Cold sunshine

 This UK weather fa?

Thank God the cold months had passed. As I write this, there's a "heat-wave" here, and everybody is moaning about how hot it is. The heatwave above is in italics because I still marvel at what these people consider to be unbearable heat. lol.

To be fair, it's gotten quite hot here in the UK, but as always, coming from the background where the Lagos heat is like a living thing, breathing down your neck like a recalcitrant tenant, constant and ever-present even in the supposed cold periods, you'll be forgiven for chuckling a bit at the serious ongoing moaning.

It's funny because just a couple of weeks ago, the weather was still very cold and you couldn't leave the house without a warm jacket on. It gets even funnier when you realize that the Spring sunshine was very much around and the days are very bright till about 8 or 9pm at night.

Anyway as always , springtime is bloomtime

and everyone is just happy that we're able to leave the house for prolonged periods without having to hurry whatever the fuck you're doing outside and try as much as possible to get back into a building's warmth.

God bless the UK. 🤣🤣

Driver driver

 I mentioned in this earlier post how learning to drive and doing the theory and hazard perception test in the UK is such a time-consuming and stressful endeavour.

 Mahn...it gets even worse when you actually have to take the practical test.

 One very annoying thing over here is the amount of waiting time to get a practical test date. Last year , after passing my theory test in August, I had to book a date about six months ahead in February 2026 to get a date for the test.

February eventually came, and even though I've been driving regularly around, I had to start taking expensive driving lessons with one Pakistani driving instructor who was just a surly grouch.

Did as many lessons as I could afford and felt I was prepared enough for the test. Of course, I studied a lot as well and watched a ton of YouTube videos on what to expect and how to pass your driving test

Finally, the test day arrived, and I went to the test center prepared for anything.

Not sure why the fates decided to allocate one white "Karen" woman to me as my test instructor. As soon i saw her...i just had a sinking feeling that this one was not a good omen.

That's how we set off and she was forming good person, chit-chatting shit about the weather and stupid stuff. All of a sudden, as we were driving past a line of parked cars... she suddenly grabbed Axel's steering wheel and twisted it...saying I was driving too close to the cars and would hit them!!

I was confused..like whaat?? What are you even saying.. I've been driving past the cars and nothing of the sort happened. Anyway... we continued, and I steadied myself and got through it all.

We got back to the center, and this stupid woman smirks up at me, announces that she cannot pass me today, and that I've failed the test because she had to intervene at some point (which is considered to be a major fault).

I'm flabbergasted and utterly speechless. After six good months of waiting, taking lessons with that surly clown Asfar, only to get this??? The truth, which I had also seen online, was that everybody and their father swears that taking this test in Birmingham is the absolutely worst place to do so (maybe apart from London) as these ones are just deliberately evil.

The worst part of it was that it was totally unnecessary for her to intervene when she did. I have been driving on these roads long enough to not hit anything and the truth of it was that she was unnecessarily scared, or picky, or just mean enough to want to fail me on purpose.

I was so annoyed at her casualness, and I swear..if not that she had gotten out of the car and walked off, I would have given her a piece of my mind.

Drove off irritated and went back home Biko, I cannot kill myself with these stupid people.

Sleepless in Birmingham

 Most of my life, I've always had my fair share of insomnia.

whether it was stress-related, work-related, intentionally induced or just generally occurring. All these instances do not compare with having to lose sleep while your baby is bright-eyed at 2 am, actively awake and making sure you don't slip up or sleep off in this case..lol

Earlier when Zoe was about two months or so, it was a struggle. It would get worse when Princess Zoe would decide unilaterally that the whole residents of Browns Green, Birmingham had no right to be asleep when she was awake and start wailing away with her wonderful set of lungs. Bruh...those nights were something.

Pickin wey say mama no go sleep and all the other stories yunno....

omo.. Based on her sleep and feeding cycle around that period, Chioma and I had to develop a tag team schedule where we would pass Zoe to her Grandma first for a couple of hours (around 10pm-12am), then I would sleep off and Chioma would be with her till around 3pm or 4pm. I would then wake up and take her downstairs with me where she'd eat and usually sleep off in my arms (She is a huge lover of contact sleep) and I'd be awake with her till late the next morning whenever the rest of the household wake up.

Ahh... those days..and nights

Thank God for good parental leave on our parts and help from Zoe's wonderful Grandma.

Anyway, it's gotten much better these days with things gradually falling into place and better routines being established. To all upcoming parents.. I assure you this period WILL pass.

The great white thread

The thread, the myth, the legend!!

Lol...growing up back then, I was familiar with this...(what do I even call it now?...myth? folklore? old wives' tale?) thing about a method of stopping baby hiccups using a thread.

Not entirely sure how it came about, and my pessimist minion strongly insinuates coincidence... but almost all mothers we grew up around used to strip off a white thread from any of their babies' clothing items and place it on their heads once they started to hiccup. It's unbelievable but in almost all cases, the hiccups ceased very soon after. 

Of course, there's no scientific data on how this works or any proof that this actually stops them but seeing as hiccups are a common occurrence with babies and seeing as the definition of "baby" fits my darling Zoe, I decided to contribute my own quota to this great mystery that has plagued humanity from time immemorial.

One fine afternoon, Princess Zoe, feeling very disgruntled at her servants' slowpoke pace in making up her bottle of milk (we're very sorry, boss), rolled her eyes at us(I'm imagining this now) when it eventually arrived, and rushed it down. Finally sated, she surveyed her kingdom from her daddy's lap and promptly launched into hiccups.

