Life, Day by Day

Last Sunday, December 4, 2016, through SM Kids and SM Accessories , the Princess Academy came to the Kingdom of SM City Bacolod. We got an invitation to attend as guest and this will be the first time that Preemie girl will be attending, so you can imagine our excitement!   But with the school intramural just finished, the  on-going practices for her First H oly Communion, and as a full-time working mom nursing a bad cough, I simply had very little time and energy left to prepare. In fact by the end of the working week, I was trying to convince Preemie girl not to attend anymore.  However, unlike in the past where my little girl was not that interested, this time she really wanted to go.

Kinship and bloodlines used to be so significant for me.  Ever since my college days, I was always interested in genealogy and how my family was related to who or whom. I used to spend hours looking over family trees and tracing my ascendants, even to the point of  reaching out to people who had the same last names as mine or any of my ascendants. I have created family trees on websites and shared this with relatives, near and far, old and new.  Then I found myself becoming a mother to two children, a boy who just turned 25 and a girl, now 7.  They may not be of my blood but they have all of my heart.  Suddenly, bloodlines became irrelevant when it concerned my relationship with my children. 

Mother's Day has come and gone, but the day before that a little girl asked me a question that needed an answer.  She asked me, "are you Preemie Girl's real mother?" Now, I don't know why little girls would even think to ask such questions, but I would make a smart guess that they learn about these words and ideas from the adults around them.  I don't think an innocent child would know that there is such a thing as a "real" mom (or dad, for that matter), if they are not made aware of the difference or this was not pointed out to them by...yes, adults. But that is another story.

I hate pink.  I would never consciously wear pink except if I really have to.  The very first time I did was during my high school prom and only because I was a junior and pink was our assigned color (blue was for the seniors).  The second and third times were the occasions when I was a wedding sponsor.  I avoided this color like the plague, mainly because I thought that being fair skinned, I did not look pretty in pink. Besides that, I associated the color with sweet and girly things, both of which did not appeal to me.  And so, you can just imagine who, what and why my world suddenly turned all shades of pink! photo retrieved from http://www.squidoo.com/celebrationofpink

My children Big Brother and Preemie Girl had their graduations this year.  Big Brother finished his Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies last October 2012 yet, but he is included in the 2012-2013 annual yearbook since there are no semestral graduations at the University of St. La Salle.  He no longer joined the graduation ceremonies last March because he has started working last January and could not get time off. I am very proud of him and so grateful that God has blessed him with a well paying first job :) And my daughter Preemie Girl?  Well, she also had her culmination ceremony, with a recognition award.......from Kindergarten! Hahaha!

I rarely watch TV but the other day while waiting for dinner, I sat down with my son and daughter who was watching Kung Fu Panda 2 on HBO. Although I saw the original movie, this sequel for me is a much better one. The adoption part of the story appealed to me being an adoptive mother of 2 kids, my now 21 year old son and my 4 year old daughter.  Needless to say, I sat through till the end of the movie. 

If only I could hold it off a little bit longer but Preemie girl is turning 4 in July and yes, I know...she needs to start school now. So it's off to summer classes for our little girl, in preparation for the regular school year this June. I enrolled her in our local parochial pre-school which has been putting out graduates who easily get accepted into the first grade of the big schools. I am hoping that if she does well, she can get accelerated to Prep school by the time she is 5 years old since the government's primary and secondary levels will now be 12 years all in all (K12), as compared to the old curriculum which took only 10 years. That means Preemie girl will graduate from high school at 17 years of age (I was only 15 when I graduated from high school) and if she takes up medicine, that will be another 10 years!. It's been 2 days now and so far, so good. She seems to be enjoying herself in the 2 hours that she is in class and made friends with another ...

