This one's for you mom!

Yay! Jemimah is one month old. Time really flies. But she is growing so well, but she is nursing very well so I suppose that is to be expected. And she smiles a lot too. Strange for a baby that young.

Well at my baby shower, she got this onesie that said, "If mom says no, ask grandma".
Funny thing is when I was a child (i think I was about 7) I had a shirt that said the exact same thing! My uncle got it for me when he returned from one of his many trips and he got one for my brother Ibro that said, "Here comes trouble"! I wonder if Ibro remembers :)

Dora in Cincinnati??

Soo one of my great mysteries was solved recently.
It was really hard to understand some of the words that Safiya had been uttering mostly because I was not sure which language she was speaking!!
Let me preface this by saying that Safiya absolutely LOVES Dora the Explorer (the spanish speaking cartoon that many little girls love).
Well the mystery was solved when I realized that they were spanish words! Crazy stuff. Why is my child speaking Spanish?

Anyway, dear Safiya also loves to sing the Dora theme song and has Dora pajamas and Dora underwear, a Dora toothbrush and Dora sunglasses, you name it. She really loves her some Dora. She also is a big Elmo fan, but that is a topic for another day.

Well she went to the post office with Musa and there was a little Mexican looking girl with a pink tshirt and shorts and a hairdo just like Dora!!! Guess what? Safiya started pulling her Dad's hand in her direction and saying "Dora, Dora" and started singing the Dora song!! Talk about embarassing. Safiya thought her favourite TV character was live in front of her and her Daddy would not let her talk to Dora. Too funny.

Reminds me of a story that my parents told me. When I was a little girl I saw a white man with long brown hair and I thought he was Jesus!! jeesh.

Kids. There is never a dull moment is there? haha.

Congrats Bro!!

Just wanted to take a second to send a shout out to my little brother Ibrahim Faruk! He just graduated with bachelors degree in Political Science from the University of Jos and turned 22 on the 24th of May!!
Way to go brother.
Proud of you

Rice Cooker?

I am one of those people who just loves kitchen appliances.

So the husband came home the other day with a rice cooker and a crockpot! I was very happy with the crockpot because I have always wanted one of those and somehow we never bought one. Now the rice cooker, I am not so sure about.
I have always cooked rice the old fashioned way on a stove, in a pot and have not had any major problems. The concept of a rice cooker just seems like a waste of kitchen counter space. Seriously am I just old fashioned and afraid of change?
Maybe someone can convince me that rice cookers are a necessity in the kitchen.

What I really want is one of those KitchenAid Mixers!!! I love those things. Maybe it is because I like to bake. Yeah they are expensive but they are soooo cool. I would gladly trade the rice cooker for one of those :) The mixer I have now is a cheapy but it gets the job done.

Maybe someday when I have my dream kitchen with a little island in the middle, I will get my KitchenAid as well!!. Yes, dreams do come true :)

Park Pics

Park Walkers!

On Saturday, we took Jemimah on her first trip to the park. We went with Celeste and Clement (good friends of ours) and had a good time!!

Everyone then thought it would be fun to climb trees!! Usually, I would have been right up there with them ... but i doubt my doctor would be happy to hear that i was climbing trees three weeks after having a baby!

Life is fleeting

I just returned from a funeral a couple of hours ago and there was barely a dry eye in the church.
Jane Hall was 79 years old and a wonderful woman that I am blessed to have known and whose friendship I cherished. I used to work in a nursing home and I got to love and care for many of the elderly people that I was looking after and it was always hard to watch them die. I never got used to it.

I met Jane Hall in church though. We sang in the choir together and she was just a wonderful person who made everyone around her feel loved. She was one of those people who just had tremendous passion for life and treated every day as a gift from God to be cherished and enjoyed to full capacity. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in mid February and was given almost a year to live but did not make it that long unfortunately.

Today, I was reminded of how fleeting this life is and how important it is to cherish every day that God blesses us with. Sometimes tragedy occurs and there is nothing we can do but accept that their is a Higher Purpose of it all.

May her legacy live on, and as I mourn her death, I also celebrate her life and I pray this prayer...