Ahah! Time for action

I sharply looked around and saw one of her white blankets nearby. Yanking it, I managed to string off a thread (a big one in this case) from one corner and, looking up to the ancestors for guidance, placed it on madam Z's lovely crown of hair.

Ladies and Gentlemen, start the countdown. 

Lo and behold, not up to two minutes later, I first noticed that the frequency of the hiccups changed. From a very regular beat of chest heaving...they slowed down into intermittent "hics" and finally stopped after about 5 minutes.

Hmmmm....I'm speechless at this point because from previous episodes, I know for sure that her hiccups can go on for much, much longer periods.

Yaaay.... One -nil for the Ancestors!

And Baby makes three

 So I mentioned earlier about life not being the same again since Zoe arrived, but I truly underestimated how much things would change.

Bruh... It's been a total overhaul of life on the Ibemere planet.

Chioma and I had a sweet little system going... where there was always time for lazy evenings after work, deciding what to eat,  spending an inordinate amount of time deciding what series or film to watch, long evening strolls, staying up late on my part, sneaking in date night here and there, visiting friends and having time to read novels.

Hmmm... i laugh in Zoe Chizara!!

for the past four months or so, I honestly can't recall a successful series we've finished (maybe one or two sha) or remember when we weren't passed out from exhaustion by 10pm.

Omo..I have to hand it to Chioma. I've always known she was going to be Super-Mum but I have to say she's been absolutely amazing with Zoe. Throughout this period, she's reshaped and re-moulded herself to balance everything and trust me it has definitely NOT been easy at all. She does a ton of baby research, shops for new things ( i'm sure her online shopping carts are full of recommendations and things we have to buy), we're exclusively feeding Zoe with breastmilk, so you can imagine the amount of time and energy involved with that, does most of the heavy lifting (literally speaking) when it comes to spending time with our little madam (unfortunately, as I'm not always around), matter of fact, we joked about not having to gym too much as her baby weight is sufficient for exercises, Suffice to say, she's the leading authority on all things baby Zoe.

Of course, I ensure my part is fully contributed too. As i said earlier, a baby is definitely not a one-person affair. House chores, shopping, cooking, spending time with Madam Z when I'm around and all other sundry affairs. So far so good, it's been working out for us and what's a little exhaustion in the grand scheme of things eh?😫😫

Photo dump

 Hi people..

What's been up with y'all? hope good. It's been a roller-coaster couple of months since life as we knew it changed entirely. I've been settling nicely into fatherhood and daddy duties.

I'm happy to report that Zoe is everything we dreamed and prayed for. She's settled nicely now and is growing happy and healthy, as we always prayed she would, hitting her milestones and becoming the happy child we all know she'll be. 

She's about four months plus now and when i was chatting with my fam some time ago, Uche mentioned documenting everything about her growing stages as much as possible because time will just blur past and before you know it, it'll be gone in a flash. In the spirit of that, this post will just be a photo dump of her progress so far.

It's weird yunno. Me that i dont really like taking pictures at all now has an overflowing picture gallery of pics and videos of our little madam..lol.. 

Google sef has been warning me to upgrade my storage capacity (something they've never done since.)

Anyway..life anagaga.. 

I present to you.. Princess Zoe!!! (featuring Mom and Dad)

)

Bibs, Burps, Breastmilk and Diapers

 Wow…. what a couple of weeks it has been

It’s so surreal how our lives have been upended… in a good way, of course.

So, nothing ever beats being prepared for such a life-changing event. We had read all the books, browsed all the articles, downloaded all the apps, and listened to other people’s experiences, but nothing hits quite like the real thing.

Again, I’m just happy and grateful for the abundance of preparatory material and the wealth of information about the whole process. We’ve also been blessed to have Chioma’s mum come over for Omugwo duties, and she’s been an invaluable help as well.

Zoe is a healthy child with a set of blockbuster lungs which she’s not shy to use at any point in the day and oboy.. My babe no send anybody!!

We were warned about the periods from weeks 3 to 6 when her crying would be really intense and oboy.. were they intense or what!! Thank goodness for the tag team efforts from everyone involved, else it would have been a really trying time for us. In any case, the storm’s passed, and she’s settled quite nicely into the beautiful, peaceful princess that she is.

Another blessing has been the luxury of working for a company that has a very generous paternity leave policy. Perk was so good as to give me a twelve-week, fully paid leave from work, and it has been an unquantifiable blessing. There’s so much to do, sort out and get used to that I dont think the complication of work would have helped in any way. Also, just for the record, looking after a newborn for any period of time is most certainly NOT a one-person job in any way.

 It’s been an intense lesson of putting theory into practice and to be honest, I’ve loved every single minute of the madness and stress.

Learning all her cues and mannerisms, identifying her different cries, and figuring out what to do, knowing the different feeding bottle types, learning about expressing and storing breastmilk, learning different sleeping methods, how to soothe Madam and get her to sleep, and yes, getting used to and understanding poo types and diaper changes. It’s all part of loving the process.

Meanwhile, shout-out to a couple of items I never thought much of but have turned out to be invaluable: nursing pillows (absolutely necessary), pacifiers, a certain gas-relieving medicine known as Infacol, a diaper rash wonder-working ointment called Sudocreme, and food warmers. All real MVPs of this period. lol. Also shoutout to the wonderful apps from Flo to BabyCenter and Huckleberry... true lifesavers

Here’s to many more years of growing, learning, working and loving this new phase of life.