Last week, I wrote about Preemie girl and now it's Big brother's turn. My son whom I raised since he was 5 months old is now 21 and hopefully will be graduating from college this year. Unlike my daughter, I had no behavior issues with him when he was growing up. He was such an obedient child that it was easy to bring him along with me to public places because he was very behaved. It was when he started school that problems started. Although he was a sensitive and intelligent boy, he did not like studying. Unfortunately, I did not have the skill nor the inclination to instill in him good study habits because I too did not like to "study". Therefore, I could not teach him what I did not have, which is weird because I was and still am an avid reader and a life-long learner. It is not the learning part that I hated about school but the process of teaching of what must be learned that was being used by traditional schools. I was the type that needed teachers who ...

I used to think that bringing up kids wasn't all that hard. My parents raised us their 3 children (1 girl and 2 boys), fairly and without biases. We all had the same privileges and got the same kind of punishment when we did wrong. I never felt any more special than my 2 brothers. But when I became a mother to a 3 month old baby boy in 1991, I realized that it was not easy at all and that parenting is the hardest job in the world where there is no retirement ever. And so when I took home a 5 month old baby girl (who was born severely premature) for Christmas in 2008, it was an act of faith and trust that this too is God's will for me and my family. You see, raising my son was a relatively fun task for me, maybe because as the eldest in my family and the oldest grandchild, I grew up looking out for my brothers and playing with my cousins, majority of whom were male. I have always been partial to boys, even as a child. I remember each time my mom became pregnant, I would al...

I bought my little girl the DVD of the animated musical fantasy Tangled a few weeks ago and since then, it was the daily movie staple every afternoon......up until yesterday.  Why the sudden change?  When I bought it, I knew it was a Rapunzel story but I did not know that it was a musical.  Now, my little girl is three and very bright.  As I was trying to explain the relationship of Rapunzel to the witch by saying that the witch was not Rapunzel's real mother, my 3 year old disagreed and kept insisting..."No, she is her mama".  I then realized that in the song "mother knows best", Rapunzel was an adult and my daughter could not relate this young woman to the baby that was kidnapped by the witch. That song showed a loving, concerned mother who wanted to protect her child.  And so to a young mind, theirs was a mother-daughter relationship.  Where is my problem in all these?  You see, my daughter is adopted and when I said that the witch was not...

There are many suggested methods on how to tell a child about his adoption.  Based on others and our own family experiences, it is a proven fact that not telling a child about his adoption brought about dire consequences for everyone involved especially if the truth is found out from people other than parents. In the case of my aunt, she found out when she was already 10 years old  from well-intentioned relatives who wanted to help her parents resolve her habitual lying when she got caught doing something she shouldn't, like playing hookey from school, for example. Needless to say that was the start of her years of rebellion.  I heard other "horror" stories so when the time comes, although I never really thought about it, I knew that I will tell my child the truth.  My turn came around the time when my son was around 4 years old when out of the blue while playing in my bed, he reached out to my stomach and said..."I came from here".  My initial reaction was to ...

I have 2 children...a 20 year old son and a 3 year old daughter. People not in the know would almost always ask...Why such a huge gap between the two?  I understand their curiosity because if I were in their place, I would wonder too.  And so, I would always take the time to explain that my children are adopted.  But it wasn't always that easy when my son was growing up... not because I wanted to keep it a secret.  On the contrary, by the time he was 4, my son knew that I was not his only mother and that he had another one who gave birth to him.  The act of adoption, fostering and guardianship were nothing new or strange to my family.  There was always an adopted aunt, cousin, nephew and niece in the past and present generation, so it wasn't like being adopted was such a big deal to us.  But you see, I used to think that saying he is adopted would make people treat him differently and I did not want that.  I get so tired of people telling me (and...

I thought I would blog about the last 10 years (2000-2010) when Y2K started and then, I realized my impending age-related short term memory loss has already began.  Somehow, I have to rack my brain to remember what the last 10 years of my life has been all about... Okay, before I do that let's me just state that Y2K brought about a lot of changes in my life...some good, some not so good, and yes, some great ones too...but what exactly in particular???  I guess, it's this over all good feeling I get when I think about the last 10 years that makes me say so. Does everyone remember the " panic " the year 2000 brought about?  It was mainly about computer glitches but people brought it to an apocalyptic level .  I remember thinking it's just another day folks !  Well, I think I did prepare some candles, just in case ;-)  Anyway, of course nothing major happened and the world survived for the next 10 years.  On a personal level, I had more or less g...

