Stories from Stepford

Joyride

2012-02-07T20:32:00.000-08:00

Recently, Little A had his first ride in a Porsche. A car dealer friend of Big A's was showing it to him on the way home from the garage. Little A happened to come across them while going for his evening walk. He climbed into the car and refused to get out. When the big boys got into the front seats and revved up to go for a ride, his smile was brighter than I've ever seen it. He sat in his little bucket seat, grinning from ear to ear.

The boys went for a couple of spins around the block like it was a race track. Tires squealing, hard turns. They were in testosterone heaven. Little A had to be pulled out of the car when it was over, and he promptly walked down the road to where another red, shiny sports car was parked (and Audi R8, I think it was) and waiting patiently outside it in vain, in the hopes that the complete stranger who owned it might let him have another ride.

Our bedtime reading lately has been the story of Lightning McQueen and his tow truck buddy. I surmise Little A associated the red sports cars with this now favourite character, but perhaps he's just a typical car-obsessed boy.

Objects of Comfort

2012-01-20T18:42:00.000-08:00

Children are resilient, everyone says. They bounce back from anything! Take Little A, who fell and fractured his skull in two places and didn't even need a bandage or stitches, just a few weeks of rest. The thing is, not all scars are visible from the outside.

After The Great Fall, Little A refused to go anywhere without his shoes on. They had to be on his feet at all times, even when he slept. (They are propped up on a chair or on the floor just off the bed). He would wake up if we tried to removed them in the night or mid-nap. Bathtime involved plenty of screaming, the fastest washes in history (shoes right next to the tub, in his line of sight at all times), and the shoes were back on his feet before they were barely dry, with the rest of him still dripping.

There was a time when we couldn't get Little A to wear shoes at all. He hated them, and took them off at every opportunity, leaving them on the floor in shopping centres and restaurants and running off barefoot. His classrooms and most homes we visited required leaving shoes at the door, so possibly he really didn't see any point in having to wear them.

We got him to accept them, finally, when my Mum bought him a very soft pair that made feet feel as though they were walking on pillows. Since then he's only wanted that pair, and we've gone up three sizes and several colours in the same style. We've been working on weaning him away and trying different pairs, but with limited success.

The aftermath of the Great Fall had them glued to his feet. We're not quite sure why - maybe because he fell at school without his shoes on and associated bare feet with being hurt. Maybe because he was made to stay overnight at the hospital and couldn't leave the room without his shoes on, and they were hidden away while was sedated and strapped to a hospital bed.

At any rate, the New Therapist and the New Shadow got him to wear slippers in the classroom. With a great deal of whining, crying and resistance, but they insisted, and thankfully after a few weeks of constant shoe wearing, he has now accepted that shoes are "only for wearing when we go outside." He's back to taking them off at home and in the classroom, but now keeps them on when we're at the mall or out and about. I hope he's over his post-fall trauma, and that there are no other scars to deal with.

Love, Hate

2012-01-12T18:23:00.000-08:00

Two sides of the same coin. With a knife edge in between. What fine balance is required to keep from tipping from one side to another!

Children are funny that way. One day they love something, the next day they hate it. More so with autistic children, who tend to get fixated with certain routines and rituals.

Little A used to just allow me to put on any clothes (apart from scratchy ones like denim) on him without really caring what they looked like. He'd look at the pattern on his t-shirt in the mirror afterwards, but only to see what it was he was wearing that day.

A couple of months ago, he started to complain and take his clothes off when we dressed him for school, and then go into his drawers and find the ones he wanted to wear. So we now have certain t-shirts that are worn over and over again, and lately he has shown a preference for grey - grey shorts, grey shirts, grey underwear.

While I know all children go through this clothes-choosing stage, I do want to get the other, non-preferred ite,ms, in rotation as well so we're now operating on a "You pick your top, Mummy picks your bottoms" or vice-versa. Today will be day two. Fingers crossed.

Then there's the school issue. First Little A hated it. Screaming, crying, refusing to let me leave his side. Then he grew to love it - pushing me out the door as soon as he walked into the classroom and refusing to go home when I picked him up. But after the Great Fall and Christmas holidays and now with new Shadow Teachers, he hated it again.

The first week was a flashback to two years ago - I had to sit next to him in the classroom, he clutched my hand tightly in his own while the other one paged through the book or played with the toy I'd handed him. He would cry when I moved further away to stand first near, then at, then outside the door, inching slowly down the corridor. My heart broke all over again leaving him there.

Thankfully he has adjusted quickly. The New Shadows, at their exorbitant rate, costing more per hour than the Old Shadow did per day, have track records to justify their prices, and I have to admit that they seem, so far, to be working. Two weeks later, Little A was less needy of having me with him in the classroom, more ready to be left alone. Again, fingers crossed.

We've set a parent-teacher-therapist conference for the last day of January. I have a program outlined based on Little A's age and IEP. We're in the crucial stretch now, the last year before he goes to "big" school. And we've got a way to go yet to get him ready. My sole wish for 2012 is that we succeed.

