Happy Birthday My little girl! 6 years old and as precocious as any six-year old girl can be. This year, she knew how to count down her birthday. She knew that March came before April - she said "After March, it will be April, April is my birthday." Come April, she'd count the days. A sample line would be - "It's April 5, tomorrow is 6 then 7 then 8 then 9, then it's 10 - my birthday. You should buy me a gift, put it in a box, and put a bow on it." She's taking summer classes now - math and reading - she seems to enjoy it. She attends class twice a week, does her work everyday for about 30 minutes and still has the resta of the summer to enjoy :) So far, she likes school, I just hope she maintains her enthusiasm through history, trigonometry, and phsics.
House Help My nanny went on vacation two weeks ago. I have my hands full with looking after two kids. Fortunately, the nanny was able to find another house help - a younger one with no previous experience. At least, I don't have to worry about house chores and can concentrate on the kids. I literally don't have time to myself anymore, so as you can see, I'm blogging this in the middle of the night. My work is on hold as of the moment, luckily (or not!) I don't have a full time job, so if it's really urgent I do it midnight or early morning. Anyway, the up side is I spend time with my kids, but the truth be told - it's draining me both physically and emotionally. Imagine never ending questions of can i have this, can you read this, can i do this, i want this, i want to go there, i want you to play this with me, not to mention monitoring meals and sleep. Whew!

Cold Feet? You know what Rance kept on telling his teacher during his first week of school? Somehow, he thought of telling his teacher that I was calling for him. His teacher said it happened around once or twice during the one-hour session. Fortunately the teacher didn't believe him and instead directed him to other activities and told him that he hasn't finished his class so I won't be there yet. Maybe it's a kind of insecurity - like somehow, he had to be sure that I didn't leave him and he wanted to check that I was indeed waiting for him.
Yikes!! Paid the children't tuition fee today - can you believe everything amounted to a total of seventy three thousand pesos??? Books not included yet!! My goodness! Why does it cost so much to educate a child these days? Can you imagine how much we'll be paying by the time they reach college? Maybe three hundred thousand?

Ggrrrr...... Found a nice and simple template and can't even publish it properly! Ano ba yan?!?

School Rance is starting summer school this week. The course is called developmental reading. It's supposed to introduce him to the look and sound of letters of the alphabet, to let him start to read phonetically. I still have to see if he'll absorb the lessons. So far, he's into letters "L" and "I." I think they start with these letters since they're the simpler letters to recognize and write :) What happened to always starting with "A?"
Decided to start his school days earlier than June. I'm afraid na come June, he might not want me to leave his side. I'd have to attend the whole class with him - imagine learning the alphabet again, singing songs, reciting nursery rhymes, painting and drawing. Hey, wait a minute, that doesn't sound bad at all. :)

Proud Mom Bea is top five of her classs. She just got home from the practice at school. Hay!! At least all my the tutoring paid off :) Just got the acceptance letter from school for Rance. He'll be starting nursery this June. At least he passed his interview and entrance exam. I'm a bit curious as to how he'll do in school.

Summer What does summer mean to you? Does it conjure up images of the sun, sand, and beaches? Does it make you think of long languid days of lazing around? Got married on a sunny summer morning seven years ago today. Is it true what they say about the seven-year itch? I just wonder.....*bad* Anyway, we were able to spend our honeymoon here in Cebu admist their famous beaches. We spent about a week here just sunbathing, enjoying the quiet, breathing sea air. We also spent a few weeks in the city. Now that we're here, can you imagine we haven't stepped onto the sands of a beach since the time we moved here?