Twenty years ago, my son came into my life as a 3 month old baby a few days after my dad passed away. My Dad had a massive first heart attack and the family was so unprepared for the loss. He attached himself to me before he could even say mama and as soon as he can walk he would follow me around...wherever I was in the house, he would be right there beside me. This little baby boy stole my heart like no man has ever done. He has given me the gift of motherhood and I finally understood what unconditional love looked like. When he was little I would always pray that he would turn out to be a good man...and well...I also hoped he would be tall since his birth mother is a very short person. So, I made him drink liters of milk, gave him growth vitamins and made him sleep early. When he turned 16, he was almost 5 feet 9 and I said to myself...I don't want to be greedy...5'9" is okay Lord. Well, he grew another inch taller...as well as bigger! And so, I begged the Lord.....

I looked up the legal definition of a family and this is what I got...and this ...and then this . It only goes to show that today's family is difficult to define because of its diversity primarily due to the many changes it has undergone through the years. In school I was taught that a family consists of a father, a mother and a child.  That teaching continues to this day even when families and family dynamics are no longer as simple as that.  When my son was in Grade 2 in a local Catholic school, his social studies teacher asked them to say something about their families and some of the children gave unusual answers.  She obviously was unprepared (or simply clueless) for what they gave because, not getting the "right" answers, she further explained that a father is the one that made your mother pregnant and a mother is the one who carried you in her tummy! Of course, when he was picked up from school, the first thing my son asked was, "where is my father" and...

Who is Preemie Girl? Last year, in mid-July, a woman was brought DOA to the emergency room of the provincial hospital. Her severely premature baby miraculously survived but was brought to the hospital 6 or 7 hours after birth. Her mother was previously admitted to the hospital's ICU due to hypertension and was closely monitored for several weeks.  She was relatively in a stable condition and the doctors were waiting for the baby to become more viable before doing a caesarian section, but the family decided to go home.  She eventually delivered at home and died due to severe postpartum bleeding.  The baby developed acute respiratory distress syndrome and was not expected to make it.  Because this was a public hospital with limited resources, she was not getting the kind of care severely premature babies like her should have. Some mothers nursing their own premature babies would give her their milk and help take care of her. Initially I really did not take much...

I became a mom in February 1991, the month my father died. I did not plan on motherhood, not for lack of a maternal instinct but mainly because I was already in my 30's with no relationship that was serious enough for marriage...yes, I believe that children should be born out of love and marriage. At a time when my family was experiencing a strong sense of loss, this 3 month old baby boy came into our lives. He brought laughter when we found very little reason to do so. His presence at home made us forget our sadness and we all began focusing our attention on him. Before long, I was spending more time with him than any other aspect in my life...even my work and friends. In fact, this was the year I started being late for work almost everyday because I was putting him first before anything else. In other words, I fell in love. He was God's gift to me and he made me a mother before it was too late. Two days from now, on November 3, 2008, this baby turns 18. Looking back, he...

Last Saturday, May 31, 2008 was a momentous day in my son Ramie's life. After 7 years of training in Taekwondo, he has finally earned his Black Belt, 1st Dan. He had trained hard the whole summer and with some help from me completed his thesis requirement on time(earning for me about 5% of his black belt). The anticipation was high during the past week but he never showed that he was nervous even during the promotion date (although, afterwards he said he was actually very nervous). We left the house at about 1:30 PM and I dropped him off at the La Salle covered court where the promotion tests will be held. The whole process for the black belt involves demonstrations of all forms learned from yellow to high brown belt, a sparring session with 2 black belts and the braking of boards and blocks. There was also a welcoming ceremony which I had no idea about. I was the nervous one and was not really keen to watch the sparring because Ramie warned me that it could be scary. But even ...