Our Christmas Break 2014 - Day 1

Finally a break from work. Our company supports a long Christmas break so I take the opportunity to rest and be with family during the holidays. Chos.

But seriously, imposed a.k.a. "highly recommended" or not, I have already set aside key dates where my paid leaves are to be used. Those dates include the Christmas season, Holy Week, the week covering your dad's birthday and our anniversary, and birthdays ofcourse. So leaves for attending school events, watching over you when you are sick, or days when there are tons of errands to do -- those are unpaid leaves that get deducted from my pay. I just wanted to be clear on that. So, God forbid, you play hooky in school, I hope you find time to think of all your dad and I have sacrificed to provide for you. (Oh God, I'm sounding like your lola)

So today is the start of our 2-week long vacation. Yey!

Goals for the next 2 weeks:
- eat healthier in prep for my gall bladder removal surgery soon (will talk about this when I find time to do so)
- move around more to try to lose some pounds
- potty train Ate and Kuya. Kuya since he is turning 6 already (Kuya pls pls pls let's make this work) and Ate in preparation for her starting school in June. Yey!

So what exactly did we do in Day 1?
- Ate and Bunso woke up too early. Thank you kids *insert sarcasm here* so we walked a bit on the streets early in the morning.
- Kuya woke up shortly after we got back from our walk. Diapers were removed and IT IS ON!
- I had my nails done. Yey! Dad had his toenails cleaned as well.
- We slept a lot in the morning. I was able to squeeze in a nap too. I wish it was longer tho. Still, sleep is a treasure and I am grateful to dad for letting me rest.
- Every 2 hours or so, we'd ask Ate and Kuya if they need to go. Kuya will always say no, but will still pee when he is brought inside the restroom.
- We had a stroll in the afternoon too. I think that Kuya can see from the corner of his eye. He reacts whenever we come near parked cars. Hmmm... I see God moving in very very mysterious ways here. I am intrigued and thankful. *note to self: visit another optha soon*
- During our stroll, I wanted to jog/run since I read about these visually impaired kids running in marathons. We tried it a bit and kuya scraped his knee so crap. Maybe tomorrow, we can do it better.
- We watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I tried teaching Ate the incantations but I kept laughing at her because she's so bulol.
- We made gift tags with your thumbmarks. I wanted each of your thumbmark to have a different color but I just had a black stamp pad. Your thumbmarks looked like... uhm.. let me post it here and you tell me what you think. <Read about that story here.>

A full day no? Much to be thankful for and many many funny memories were shared. Thank you for never failing to make Mommy smile. I love you chipmunks.

Random thoughts during the first monthly period after giving birth and exclusively breastfeeding

1. Wait, what? Oh drats.
2. I can get pregnant again! Oh no!
3. I can get pregnant again! Probably twins? Yey!
4. How long did I skip this? 19 months? Not bad.
5. Ugh. I forgot how messy this could be.
6. Did a hundred elephants die in there?
7. Need to change again? Eew.
8. I'm not really angry - these are just my hormones wanting to wring this person's neck.
9. Maybe it won't be this bad next month.
10. Oh I miss pregnancy.

A day of errors - Nov 2, 2014

Have you ever had those days when you are excited to try something but it doesn't work out the way you envisioned it?

Today was one of those. After such a fun-filled and prayer-answered day yesterday (will tell you about it soon), I was looking forward to make puto for snacks before we went to church. I had googled the recipe a few days back and was so excited especially since dad brought back Lola Dely's steamer from Antipolo.

Dad and I talked the recipe over and he was commenting that instead of buying the dry rice flour, we should buy the ready-to-use galapong instead.

To make the long story short -- the lesson learned here is rice flour is different from glutinous rice flour. Duh. Sayang, it was cheesy pa man din.

It was a good batch of kutsinta/tikoy/maja blanca though.

Later that night, I planned to cook food for Miko to eat throughout the next few days. I steamed squash and brocolli and proceeded to make him a vegetable patty. I just mashed the squash and brocolli, then added cheese and a scrambled egg yolk (since most allergens are found on the egg white). Then deep fried dollops of the mixture.

Lesson learned: stop cooking this for Miko. He doesn't like it. Ate and Kuya ate one patty each and refused more.

What are your misadventures in the kitchen? Let me know and let's laugh talk about it okay?




You can read about other kitchen adventures here.