He will be the death of me

T is getting very confident and daring right now and I am not sure I am enjoying the transition at all.When he is not treating everything around him including myself like a jungle gym at the playground, he is running, jumping and just driving me near crazy with his daredevil antics. Just this evening I took him to the park and within 30 minutes of being there he had fallen flat on his face twice, banged his head on a ride and tripped on the slide thrice from jumping off it; all these while I was screaming and running about frantically making sure he was playing nicely and carefully. But boys always have to be boys and when I tell him not to do something he does exactly that. Don't climb the slide; he goes and climb it laughing. That is for boys bigger than you; he goes and play with it and screams 'look I did it' afterwards. Can you watch where you are going; he keeps looking at me and walking away until boom, he walks into something. At times I just want to chain him down or wrap him in cotton wool but I know I can't and the feeling that he could hurt himself is wrecking havoc on my mind. Watching him play this evening, my heart was beating so fast as I wondered if we would leave the playground heading home for dinner or in an ambulance to A&E. He was so bold and rowdy I was shaken a couple of times by what he did. Someone pass me a pace maker for my heart. Oh the joys of raising a boisterous and active young child!

RIP Daniel Pelka

If you haven't heard about the sad story of Daniel Pelka, then you must have been living under a rock. I was just watching it on the news and it brought so much sadness to my heart that a mother would do that to her own child when she was meant to be his biggest protector. How could she live with herself knowing she, and her boyfriend, killed that boy? And then she tried to cover it up and lie in court. What a sad and tragic ending for such a young innocent soul. God rest him in peace!

Boys Vs. Girls

Although I am open to raising a baby girl, I have to admit I reckon raising a baby boy is easier. Pink dresses and all that frills which I don't particularly enjoy doing aside, when it comes to potty training especially when you are out in public, boys sure must be easier to manage and deal with than girls. I was just out with T in a playground and he had the urge to go; he's out of nappies now in the daytime BTW. There was no toilet around so we found a corner, whipped his trousers down and he went about his business discreetly. Pretty simple and straightforward I suppose. Moments later, a young girl was screaming she had to go and her mum had to drag her out of the playground to find somewhere more secluded and private. By the time they'd made it to the gate, the poor girl had done a wee-wee on herself. It had me thinking gosh it must be the whole nine yards to fully potty train a girl.

You know your son might be a born and bred Nigerian when...

...He runs around the house jumping and singing simply because he is about to eat Garri soaked in water. It is not exactly triple chocolate cookie my love so calm down!

Living with a toddler

Want to know what it feels like to live with a toddler? This video basically sums it up

Love this!

A dying trend

Still on the Facebook/social media issue, was anyone thinking what I was thinking when Beyonce released that adorable picture now aptly called 'diva in training', via tumblr? I was thinking wow, that is going to be a thing of the past considering how we all share pictures of our children online now. Times do change but it is such a shame that the days when childhood pictures were tucked away in some dusty old album on the shelf are fast disappearing. These days they are readily available online to anyone because we the parents have put them there. I sense a lot of embarrassed red-faces in the future. Stars and celebrities of tomorrow better be worried indeed.

A letter to Facebook

Dear Facebook,

You are bad for my blogging. You are so bad, you take all the issues and topics I want to blog about and turn them into short, snappy quick status updates. This is why I have now deleted you off my phone and I will only access you via my PC. That way if I have something meaningful to say while on the go I can dwell and marinade on it and hopefully turn it into a purposeful piece to blog about instead of just another quick update that will quickly disappear down other people's timelines.

I do appreciate how you have changed and revolutionized the way I use and share information of course. Thanks to you I can upload pictures or share status updates about what is going on with me in London and my friends and family who live on the other side of the globe can access it at the touch of a button. Pretty awesome I think but that aside, your accessibility is bad for my blogging and therein lies our problem. We will continue to work on our relationship of course and I will not abandon you (at least not yet). I do hope you understand.

Sincerely,

Daddy