Vacation. A school year has ended for Bea and summertime is here! Yehey! No more lessons! But me, as her mom, I still try to get her to do practice writing her words, to read a book or two, or do her numbers. Killjoy ba? Not only that, I've been meaning to enroll her in math or reading/language summer class, so as to improve her skills. I'm also trying to get Rance to summer class so as to slowly initiate him into a classroom setting - with teachers and fellow students. Ricky, on the other hand, wants the kids to learn how to swim. :)

Tests. Time to take the final exams. I just hope Bea will be able to ace her exams. I'm trying not to give her undue pressure. I try to steer her into thinking that understanding the lessons is important and that knowledge is already an achievement. I will raise my voice sometimes, because I know she can grasp the lessons or memorize things easily but seems to have her attention elsewhere. How can you explain to a child that he or she has to get high marks from now till high school in order to get to a good college in order to get a good job, eventually land into a high-paying one that would provide him/her with her everyday needs and lifetime goals? Come to think of it, nobody explained anything to me :) I just did what I thought needed to be done. Studied! Maybe I shouldn't explain anything, just help her and tutor her in her lessons.

Cartoons. Took Bea to watch the Powerpuff Girls :0 I love cartoons! I can still remember spending the entire Saturday morning in front of the TV for my weekly "fix" of cartoons. In my time, cartoons didn't have mini-shows in malls, nor did they have meet-and-greet activities. I don't think there were licensed pens, crayons, water jugs, or bags before. In short, everything I owned was generic, but the things I had weren't of bad quality, they just lacked my favorite cartoon characters' faces on them. I didn't mind at all, they were still mine to use and play with :) Are today's children hooked on their cartoon characters that they have to have their faces on everything they own? They presence of the cartoons doesn't guarantee quality does it? You'd be surprised and amazed at how many things these cartoon characters have their faces on!

One Big Step. Today my little boy Rance had an interview in school. He's 3 going on 4 this Aug., and he's going to apply for nursery at his sister's school. It's one big step for him - starting school and being in school for the next 17 or so years. I hope he knew the answers to the questions the teacher asked him. I've taught him the basics - letters, numbers, colors, shapes, some songs...but he's kind of a restless child. He can not sit still. After teaching him for about 20 minutes, he gets restless. I've also introduced educational computer games to him, just to give him variety while trying to learn his numbers and letters. We'll know the results in two weeks' time. I hope he passes :)

After A While

After awhile you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul

and you learn
that love doesn't mean leaning
and company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn
that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises

You begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of an adult not the grief of a child.

And you learn
to build your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is
too uncertain for plans
and futures have ways of falling down
in mid-flight.

After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns
if you get too much
so you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure,
you really are strong,
and you really do have worth.

And you learn


And you learn


With every goodbye, you learn.....

1971 Veronica A. Shoffstall

Sports Attended the school sportsfest with Aevryl. She isn't engaged in any sport as of now, she was giving a dance number together with her classmates as part of the opening ceremonies of the games. Ricky was into sports a big way when he was in high school, he's a member of the track and field team and also part of the volleyball team in his high school. He used to practice everyday - Mondays to Sundays! Me, I'm the exact opposite. I'm happy just staying at home and reading. Yucckks!!! Boring ba?
Come to think of it, I don't know who the kids will take after - me or Ricky. No indication yet from any of the two.
"We worry about what a child will be tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today." -? Stacia Tauscher

I'm Back
Been tinkering my template, looking for new ones on the internet as well. As you see, my site is sorta out of sorts in a way. Hopefully, I can get it right in the near future...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Does the new year bode well for the sign of the monkey? I really don't know....I haven't had the chance to really sit down and read all the newspapers and magazines with the latest predictions from the different renowed geomancers. Who can tell what will happen in the coming year? It really is tempting sometimes to want to know the future, a glimpse of what will be, a peek at what lies before us. :) In the end I guess it is the person himself who can forge his own path with the help of the stars on in defiance thereof.

