Momcation

A friend recently went away with her sisters for a weekend. I saw a photo of her and she looked absolutely radiant and free and it reminded me of the woman I knew her to be before their little bugs came along. It also reminded me of the Momcation that I took last year and it was something that I wanted to blog about.

The inspiration for my momcation came from this article.

I had the idea in my head and I am lucky enough to have friends that live in CT and I contacted them to ask if I could crash on their couch. Plane ticket booked and off I went. Being surrounded by 3 kids I crave silence and the need to do what I want at my own leisure. I kissed all of them good-bye and got into an Uber with just an overnight bag and not a care in the world. The experience was life changing.

When Anees was born and I was depressed I was the type of mother that could not leave him overnight.I needed him to be with me. How could I entrust anyone else to look after him overnight? I was his mother, only I could do things “perfectly” the way he needed things to be done. I could not let go. I was riddled with anxiety. My life was defined by him needing me. That’s what I lived for. If I left him overnight and he was OK what would I live for then? I don’t think I am articulating these feelings very well. What I can tell you is that I can feel the lump in my throat rising as I relive those painful years. Being Anees’s mother was my sole purpose in life. It really did consume me. I have learnt to rediscover who Nasima is and what she likes and I have learnt to fall in love with her again. I needed to. I’ve realised that the kids really do grow quickly and I can’t be living for them because the older they get the less they need me and then where would that leave me? I hope that in learning to love myself and make myself a priority they will learn to do the same for themselves.

I first “travelled” without the kids on my 35th Birthday last year. My darling adventurous friend Suanne suggested a day trip to Durban to celebrate my birthday at the beach. At first I was hesitant. It seemed so “indulgent” and I had to quieten all the voices in my head that said it wasn’t possible and that gave me 10 reasons/excuses not to do it.WE DID IT!!! Su picked me up at 5 am in the morning and we giggled and laughed all the way to the airport. We touched down and headed straight to the beach where we spent the day lying in the sun, talking, napping, laughing, getting washed over by the waves. It was one of the best days of my life. It made me crave more.

  
  
  

My trip to CT was even more life  changing. I got to learn to enjoy my own company. I did not want my friends to pick me up from the airport or do anything for me. I wanted to explore CT by myself and know what its like to get around on my own and do things for myself. Of course they would hear nothing of it!! They picked me up from the airport but let me dictate the events of the weekend. Even though they were with me all the time they are the type of friends that I can just be quiet with. We can sit in silence in our own thoughts. We stayed out and danced until the wee hours of the morning and had lazy long dinners and lunches. We slept almost half the day away after the night of dancing, did a McDonald’s run in our pj’s. I dragged them to the beach in the cold. I can still giggle when I think of that weekend. A guy even slipped me his number when I checked in for my flight at CT International! LOL! I’m so blessed to have such amazing and phenomenal woman in my life who love and appreciate me. Thank you to Suanne, Zaida and Gyri for inspiring me and encouraging me. I look forward to many more trips like these!

 

  
  
  
  
  
  

Book yourself on a Momcation if you havent had one yet! trust me this kids will be fine! Most importantly you will come back refreshed and energized and be willing to take on anything your kids have to throw at you 😉

 

Mwah!!!!

Howdy…

I awoke this morning with an intense need to blog. There’s been a lot going on and I have just become overwhelmed by all that has happened and all that I have achieved and how I have grown. I didn’t have anytime to blog today because it was a crazy busy day at work. I am sitting here now at the boys swimming lesson and I have a million words running through my head. 

I just read through my last blog post and it made me smile because it reminded me of how much I actually love writing. 

We are heading off on a family vacation tomorrow. We are off to the the Wild Coast Sun and San Lameer. I have memories of going there with my dad and look forward to making new memories with my little family. 

I have been feeling overwhelmed today because I find I am finally coming to terms with the capacity of my mental strength and physical strength too. All my little hopes and dreams start as an idea in Natasha’s little room and now as I sit here I realize that I am one focused and determined cookie and the sky is the limit! 

