide what I would do with it. I therefore tried several styles and in the end, I came to the realization that I had been right the day before. The hair did need to be trimmed a little.

And trimming I did!

It was easy; I just held it into a ponytail, reached behind my head and propelled the scissors into action. When I was done, I took the mirror, closed my eyes and opened them slowly hoping to see a perfectly dressed head staring back at me. What I saw almost made me scream…

I turned the mirror round and round looking for the ‘undo’ button but I could not find it. All I saw was this…

This time my eyes popped out!

Realizing that I could not ‘Ctrl Z’, I took my phone and made a call to boyfriend, ‘I just did something stupid …’ I told him, explaining my predicament.

He told me to not do a thing; he’d come and fix my mess. Again, I should have listened.

The following is a demonstration of what happened next…

I could see that I was on the right path, now if only I could trim it a little on the left… And I did.

What the hell??? Anyway, no need to panic. You can still rock this look Cess. You just need to relax. Breath in, out, in, out… Now cut on the right side…

After this, I knew that it was time to quit.

And that is how I managed to ruin my most expensive hairdo in less than 16 hrs!

Dear Diary

I know I’ve not been me lately, I barely seem to have time for you and it must look like I don’t even care about you anymore…

Truth is, it’s that time of the year when you wake up and realize that you don’t know what to say anymore, or even how to say it.

No. Nothing’s wrong, in fact I’m very much ok. I guess it’s just a phase.

I can compensate by posting stuff from other blogs, but I’ve even stopped reading… How sad?

I can however promise that this will not last for long. And when that happens, you’ll be the first one to know.

Bye for now.

Yours faithful,

Stand For Kenya!

We are extremely proud to be Kenyan!
We are proud of our beautiful country!
We are proud of our diversity cultures and traditions!
We are proud of our heroes!
We are proud of our high achievers!
We are proud of being hustlers!
We are proud of our hoods!
We are proud of our tribes and twengs!
We are proud of our kanges and our mats!
We are proud of our artists and musicians!
We are proud of our industries and farms!
We are proud of our sports teams!

On the 28th of February 2012 at 1pm, wherever you are, at work, in the supermarket, in traffic, in school, on campus, in hospitals, in churches, in mosques, in temples, in synagogues, on sports pitches, in court, on your farm, at police stations, at armed forces barracks, in matatus, in buses, on the beach, in the game parks, at the airport, in parliament, in State House, in your homes ..

On the 28th of February 2012 at 1pm, we stand
On the 28th of February 2012 at 1pm, we unite
On the 28th of February 2012 at 1pm, we shall speak in one voice.

On the 28th of February 2012 at 1pm, let’s sing our beautiful and powerful National Anthem, all three verses.
On the 28th February 2012 the world will watch as Kenyans stand UNITED;
1pm, 1 nation, 1 people, 1 anthem, united in 1 prayer for 1 Kenya
We are Kenya!