Keeping Buried Treasure for Your Children

This is a photo of a 1995 playbill of my performance in a major kindergarten play. The title is Daughters of Mohamed and I played the main role as "Kadiga", the handmaid servant of the 3 princesses of Mohamed.
Fast forward to 2011 and this playbill is still around, with the handwriting of my grandmother still intact and readable. She kept this copy in a photo album stored inside her own treasure chest in her room, and thankfully I didn't accidentally lose it or throw it away.

Summer Activities for Kids: Kick Balls at Futbol Funatics!

The month of March is almost over (which reminds me, a very belated Happy International Women's Day to all!). For us moms with schoolchildren under our wing, it offers a slight relief from having to wake up very early in the mornings, preparing baon, and paying for tuition fees and school expenses because finally, summer vacation is at hand! Our bodies and our wallets could rest for a couple of months before a brand new school year starts.

In the meantime, families are starting to plan beach holidays or vacations in the provinces, especially for Holy Week. You might also be thinking of signing your children up for summer activities that would keep them happily busy.

When Freelancing and Motherhood Isn't Always a Good Match

I'm an active freelance copywriter and blogger, and one of the things I realized only recently is that freelancing and motherhood don't always go well together.

You'd here people saying that freelancing has helped them by giving them the opportunity to be with their families while working, but what you haven't heard are the trials, challenges, and even failures that come with the ability to work from your own home.  I've experienced these failures in particular for myself and to be honest, I still haven't come up with a better solution than to hire a yaya or to cut down on your workload.

Doing Both Can Be Just as Stressful

Here's what I think:

Homeschooling Tips: The Lapbook Project

I’m not the best example of a homeschooling parent, but forgive me if I gloat about this one thing. I’m just so proud of these lapbooks that we made. Lapbooking is awesome!

science lapbook

(Still) Tangled Up!

"Tangled," although sure to be enjoyed by all kinds of audiences, also deals with the trappings of mother-daughter relationships. It is about the story of Rapunzel, a character Ninipie knows too well from her bedtime stories. In the original Grimm version, the reason why the witch kept Rapunzel in the tower was because her parents "owed" her after the couple stole her medicinal plants. Disney gives the story more depth by supplying a more feasible, magical, and rather believable reason. (I'm not telling. Watch the movie! J)

A Special Moment with My Daughter

I've experienced one-of-a-kind moments and instances with my 11-month old daughter from time to time, which sometimes gives me an idea just what is in her heart and, hopefully, what type of personality she has as a person.

Today, I saw once again one of her most beautiful qualities that makes her lovable and special: her ability to lift my spirits and make me smile.

A Brave Little Girl

I was crying today because of a fight I had with my husband. I guess my yelling woke the little one up from her morning nap, because she was awake when I stepped out of the bathroom.

She didn't cry a single tear due to the sudden noise. She just lay on her back and looked intently at the moving figure that was sniffling and crying her eyes out on a blue towel. She then sat up and stared, wondering what was wrong with her mother.

How I Breastfed Three Kids Til Toddlerhood

First attempts at breastfeeding
 from a first-time mom

I suppose I was lucky the first time. I gave birth in a small, out-of-the-way, but well-maintained hospital. I believe these kinds of places are friendlier to breastfeeding than the big city hospitals. For one thing, there was only one other in-patient during my stay, so there were no viruses and bacteria to worry about. It was a normal birth. The baby and I were roomed-in at once, and I didn’t have to fight for it, or even insist.

My Plea to All Would-Be and First-Time Moms

It was a Sunday morning when my husband's little sister knocked on the door and relayed heartbreaking news.
A baby girl of about 3 months was found abandoned in her parents' house, alone with her tiny legs full of rat bite marks. Someone had informed my father-in-law, a Kagawad official of the barangay, about it, so he asked for the baby to be brought inside our home.

10 Important Tasks a First-time Mom's Gotta Do

Just found out you're about to have your very first baby? Congratulations! Those 2 red lines represent the start of a journey that will forever change your life.

Let the feelings of euphoria and nervousness sink in. Allow yourself to bask in the realization that in the next 40 weeks, you will be experiencing a miracle that only we women are blessed with.

But this miracle is a precious one, something that you don't just toss from one hand to the other. And because it is precious, it can break at the slightest sign of carelessness and neglect. Don't ever allow this to happen to you! Start taking good care of yourself and your baby by keeping these 10 important tasks in mind:

Baby Journals: How to Keep Your Baby Books Updated, the Do-it-Yourself Style

I have here with me a stack of three journals. One is a Taschen, the other is a Piccadilly, and the third is an unidentified good quality hardbound.

These are my family’s baby books, one for each son. These are where the memories and keepsakes of each of my babies’ growing-up years are recorded. These keepsake journals are not the usual kind that you can buy in stores. Inside these books, there are no illustrated pages of pink and blue cutesy designs, color coded according to the child’s gender. There are no specified areas to fill up with milestones and growth charts and baby’s first everything.

New Mom Blogger Kelly: Queen of All Trades

Kelly with little Kaaro

Now that you've met Steffi, let me now introduce our next, new mommy blogger. Mommy Kelly is mother to three boys (four, including her adoring husband, Marlon) with whom she's made a home in Cagayan de Oro.

She and her husband are both artists and between mothering and working online, it amazes me that she still finds time to curate museum exhibits, organize artist directories, spearhead conventions, and who knows what else. She even home-schools her younger boys. Lately, she was just in Boracay, where she attended a tattoo convention and learned about the basics of tattooing.

New Mom Blogger Steffi: Young, Tech Savvy, and Hardworking

Mommy blogger Steffi, hubby Jayson, and their little Holly

Mom Notes would like to welcome two new mommy bloggers, Steffi and Kelly, both of whom I also consider good friends, aboard! Work and duties at home make it a little more challenging for me to update and even though I vow to post something whenever I can, two new minds and two extra sets of hands should keep Mom Notes alive and kicking. We aim to inspire other moms by sharing our experiences and hopefully, new knowledge and useful/fun/practical information, too.

Let me first introduce Steffi who, like me and Mommy Kelly, is also a stay-at-home mom. We actually met at a local online community for writers and although we may no longer be active in said community, our friendship remains. The bond of motherhood and the things we go through as online writers also have a lot to do with it. Steffi is mother to Holly, who will turn 1 next month, and happily married to Jayson.