I want to work out with a personal trainer and lose a few kilos I said. Here I sit 18kgs lighter in a size 8 jeans and much to my surprise able to leg press 80kgs on my first attempt. I am still training with Charley once a week and looked at him like he was mad when he told me to get onto the leg press machine. I did the calculations and laughed and told him to remove some of the plates because there was no way I was going to manage the 80kgs. He urged me on and much to my surprise I Managed 3 sets of 10reps with relative ease. I can’t tell you how empowering it is to constantly learn new things about your body. The high that you feel when you achieve something that you think you can’t. I look forward to more sessions with Charley and learning more about how strong my body actually is.

The other little thing that overwhelmed me was this little thought I had in the back of my head about leaving the kids to go overseas for a 10 year wedding anniversary celebration. Zaid and I will be together for 15 years at the end of the month. I mentioned it to Natasha last year and lo and behold things are in place and we are off to spend some much needed QT on an island by ourselves next month. We have never left the kids before. I  am pleased to announce that I have absolutely no anxiety about leaving them and I am not the least bit convernded that they will not cope with out us. They will go to school and will be looked after by people who love them and I think they are actually a little bit excited lol. 

I hope my kids look at me when they are older and say that I taught them how to really live. I hope they say that I taught them self love. I hope that they say with pride that my mom showed us that anything is possible if we are prepared to work for it. 

I hope that my little story will inspire you to go after what you dream of. Dont wait for the kids to be older or xy and z to fall into place. Work towards your dreams and find a support group of people who can help you realize them ❤️❤️❤️

Mind,Body and Soul

I’ve been training for the last 2 years I think. I originally started going to gym because Natasha thought it would help with my depression. Having some “down time” would help me cope with all the emotions that I was overwhelmed by. I started with the spinning classes and remember wanting to cry during that first class. Not because it was too difficult but because the first time in a long time I was finally able to shut down my mind and run away from the voices in my head. I got lost in the music and it was an evening class so the lights were turned off too and on that night I found a sanctuary in my crazy, emotionally charged, guilt ridden, lonely world. I continued to spin and even got myself some cleats and it took my classes and fitness levels to a whole new level. I used to spin almost 7 days a week because having that hour to myself became tantamount to my sanity.

I then started testing my fitness levels by running road races. I absolutely loath running. I might have ventured out on the odd jog around the block but it never did it for me. When i ran my first 10 km I did it to test my fitness levels but most importantly to test my mental strength. I fell during that race and had Zaid by my side to pick me up, dust me off, wipe away my tears and wobble with me to the finish line. I’m smiling as I remember that race. Although I wasn’t smiling on the day. I cried as I crossed the finish line. I felt as if I had run the comrades LOL. I couldn’t fathom that I had just run 10km even though I despised running. I only entered the races after that to see if I could better my time and so far I have accomplished that.

After Liyana was born I knew I was up for another mental and physical challenge. I was eager to drop some of the baby weight. I had been to a few of Charley’s classes and was considering signing up with him for a few sessions. I approached him one Monday night to discuss the possibility of signing up with him. He said “I’m available now”. I made a conscious decision to try to always come from a place of yes and without hesitating I said “OK lets train”. I will never forget that night and how out of my comfort zone I felt. I left him huffing and puffing 50 minutes later tearing up from the excitement of what lied ahead. I thought I would stick with him for a month. 2 weeks later I decided to tell him that I would sign up with him for 2 months. I got stronger with every session. I remember leaving the gym crying on the odd occasion because with Charley you are never allowed to get into a comfort zone. He is constantly challenging you. Without even realizing it I progressed from the  5 kg sandbag to the 10kg one and I managed to use the 15kg bag for shoulder rotations on Friday.EEEEKKKKKK!!! I couldn’t do a sit up to save my life and now I can do 200 maybe 300 at a push all while catching and throwing a 5kg ball to Charley. I was terrified of box jumps and managed to jump 750 on Friday too. I needed to write about this. I need to process it because I still find it difficult to wrap my head around the fact that I AM CAPABLE OF DOING ALL OF THESE THINGS. When I get a new instruction from Charley my first response is “NO that’s too difficult” and then I do it and he points out that all I need is an attitude adjustment. I need to stop doubting my strength. Zaid had the same conversation with me last night. You might get sick of seeing my workout videos on social media. Sorry for you. Feel free to unfollow me LOL!! I have decided to continue my sessions with Charley until December so you will probably be bombarded with a lot more videos as I go from strength to strength. I am already contemplating what I am going to do next year and I’ve always been a water baby and I think I want to go back to swimming lessons.

