blessed

Woke up today to this.

A clean living room.

Not worrying about doing the laundry.

(Yes our kasambahay arrived last Sunday and officially started work yesterday.)

The slow steady breathing of my two sleeping kids.

New haircut and hair color from yesterday's me time.

Cooking 3-cheese fetuccini pasta and toasting garlic buttered baguettes for breakfast. (So who says it has to be eggs benedict all the time? Hehe)

Tuesday and it's a non-working holiday.

Thank you for blessing me in more ways than I know.

Reflect upon your present blessings --

of which every man has many --

not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

~Charles Dickens 

Feeling foodie

Recently been doing a lot of stuff in our little kitchen. And I must say I've been enjoying the time I spend there. It's one of the blessings I consider that God has given me after the major changes in our little family. 

Just for the record, here are some of the stuff I've been busy with, serving my little big man and little girl these past weeks.

Hungarian sausage and scrambled eggs

The last 2 months, I also started the habit of going to the palengke every Saturday morning to buy food, fruits and... shrimp! Shrimp is the little girl's favorite and being the picky eater that she is, this is the only food she would eat with gusto. She would even help with the cooking.

Then there's my obsession with plating and instagramming my work. I search the internet for recipes that not only taste good, but look good as well. It feels good to prepare these for my kids. And I know they appreciate the effort, esp the little big man who even told me last week that I should stop working and just stay home and take care of them like this. Oh how I wish I could do that!

Tuna pesto pasta + Four seasons

Lemon infused water + Fruit loops + s'mores + 3-cheese & tomato pasta

Tuna & alfalfa rolls / sandwich

Salad composed of cucumber, lettuce, carrots, avocado and yes, alfalfa sprouts + vinegrette

Food for the body is not enough. 

There must be food for the soul.

~Dorothy Day

misadventures of a working mom

i'm a trying hard working mother.  this much i know.

last week, i convinced the powers that be at work to let me off early (for the rest of my working life at that company) for the reason that i get to the office earlier than necessary.  so officially, i'm off at 5pm instead of 6pm and i am on my merry way home before sunset.  eversince they removed our privilage of flexible time schedule, this is what i've always wanted and now i got it and i'm happy.  at least now, i can be with my kids early.

last night was a toink moment.  something i'm not very proud of.  

of course, i was home early and i immediately started workin tle computer on a project.  since i was early and the nanny still gets off at 7pm, i let her and the little girl play while i worked.  by 7pm, i let her go while the little girl stayed with me inside the bedroom while i continued working.

after a while, i heard the little girl sobbing and as i turned to look at her, she broke down in tears.  she then told me in between sobs that i shouldn't have let her nanny off coz she doesn't have anything to do and she was sad.  so i immediately bolted out of the revolving computer chair, wrapped my arms around her and told her we could play.  to which she replied, "eh mommy ka eh. di ka naman naglalaro eh!"

my heart literally broke.  how could she think that way?  i hugged her to me and told her, of course, i can play.  so what do you want us to play?  in my mind, i was hitting myself in the head with my fist.  what have i done?  i knew i should stop working at that moment and spend the rest of the evening with her, which i should've done the minute i got home in the first place.

we went to the living room and the little girl got 2 balls and she wanted us to alternately roll each ball at each other while slumped on the floor on opposite ends of the room.  i tried to sound happy and animated as we did this but after a few rolls, she started bawling again.  i am not happy at what we're doing!

i came over to her again to appease her.  i carried her to the bedroom, holding her close and asked her again what she wanted us to do.  she said she wanted to play or do something but she doesn't know what.  ok, so let's see....what do we do?  how about the computer? 

she settled with an online game where we played hosts in a virtual spa and tended to customers who wanted massages, facials and hair treatments.  we did this the rest of the evening until the hubby and little big man arrived from taekwondo practice.

looking back, and after telling this to the hubby, i realized that the reason why i requested for an early off from work is so i can "do my responsibilities as a mother" early.  i didn't do that.  instead, i worked some more.  i know now what to do.

see andre, i'm not perfect?

mom "me"

i washed some of my kids' and hubby's clothes and underwear a little while ago.  two days of typhoon and a week's worth of laundry (due to the absence of my nanny/helper) summoned me to do it against my will.  i just did a few though to get the family through the weekend.  


i have a confession to make.  i can't believe i enjoyed it.  i'm not kidding.

it dawned on me as i was rinsing the suds off the little big man's P.E. t-shirt as i thought about how it should dry overnight cause he needed to wear it tomorrow.  (sorry we don't have a dryer.)  i wondered if our helper would thoroughly rinse our laundry or would she haphazardly do it just to get it over and done with.  as i thoroughly squished and squashed dirty socks, i imagined myself doing this everyday with only the thought that i'm doing it for my kids.  then it hit me:  i would rather do this than sit on my office chair right at this very moment.

then again, after finally saying it out loud (literally, with the larger fonts i used), it may be just because i don't do it everyday and maybe i felt the novelty of me washing clothes.  

earlier today, as i browsed the grocery for the stuff the little girl will be needing for tomorrow's school activities, i thought, what the heck, this is fun!  it gave me that sense of fulfillment that everything is taken cared of for my daughter and that i personally prepared everything for her.  thus,i am assured that she has everything she needs.  these things i couldn't have done, and the hubby wouldn't have done, had i didn't skip work today to take care of the little girl.

then again, maybe the hubby would've done it if i weren't around?  and i'm just using this as an alibi so i can resign from my job and be a stay-at-home-mom like i've always dreamed of?

whatever it is, i still think, as i've thought of for the last couple of months, that maybe i should really start thinking of a career that involves me staying with the family most of the time.  so there.  so shoot me, boss.