Butterflies Can Soar Like Eagles

With less than three weeks to go I’m looking forward to your arrival. I wonder what kind of parents we’ll be and how we’ll raise you. I have a lot of theories, but that’s all they are. I’m not so sure that they will pan out in practice. The main thing I’ve learnt from A and her daughter are to remain calm and never to panic. That seems to be a cardinal rule, unlike those who need regimented rules or panic ensues. Infuriatingly I have been told by someone who is bound within rules and restrictions that I will probably be a prescriptive parent.

The comment about me being prescriptive popped up in what I thought was a friendly conversation with me discussing out loud ideas I had about how to raise my child.

I admire how that person raises her children, don’t get me wrong, however why is it that only she is allowed to have firm ideas about education and discipline and anyone else is being prescriptive? Why is it one rule for one and one for another?

I want to take the best from all of my elders. However my little one, I want us to have space to explore who you are and who you will become without being hidebound by other people’s rules and strictures. I don’t want to suffocate who you are or stifle you before your wings unfurl. I know that there are times when I have to be strict and be the bad guy, but I want to do that only when need be.

I don’t ever want you to become the kind of girl who is not free in her thoughts. Before we were married your baba joked that I wasn’t independent because I wasn’t allowed out anywhere. But my thoughts were free. I’ve seen so many women since I’ve been married who think they are free, they can go where they want and be as liberal and modern as they are allowed to be, however the most important thing about them is that their thoughts and opinions are someone else’s. Rather than thinking and reasoning for themselves, using the minds and intelligence that God gave them, they espouse first their parents’ opinions and then in due course their husbands. Or anyone else with a forceful enough opinion.

But you my little butterfly, for you, I want you to be able think and reason freely. Use your God given intelligence to develop your opinions and thoughts and make your baba and I proud.

I have so many hopes and dreams for you and can’t wait for you to arrive

The Little Chocolate Drop

I wanted to take this blog in a different direction and document the positive changes that are coming in my life. I’ll still use it as my space to rant sorry discuss issues I need to focus on the positives as there are many of those.

I initially started this blog after I got married and documenting the changes that happened in my life was great, but I found that a lot of the negatives were finding their way into this space which was supposed to be my haven. The things that were hard about adapting to a new family and home etc.

So two and a half years later, and having been through the burn out phase of leaving my last job, getting another…

And two and a half years later, two are about to become three, as my husband E and I are expecting our first child inshallah (God willing). This is not going to be an easy transition either, however I wanted to keep the tone positive as our little one makes it into the world and beyond.

I wanted a space that is mine to document how my little chocolate drop (I’m a chocoholic and this is the nickname I have for our little one) arrives, turns our lives upside down, enriches them, makes us a family and inshallah challenges us to be better people.