I think part of my success with this training is due to the 6 years of hard labour in the therapy room. I laid the foundation there. I am on my way to achieving peace and serenity with my mind, body and soul.

If I can do it so can you.

xxx

First Day of School Pics

Anees awoke at 6am on Wednesday with the biggest smile on his face asking if its time to go to school! He had the best first day and was so proud of himself.

Can’t believe that we have 13 years of this school journey ahead of us. I hope to post a pic on the first day of school for the next 13 years 😉 I think that will be a sweet memento for him to look back on when he’s older and maybe share with his kids one day 😉

And he’s in underpants! Hey presto!

I’ve never consciously tried to potty train my boys. I took it at their pace and only ever addressed the need to get out of diapers until they have expressed an interest in doing it. Yes I’ve seen the cashiers at Dischem roll their eyes at me when they see me buying 2 packs of nappies in different sizes. This is our 6th year of buying nappies! (The thought just hit me now!) The cashiers always ask how old are the kids and when I say that he’s 3 and a half or 4 I can see the look of horror in their eyes! Both boys never showed an interest in underpants and I wasn’t the least bit phased. Anees only also a started wearing underpants after he was 3 but only came off the night after after he was 4 or even maybe closer to 5. I knew that he would not be wearing nappies to primary school so I never pressurized him or actively tried to get him off the nappy. I had learnt my lesson with his dummy and I knew that eventually physiology would take over and he would just not want to wear it any more.

Rameez’s potty training story has been an absolute breeze. When he started school at the end of last year he asked about it and so we put on Anees’ old underpants for him. He would have an accident and then be put off it for a week or 2 and say that he’s NEVER gonna wear underpants. LOL! He would ask to wear it on the odd occasion but I could tell that somehow it felt like he was doing it out of pressure and the desire to be like the other kids at school, he wasn’t ready.

For the last week or 2 he’s been bothered by his nappy. You could see it was uncomfortable and I had a feeling that the end of his nappy days were close. On Wednesday he went to school in his nappy and came home to say that he’s going to wear underpants to school on Thursday. He awoke early and took the nappy off himself and put his underpants on to go to school. He wore it the entire morning. He came home beaming. He then had a few accidents at home but for the first time it didn’t bother him as much. When he used to have accidents before he would start to ‘HATE’ underpants. Yes this is his nature! Lol! Since Friday he’s been in underpants and accident free. He even ventured into the public toilets today while we were out at a birthday party today.He was so pleased to go into woolies and choose his own underpants instead of having to wear his brother’s hand me downs! Lol! He’s been trying them on since he bathed and modeling in them. Telling us that now he can run faster because he’s not wearing a nappy anymore! lol! Rameez you are such a crazy character. Mwah!

On Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Khalil Gibran

I’ve always loved this!
xxx

Excitement!!

Tomorrow is Anees’ first day at “Big School”. He will be starting Grade R. I have been inundated with questions about how I am holding up on the brink of this momentous occasion. Thank you for the concern 😉 I can happily report that my feelings range from non chalance to excitement and there is no sadness or anxiety. I share only in his joy and excitement because for me, this is his journey and not mine. I am not sad that my first born or “baby” is growing up. I am always keen and happy for new adventures that we face as he tries to steer his way through this thing called Life.