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things that I can
and the wisdom to know the difference
Amen"

Happy Mother's day to me!!

And a Happy Mother's day to all the mothers out there. Sunday was my first mother's day with two children and it was a good one. I got flowers and a gift. I was actually supposed to get a diamond necklace but the money for that was used to fill the car's gas tank instead!! Okay, I'm just playing... I was not going to get a diamond necklace. But seriously, the price of gas is just ridiculous. At least now people are walking a lot more instead of driving. If things continue like this, America will be considerably skinnier by the end of the summmer :)
Not a terrible side effect of the terrible economy I guess. At least now people are learning to appreciate all that they used to take for granted.

I need new glasses!

The other night, I left my glasses on the side table in the living room. Well little miss Safiya woke up before everyone else and went on a destructive rampage in the living room. She usually comes and wakes one of us if she wakes up first but not this morning.
So Musa heard the ruckus and came to see what little miss was up to. She really did not destroy much but managed to break my glasses into three pieces!! The situation is beyond super glue intervention. Thankfully, I have almost a year supply of contact lenses but sometimes my eyeballs are tired and I need my glasses. oh what's a girl to do now? Money for new glasses isn't exactly growing on a tree just now.

and more pictures of the girls

Kissy sister

I just love being a mother of two!! I was not sure I would have enough love in my heart for my growing family but I do. God is love so it would not make sense if we do not have enough love, that would mean we do not have enough God :)

Safiya is a wonderful big sister so far. We are a rather kissy family and it is so so cute to see Safiya kiss her little sister over and over again through out the day. And she does it so gently like she understands that babies are fragile and require gentle kisses :)
Or she puts her cheek against her sisters cheek and just holds it there for a few seconds. Too cute. They seem to look very alike too.
No sibling rivalry just yet and I hope it stays that way.

Everytime Jemimah gets the hiccups, Safiya starts laughing like it is the funniest thing ever. Watching them just cracks me up with laughter as well.

pictures

Dad has been great with diaper duty!!!
Safiya loves her new baby!!
Dad is in love with all his girls.
What more can I ask for??
God is good.

YAY!!!

So what kind of person blogs from a hospital bed? I guess someone stamped crazy on my forehead!! Thank God for free wireless internet in Cincinnati hospitals :)

Well I finally had my baby girl and I just think she is beautiful. I am in love with this new addition to my life, I feel like my heart will burst. It's just wonderful. Her name is Jemimah Zigwai Tukurah and I just cannot describe her well enough so just look at the pictures. Zigwai means "thank you" in Musa's language Bajju, and that's what we are - grateful to God for her life.

Musa and I went into the hospital at 1pm on Wednesday (April 30th) to be induced. And sat in the waiting room for an hour!! Crazy stuff. Before we left to the hospital, I left Safiya with a good friend Celeste. The crazy kid just walked off without saying bye and giving me a kiss. I was upset that it did not seem like she was going to miss me :) She did great though. Celeste said she did not cry once although she did break her coffee pot. tsk tsk. Obnoxious: that child of mine.

Oh well, back to my labour story... I was finally checked into a room and the nurse midwife came in a broke my bag of water at 2:30pm. I was already 5cm dilated before they broke the bag of water. She decided to just let my body do it's thing without any additional hormones and see if my body is ready to go without Pitocin.
A good friend from church who's also my choir director Miriam was also there to give support. So we all sat talking and generally having fun till the real painful contractions began at about 5:30pm. My plan was to go natural without pain medication so I used a birthing ball and hubby was there to massage my back and apply counter pressure while Miriam was holding my hand and helping me breathe through it. They were great!
By 7:15 pm I felt so ready to push. I felt like the kid was about to fall out!! I kept saying, "I need to push. Let me push".
After about 15minutes of pushing, Miss Jemimah was here with about an inch of hair!!! No I am not one of those women who yells at their husbands while in labour. I was just so glad to push her out of me. It felt like a really big painful poop that needed to come out now :)

She weighed 6pounds 10.1 ounces and was 20 inches long! I thought she would be bigger considering how long she was in there. looks just like Safiya! It was quite an ordeal and I thank God for everything!! I'm just overjoyed. I love my new family of four !!!!