Another New Year

2012-01-05T12:14:00.000-08:00

Little A spent about a week recovering from The Great Fall. He walked slowly, did not run or jump, sat down while watching tv (instead of jumping and bouncing as he usually does), and stayed in the school library while his classmates were in the romp area.

He went back to school the Monday after the fall, just in time for the class Christmas party and Nativity play. While the rest of the class had speaking roles, Little A just had a walk-on part as a shepherd, complete with rolled up and painted paper staff. He stood at his place and did some of the choreography, making us very proud.

By this time, he was feeling better. Walking became trotting, with the occasional gallop before he was stopped. Little bounces began, though he stayed off the trampoline at therapy and did not attempt full scale jumps (bed to floor, couch to floor) for another couple of weeks.

I was in full Christmas mode by this time - barely sleeping, in a gift-wrapping frenzy (both at home and at work), chasing down suppliers and frantically trying to squeeze in present finding and buying in between. My waking hours were spent typing up sales reports and balancing ledgers.

Before we knew it, the Big Days arrived. Christmas Eve. Traditional dinner and present opening at my parents' place with the entire extended family. Followed by Christmas Eve - another dinner with Big A's family. Two weeks of school holidays, during which time Little A enjoyed twice-daily long walks. And then a week when the Au Pair went home for her holidays. Family bonding time. A quiet New Year's Eve with my sister's family and my parents, watching fireworks from the windows.

Then it was time to begin the routine again - albeit with a few more changes besides the date. I asked Little A if he was ready to go back to school and every time was answered with definite shaking of his head. This meant trouble in early 2012. Cheers, all!

Old and New

2011-12-20T19:29:00.000-08:00

At his latest parent-teacher conference, I was told that Little A's Shadow Teacher, after a year of working with our son and his teachers, has not been achieving results as quickly or effectively as we would have liked.

I agreed with them on this as I had been feeling the same way, and took immediate action. There is no doubt that she is intelligent and capable and clearly loves my son, but at this point, I had to do what was best for his development, which still lags far behind his peers'.

Big A and I had also been looking into giving up his Monday Speech Therapy, which he'd been attending for a year with little results. Most forums suggest abandoning a course or therapy after a couple of months if it doesn't seem to be working, but like all parents who grasp at straws, we didn't want to give up one class if there wasn't a replacement. We'd finally gotten another Monday class - Communication Therapy this time - and were willing to make a switch.

There was a Shadow Teacher I consulted when we first needed one for Little A. At the time he was working with another child, but last summer he emailed me to let me know he was available. At the time we wanted to stick with the one we had, and had trained from Day One to work with Little A, but time enough had passed to indicate she wasn't effective enough.

So we engaged the New Shadow (who came with a companion as he wasn't available on all the days of the week we needed one) and began the transition, which was interrupted by The Great Fall. Now we're into the Christmas break, so I expect another adjustment come January. We're readying ourselves for what the New Year will bring. Happy Holidays!

The Great Fall

2011-12-07T17:37:00.000-08:00

I thought it would be a regular Tuesday. Put in a load of laundry first thing in the morning, got some paperwork done over breakfast, made sure everything was ready for the dinner party Big A and I planned to attend that evening, and paid a visit to the bank while Little A was in therapy.

After talking with his therapist at the end of the class, I took Little A to school and headed off to the shop for a couple of hours. As I waited for the lift in the mall's carpark, my mobile rang. It was Little A's school, and this was the first time they had ever called me during class hours. My heart skipped a beat before I answered.

Little A has had an accident, his teacher said, as I heard him screaming in the background. He's bleeding from his ear. The headmistress is already on the phone to your pediatrician. Please could you come back now? Quickly as I could, I rushed back to school.

In the classroom, Little A lay on the floor whimpering. When I came in, he curled up against my chest, his hand cupping his right ear. I was told a car was on its way to take us to the doctor's office. The headmistress accompanied us there.

From what I gathered, his new shadow teacher (the current one leaves in a couple of weeks, so today was the second day of the transition from old to new) was playing with him, and when he picked up Little A, my boy threw his head backwards and pushed with his feet against the teacher's chest. He does this with Big A, to flip over. The New Shadow did not expect this, and dropped Little A, falling to the floor himself.

My son must have hit the ground so hard, though they could find no bumps on his skull, because his ear did not stop dripping blood for hours. Our pediatrician took us in immediately but couldn't get a good look because Little A was screaming and wiggling so much, so she sent us to an ENT. We went off to another hospital, with my mum this time, who'd rushed over herself as soon as she got the news. We left our car at home for Big A, who was also speeding back from work, breaking every traffic law in the book.

The ENT found torn skin in the ear canal, and ordered a CT scan to check if there were skull fractures. He warned us that if there was a fracture, he'd want to keep Little A overnight for observation. Big A, having once been little and no stranger to hospital emergency rooms himself, had anticipated this, and arrived armed with the Au Pair and extra clothes, books and toys for our boy.

We had to wait a few hours because Little A had had cornflakes in the car, and he needed to be sedated for the scan as there was no way he would lie on that cold hard metal bed voluntarily, even for a 2 minute procedure. Instead of waiting in the Trauma ward, we got a room and let him have a much-needed nap while I finally got to eat some lunch. This was at 5pm, and he had fallen just after noon.