Anees is over the moon. We spent the afternoon shopping for new school paraphernalia and I only hope that he always has this enthusiasm. He came home and had to try everything on and it was the sweetest thing. I know he will be up at the crack of dawn nagging to get dressed. I will not be surprised if he wakes me and is already fully clothed and ready to go! I know that he is more than ready for this. I am confident that we have laid a strong foundation and armed him with the right tools to steer his way and hold his own in this new phase of his life.

I’m so excited for you Anees. We will always be proud of you and look forward to the lessons that we all shall learn as you embark on this journey. xxx

Life isn’t fair

I always preach this to the boys yet it is still a hard pill for me to swallow. Especially when it comes to my children and I try to do things in the best interest of their future. We applied at a school on the 5th March 2014. I sat outside the school at 5 30am on the morning of the 3rd March to collect the application form and then again on the 5th March to hand in the application form. The school website states that they adhere to National Policy for admissions and after researching what exactly that meant I decided to make the sacrifice to try to ensure we stood a good chance of getting in. When we read through the application form we were a tad disheartened, we didn’t understand of what relevance mine or Zaid’s social and academic achievements were to Anees’s acceptance at the school. I was the first to hand in the application form and then the waiting game began.

On the 2nd June 2014 we received a letter from the school to say that they could not find a place for Anees. I couldn’t understand this when I knew for a fact that kids that don’t reside close to the school and who didn’t have any connection via family ties to the school had been accepted. I promptly requested a meeting with the lady in charge of admissions and she was quite blasé about my request and referred me to the principal. I e-mailed him requesting to see a copy of the admissions policy as I was never informed that it differed to what was advertised on the website. To this day I am yet to see this admissions policy! I am gobsmacked that there is no transparency with regard to this school’s admission process. I have e-mailed the Department of Education and  been in contact with lawyers at NGO’s who say that we are being treated unfairly after they had seen the correspondence that I had sent to the school. They have even sent letters to the school and the school has not responded to them either. The next step should have been litigation but the NGO doesn’t have the capacity to take on more litigious matters and we don’t have the money to hire an attorney.

This has been weighing on me since the 2nd June but I have not said anything about it because I was hopeful. I’ve reached a point where I find there is no more hope and I am just disappointed and hurt that the school did not have the common decency to be upfront from the start about their selection criteria.

I needed to blog this so that I can let go of it. Yes life isn’t fair and you will not be treated fairly sometimes. It seems that even institutions such as schools that pride themselves on being fair to all and advocate respect for others don’t always behave as we would like to think they should.

2 week update…

It’s only been 2 weeks since we’ve become a family of 5 but somehow it feels longer. Liyana has just fit right in. She eats, poops and sleeps like a trooper and according to her brother’s she is “lame and boring” LOL!!! They want interaction. They constantly smother her, I actually feel sorry for the poor kid. I suppose this is setting the tone for a life with older brothers who will always be in your business. It’s taken Rameez a week or so to warm up to her. At first he would play with her but then say that she’s not his sister, its Anees’ sister. Until today. He ran in the room while I was feeding her and started trying to hug and kiss her and then asked if he could hold her. When he did he kissed her on the forehead and said ” I love my sister”. My heart melted.

