Boo-boo

                     Booboo aka Jayden

“Booboo, what’s my name? ”

He paused and looked at me like🙄🙄

“What is she saying? How can she be asking me what her name is?”

His mum, my aburo smiled and spoke in Hausa.

“Bai san sunan ki ba (he doesn’t know your name)”

See, he doesn’t speak Hausa yet, so he didn’t understand what we were saying. Before I could respond to my sister’s response to him not knowing my name, he answers me.

“Booboo”

Hmmm!

“Your name is Booboo” he added.

Ngwanu! Confirmation of his mother’s answer.

This child truly doesn’t know my name.

He thinks my name is Booboo. He actually thinks my name is “Booboo”

Waawoooo!

Na me find trouble. I actually gave him the name. I started calling him Booboo when he was a few months old. Maybe six months or so.

But if I say Booboo, he knows it’s him I’m calling. He’d smile, and smile. He responded each time I called.

Whether we are fighting or playing, Booboo is the name I call him.

Then one faithful day, he was in the living room while I was getting ready to go out. He was about a year then, he was beginning to walk at this point, so he’d strut around everywhere just to confirm, lol.

So I walk out of the passage, into the kitchen and there he was strutting into the kitchen from the living room, he points his tiny chubby fingers at me and says “Booboo”, smiling.

Awwww.

I experienced many emotions at once.

Delight.

Amusement.

My heart swelled with joy. This baby sure knows me.

Amusement at the fact that he called me Booboo. That is supposed to be his name, of course, I understood, he could only identify me by the name I call him.

“Booboo, don’t go, stay one hundred more times, please” when I visited one time and stayed the night. He did not want me to go. He came to me privately to plead. Awwww, my boy.

“Booboo we are not ready to eat, we are playing” because he, Shamah and Bright were playing that hot afternoon. Meanwhile, the others were hungry ooo but, the play was more important to him at that time.

“Booboo, I will tell my mummy to buy ‘Detol’ for you so you can also use it for bathing too”

What led to this conversation, I cannot remember. he actually did tell her to buy one bottle for me.😃😛

“Booboo I want bread” when he is hungry and I am the only one available.

“Booboo they gave me an injection,” he told me when I called after finding out he took ill and was even admitted

“Booboo I’ve been waiting for you” when he came back from school one day like that and found me.

👀😃

“Kwot!

Waiting for me ke?

Did you know I was coming before?”

See this child oooo. Did he mention something about dreaming? I can’t remember sef.

“Oya I have come, what did you keep for me?”

Nothing fa. Just plenty gist.

Toh, that’s how it has been between Jayden and me.

Booboo this, Booboo that.

We catch up and get updated.

For the first time, I sent him on an errand and he didn’t go. Because I couldn’t stay another day, I asked him to help unplug my power pack and my son says to me,

“unplug it yourself now”🙆‍♀️ without flinching. Wato he ”yaff” vex ko?

I was speechless sha but wetin I fit do na? I rejected his request to stay one hundred more times. I no fit scold am sef, I jejely let him be.

So asking him for my name was me looking for trouble.

Booboo it is till the day he realises my name isn’t booboo but …

I can’t help wondering when that will be and how he would feel.

Until then sha.

 

Let’s pray for our children?

We pray for good friends that will influence them positively and constantly lead then to God.

We declare that they have good and God fearing teachers/caregivers.

We pray for safety and protection from harm and from wicked/unreasonable people

We stand against any form of abuse/experiences that could traumatize or scar them for life.

We declare that their innocence is preserved, in Jesus name,

Amen🙏🏾🙏🏾

God bless our children!