This past five-day weekend had been both a blast and a horror at home. When the Quezon City government announced on July 8 that classes were suspended until the 10th, I started having palpitations. The girls were going to be stuck in the house with nothing to do and, predictably, they started fighting over every […]
My husband and I had a great laugh when we saw a series of signs – saying “Boycott China Products Now!!” – recently lining a street behind St. Luke’s Medical Center, Quezon City and ending at the barangay hall on Broadway corner E. Rodriguez Sr. Ave. We immediately looked at the tags of the clothes […]
In one conversation with the husband, we noted how our neighborhood was sprouting more children every month. We’re often deathly scared of running over tiny toes whose owners were never taught to step aside when a car is coming along. In the afternoons, we see fathers or mothers dragging a child by the arm with […]
Say these in Hokkien: Di-si-di khong pue khong pue and di-si-di sam it di sam. Our long time staff, Tulay artist Liza Lopez, still has these numbers memorized. So does one former staff, Gemma Ubay, who now lives in Cavite but still visits Kaisa Para Sa Kaunlaran in Intramuros, Manila. I tried those Hokkien syllables […]
“Achi, put down the squash and eat the morcon.” My two girl friends and I were at a restaurant with all our children. They heard me say the words; I heard myself saying those words. We looked at each other and laughed. One commented, “Mali yata sinabi mo.” The incident sums up my family’s restaurant […]
Ever since I became a mother, I have received warnings from friends and family about the dangers of the world. There was that story about shoes or flip flops getting sucked into the steps of an escalator (this really happened to my cousin’s son in California). There’s also that true story about a stranger who […]
For the first time since Achi’s birth in 2007, the hubby and I are going on a long-overdue vacation. Since I am presenting a paper in the Asia Pacific Children’s Museums Conference on Oct. 19-21 in Hawaii, we decided to hit the beach as well. Who’s having the blues? Shobe is now experiencing a severe […]
One hot day in early June, it was my turn to mind my friend Astrid’s two daughters (Ara, 7, and Happy, 2) plus my two for the afternoon, in return for her minding my kids in March. The question: how do we take care of that many kids? The answer: if our parents / grandparents […]
Babies and toddlers are just too cute for their own good. My husband believes that God deliberately made babies and toddlers irresistibly cute so that parents will not abandon them, no matter how horrible their tantrums can get. Also, parents will have the baby memories to look back to and decide that all the horrible […]
My little shobe, who is daring and gungho about pretty much everything, had a major drama breakdown late last school year. I had to put her head on my chest so she would not see me smiling at her hacking sobs and giant tears. The problem – typical 6-year-old issues of her BFF (best friend […]