Raising Hope

Hello folks. I trust you have been well. I can't complain either. Oh, wait...I can! But I will choose not to hehe. Instead, I will share something very interesting with you so ya'll better stick around :)

Children are a gift from God. One cannot deny the amount of joy their presence brings to a family. This brings me to what today’s post is about. I want to introduce you to someone who is very close to my heart. She changed my life. She made me better. Well, it’s not what all of you are thinking hehe. I am talking about my niece :)

So angelic. And the people say "awwwwww"

A few months ago, March to be precise, our family welcomed a beautiful baby girl. We named her ‘Hope’. She was so tiny and fragile it was almost hard to hold her without thinking you were hurting her. Her delicate cry could bring you to tears as you could not decipher why this angel was not happy. It is almost as if she was yanked from a beautiful life and damned to this cruel world and she just wanted to go back. But as the days went by, she kept on adjusting and feeling at home. And now almost six months later, she couldn’t be happier! Or maybe I should let her speak for herself? Watch this space…

Meet the youngest Noogler. LOL

Yesterday, I got to spend a lot of time with her! And it is amazing how big she has grown. You know with adults, a couple of months won’t really change your appearance (at least not naturally). However, you will realize just how long a month is when you watch a baby grow. Hope looks so different from the way she was a few months ago. And this is not only physically where she is bigger and has learnt how to sit but also behaviorally. At first she used to cry a lot, for no particular reason. But now she is mature hehe. She only cries when she is sleepy and you will know this by the way she persistently rubs her tiny eyes. If you rock her gently when she in in this state, she will fall dead asleep in a matter of minutes.

Another thing she does nowadays is laugh. Oh boy, she laughs and smiles so much that should you be in a sour mood, it will be bound to change the moment you hear her laughter. And the good thing about it is that it is so pure. Unlike adults who could be sarcastic, ironical, cynical and sinister, her laugh is genuinely from the heart. It will just warm you up and make you feel all fuzzy inside. You will know she is truly happy when she laughs out loud! Which she does almost all the time :)

'Black' tie event :)

One thing we are all anxiously waiting for and dreading at the same time is when she starts to talk! This is because we can’t wait for her to finally verbalize what she actually desires but on the other had we know once that door is opened it can never be closed again. Why, you may ask. Hehe, our family is loud. I repeat, our family is LOUD!  So when she starts talking she is going to raise the decibels in the house a notch higher. She has already started to mumble a couple of things. Nobody knows what in heaven’s name she usually talks about. But as tiny as she is, she is already so loud. It was so funny yesterday during the prime time news when she started telling us a ‘story’ and she kept raising her voice. No one could tell her to keep quiet because they wanted to concentrate on the current affairs being shown on the TV. And all I kept thinking was, “LOL, finally!” This is because I am usually the one who gets shushed all the time but now they can’t shush the baby! YEEY! I can already see the number of times she will be in the noisemakers list. And I want to tell her in advance that I am sorry! Hehe, but it comes with being part of this crazy fam of mine!

With Google shwagg

Meal times with Hope are hilarious if you are the one watching but they are a task if you are the one feeding her. She is being weaned so things like cerelac, mashed potatoes, spinach, pumpkins etc. are her thing! This baby is darn cleaver! When she is hungry she will jump at the food and eat it so well, to our delight. But the moment she feels she has had enough and doesn’t want it anymore, she will pretend to have fallen asleep. Only for you to take away the bowl and come back to find the baby wide awake and laughing. When we noticed she does this, we started insisting that she should finish her food. And when she noticed that we noticed she used to pretend to be asleep, she devised a new scheme. This included taking in the food and then spitting it out!! Oh my, it is hilarious but annoying AF!! But she is too cute and small to be punished. Just wait a couple of months; she will have it coming to her if she doesn’t change this behavior. For now, I will never feed her in my nice clothes again. Yo, you gotta be smarter than the kid.

Is this dress getting tiny, or is it just me?

As for talents, everyone in the house has something planned for this girl. If she only knew the shoes she is being prepared to fill. She is supposed to be a model, a singer/songwriter, an actress, a swimmer, skater, gymnast, mathematician, dancer, googler and I think there was president in there too. Everyone wants to live vicariously through her hehe. So my sister and I took it upon ourselves to try and make at least one of these come to pass, hence the quirky photos. We are trying to jumpstart her modeling career. Hey, it is never too early to get used to the camera. But she was so fidgety, more practice needed perhaps??

She was so happy to have those sunglasses on her head :)

Haha, by the way, those are my t-shirts. They are so big on her but she rocked them well, don’t you think? And with that bow tie, ohhh child! Work it! I hope +Pampers Baby and +Google Africa are reading this and are ready to give her a contract. And the other kids better watch out because there is a new baby in town LOL. There is Hope :)

Thank you for reading. I hope you had a nice time doing that as I had writing it. Of course there will be more to come about raising Hope; she is the beautiful gift that keeps on giving.

Have a lovely Monday.

#happydays