While my heart has been melting at the way these 3 have been bonding my head has been hurting from the incessant talking and bickering and fighting over who gets to do what with their sister. Yes its endearing but FEK I need a break from these kids. It’s just getting too noisy in my head. I’ve been feeling claustrophobic because I havent been able to drive and recovery has taken longer this time than previously. Yesterday I felt like I was let out of jail as I took the car and drove the boys to school. Rameez went to school yesterday for the first time and he Loved it!! You know how they say there’s a time and place for everything. After chatting to him the night before I could hear and feel his excitement and I could feel that the right time was upon us. I took him to school with clear instructions to him that he is not allowed to go to Anees’ class. He had to stay in his own class and make his own friends. I always wanted Rameez to establish his own identity. I felt like he needs to learn to be his own person and not just live in the shadows of being Anees’ brother. This was the main reason for not sending him to school earlier. I also felt like Anees needed his own space and I didn’t want Rameez to infringe on Anees’ personal space by being at the same school and being a tail. So things worked out great! Rameez walked into school and was taken to his own class. I explained to him that if he wanted to come home he should ask the teacher to call me. He looked at me timidly and asked “Mom, Can I go?” I thought he was going to burst into tears and say the he wanted to go home. I asked him where would he like to go and with a huge smile on his face he pointed at the other kids and when I said Yes, he had run off. I was so proud. I said Good-Bye and told the school that I would not be checking in on him later and that they should call if there were any problems. I didn’t hear a word from them and Zaid went to pick up the boys at lunch time and Rameez couldn’t stop talking about his day at school. So Anees will probably be taking the rest of the year off and spend some QT with me while I’m on leave and we will happily send Rameez off to school.

I’m contemplating going back to work in December. Staying at home feels so unstimulating. Yes, i know I need 6 weeks for my body to recover! I’ve already started counting the days until I go back to gym. I need more than this though. The cooking, shopping, mani’s, pedi’s, coffee dates and lying on the couch is a tad overrated in my opinion. You can only do so much of that before it too becomes monotonous.

I’m so glad to have had Zaid at home with me for the last 3 weeks, his leave is unfortunately coming to and end on the 12 November. We will be squeezing in quite a few fun dates before then. I’m so relieved Liyana took the bottle with formula (gasp, what a bad mother am I? LOL) like a champ. I can leave her without the stress of worrying that I need to be back for her next feed and its been such a relief, there’s no pressure or stress this time around and I’m sure it will be in the best interest of my mental well-being. I wish I could bottle up all of this “3rd time mom” wisdom. I do whatever feels right and not what the books dictate is supposed to be right. With all due respect to the authors of Baby Sense and the likes of “What to expect in the first year”. The problem with those books is that the baby hasn’t read it so she doesn’t know whats expected of her so if she doesn’t do what the book said she would do after I did EVERYTHING I was supposed to do (according to the book) I would go batty!!! LOL 😉 I know to works for some people and that’s great but in my case it did more harm than good.

I had a friend of mine up from CT for the weekend and boy was that good for my soul. She GETS ME!!!! She gets my mothering style and my need for independence and to be seen as an individual. I missed her! Look forward to lots more visits and laughs together 😉 We had so much fun as I helped her choose an outfit for her night out, I was trying to be fashion consultant while breastfeeding Liyana. Poor kid choked on some milk and we giggled as I apologized to Liyana and explained to her that one day she would understand the fashion emergency and the need to find the ‘right’ outfit LOL!

We had the most gorgeous party for Liyana and I look forward to uploading the pics soon.

Until then…

xxx

Groundhog Day

Ever watch the Bill Murray Classic Groundhog Day? Ever feel like you’re caught in that movie? Well I do! Life.can.be.so.monotonous. Get up, get dressed, go to work, come home, make dinner, get kids ready for bed, have the same arguments with them every night. Lie on the couch watch tv, sleep, get up and repeat!

Maybe I’m just feeling this way because we are fasting and there’s been no ladies nights or date nights and because we now have dinner at exactly the same time every night! Yawn! Give me spontaneity and excitement over monotony and the mundane any day!!!!

My anxiety levels have also increased! A friends son was shot the other night and now I’m on the alert and anxious because we can so easily become victims of crime.

Staying at home with the boys the other day also scared me a little. I’m terrified of being at home on maternity leave!!! 3 KIDS!!! with no work to escape to! I’m considering going back after 6 weeks. I can’t do the stay at home thing! Everybody is telling me I’ll feel different because I’ll have the daughter that I longed for but I’m just not the doting mother type. I just generally am not a ‘baby’ person! I always thought I was until I had babies! I prefer 5 year olds! They’re cooler! LOL!

Too.much.anxiety!!! Can’t wait for therapy next Thursday!!

xxx