MIDST OF A BUSY WEEK It didn't take long for me to get back to work after my SHORT vacation. Just looking at the BIR calendar already sets my panic buttons to high :( the deadlines were 20th - mayor's permit & license w/c would need total year sales' figures, 27th vat, 30th inventory (which means you already finished the clients' trial balances!!), and withholding tax. Can you believe that!!! Our clients have already reached 20 or so and some are new ones without any kind of data yet from Joan - my Mla. partner. She's also into revising their vat scheds so our figures of some companies would have slight differences (for recon later :# ). Through everything, I have to squeeze in my working hours in the early morning or late at night. I've also taken to internet cafes in the afternoon just to catch up.
However, I still managed to have dinner and coffee out with Ricky's friend Mike, Mary Ann (daughter of Ricky's boss) and her cousin Mike. Treated Mike to ihaw na manok bisaya, fish, squid, and ngohiong. His wife Cherry is still recovering from the mild stroke she had mid last year. Guys...always take care of your health.
Bea is still doing good in school, got her card last Jan 18 and all her grades were Excellent *FEELING PROUD* and her conduct was A. I just hope she keeps it up :) Been looking for short courses to slowly integrate my Rance into the school world. I just want him to sort of get to know how a classroom looks like, how to have a teacher, how to have classmates around. We might enroll him in development reading in Ayala. For Aevryl, I enrolled her in Kumon for 4 months before she went into nursery. I must admit the course did her good.

Home Came back to Cebu Wed (Jan 8). Had 1 luggage and 1 balikbayan box full of gifts and 1 twist-twist car for Rance. Got held up in the airport. Guess there was a regulation about not bringing anything with steel bars on the plane :< had to slip a little something to the girl with the xray machine. Aevryl and Rance were ecstatic about their gifts from their ninongs and ninangs. It didn't matter it was already past Christmas, they were just as happy receiving them. :) As for me, it's time to shape up and lose the lbs. I gained in Mla from pigging out almost every day *GUILTY* Time for me to go back to work as well as Jan is the busiest for an accountant with literally LOTS of deadline. Time to play catch up too with my children.

Gano Excel Went to the office today and had a tete-a-tete with my friends Irene and Nette and my sister-in-law Cynthia. Both Irene and Nette have worked there for around two years already. We talked about what happened in the office, the staff, the stockists, management.... we all hope the company will grow to be more professional, and will develop adequate internal controls to safeguard its assets. Most of the time, it seems so hard to implement changes to better the company policies and procedures. Maybe the staff are untrainable? They've reached college and some even have college degrees, but I don't why they can be so "unbendable" or why they only follow the rules for a certain time and slowly veer away from them or why their attention always have to be called in order to keep them in line. I can tell you figures are easier to handle than people. You should really give credit to people in human resources.

Happy Three Kings!Attended mass, then proceeded to the Podium. We had lunch together with Auntie Victoria and Tino. The sudden passing away of Trini still hung in the air. How could one get over the death of one's son or one's brother? Tino tried to tell us the events that led to his passing, what kind of a person he was, what if's, "incompetence" of the hospital staff, how the kids are coping......I don't think there are right words to comfort their grief.....

Hectic DaysBeing in Mla. puts me in a tizzy - had a blood test (results were good, whew!), visited Value Point and got to talk to Dulce, Alex, Willy, and Oliver. Went to Ann's house and compared notes on children and nannies. JT talked endlessly about his Digimon characters, he practically knows every robot and was telling me the names of each one and showing me their pictures. Jet's smaller but he moves around a lot, touching things with curiosity and trying to play with anything he can get his hands on. A guy with lots of curiosity! Had an Edgeworth reunion at Greenbelt 3 - Ann, Jojo, Sam, Renan, EC, Cesar & Cherry. I think Makati is till the place to be. There were so many people, it was hard to get seats for dinner!
Was able to renew my immigration papers, visit my ob-gyn for a pap, and then to Gano Excel to visit former co-workers. Enjoyed dinner with Junice, friend from Unionbank and Cynthia, my sis-in-law. You can see I'm eating a lot. I'm already dreading the pounds I'm putting on these past few days :(

HAPPY NEW YEAR!Started the day with mass, personally officiated by Archbishop Cardinal Sin. It's the first day of the new year and at the same time the day of Mother Mary. Planned to visit Alabang Town Center and got lost on the way :) Guess I can't quite remember the roads that much. Met with my Uncle Alfred and Aunt Mila from Pampanga. They were accompanied by James with his wife and two children, Jr. with his wife and one child, and Sheila. We were able to browse around, did some window shopping. Got home around 5 and caught the 113th Rose Parade on TV. The floats looked so grand and I'm continually amazed at how they were able to build the floats out of flowers and other plants. To top it all, Aunt Jeanne even called from the States. A good day filled with time with family.