At 730, we all walked down to the Radiology unit. The sedation team came, and I held my son as they injected him with a tranquilizer. He tried to fight the insertion of the IV and the tubes and wires, but quickly went under. Blinking back tears, I laid my son on the machine's hard table. The scan was over, as promised, in two minutes. I accompanied Little A to the recovery room while Big A stayed with our SuperDoc to hear the findings. The Au Pair cried as she watched our little boy being wheeled out on a full-size hospital bed.

In recovery, Little A was still half sedated as he removed off his oxygen tube, his pulse monitor and made every attempt to rip out his IV. SuperDoc's voice and mine calmed him down, but in the end the tubes had to come out because he refused to keep them in there. Groggy and nauseated, he climbed off the bed and would have made for the door if his legs hadn't given out. I sat him in my lap while he threw up in a basin, and we waited to be sent back to our room, watching the anxious faces of our family through the glass panels in the swing doors.

Back in the hospital room, Little A made up for the 12 hours since his breakfast, gobbling down a bowlful of food but then vomiting it back up again because the sedative was still wearing off. He stood under a hot shower and then played until bedtime. We made every effort to keep him quiet and still because it turned out he had two fractures, in the temporal bone and the occipitoparietal (?) one. The bleeding finally stopped and I put in the antibiotic ear drops as he slept.

We've got a struggle ahead of us keeping him from running, jumping and rough play for up to a month. But so far Little A is cooperating, walking slowly and climbing carefully. He is learning how to be less than a human dynamo at all times, which will certainly be wonderful if he manages to keep it up. As for me, I'm just taking it one day at a time. Just call me Humpty's mother.

Technical Difficulties

2011-12-01T05:14:00.000-08:00

Last week, my laptop's hard drive conked out. Once upon a time that would have been earth-shattering, but with everything I'm dealing with at the moment - work, life, family - it was just a minor blip on the radar.

What did make me mad was discovering that the Internet Cloud site I was supposedly storing my files in as backup, the one that claimed to "automatically update files as you update them on your computer," was a total crock. Some of the files were 6 weeks out of date, and others never updated at all. I'd stopped emailing them to myself simply because I believed the stupid Cloud site's claims. (Okay, maybe I didn't read every single word of the fine print. Still. I have false advertising.)

So the only "real" data I had was what I'd either written in my trusty notebook (never without one, thankfully!) or I'd printed out. Thankfully, I'd just printed out a recent batch of Little A's photos since I still keep proper photo albums, otherwise all of this year's snapshots would have been completely lost.

Today I was told by the technicians that the files in said dead hard drive are unrecoverable. So now begins the task of rewriting 6 weeks' worth of daily sales reports and other things I really don't have time for since I can barely get the laundry and groceries done and my son to and from school on time, let alone find, buy and wrap Christmas gifts for my entire family (thank goodness friends and teachers have theirs already). So it's goodbye, sleep, for the rest of 2011. Now, where's that frozen margarita?

Anger Management

2011-11-19T05:42:00.000-08:00

On Saturday mornings, Little A has Occupational Therapy. It's in the next city about a 20 minute drive away from home. During the hour he's in class, I try and fill my time productively. Today I'd booked an appointment that was timed to finish in barely enough time for me to pick him up after the session was done.

Since the therapy centre is in an office building, it's fairly quiet on Saturdays, and only two or three out of six lifts are in operation. Apart from us parents and our special needs kids, the only other floor that seems abuzz with people is a call centre two floors up.

Little A's session time coincides, apparently, with breaktime for a particular shift of call centre agents. This means that after leaving him with his therapist, it can take up to 15 minutes to get a ride down the elevator, because every time one stops, it's already packed with people. Big A says to get into one that's going up, since once it stops on the call centre floor and fills up, it heads straight down with everyone inside.

Today I did just that, and found that Big A was right. I stood in a corner as the lift filled up with young people sporting bright orange ID lanyards proclaiming their employment for whatever business outsourcing firm they belong to. One smart aleck by the door thought it would be great fun to keep popping his arm between the doors every time they started to close, causing them to open again. The other people waiting on the floor for the lift to go down so that another would arrive, and we crammed like sardines inside, were far less amused.

After about 2 minutes of this unbelievable behaviour, I snapped, "Could you kindly stop that and allow the doors to shut? Some of us have better things to do with our time than stand around while you amuse yourself." The young man quickly pulled his hand in and allowed the door to shut, finally.

The lift started down, and I would have shut up if I didn't hear a sarcastic comment whispered by someone else inside the lift. I then retorted, "There's floor full of special needs children working below you, and not one of them behaves as badly as you do in a lift. If you can't observe proper elevator etiquette, you should just take the stairs in future." At this everyone fell silent.

Once we got to the ground floor and everyone poured out, I tapped the offending character on the shoulder and asked him to apologise. Perhaps his other companions found his antics amusing, but I certainly didn't.

I don't know if a mother's voice of authority works on anyone other than her own children, but I certainly hope I shamed some of those uneducated young people into better behaviour today.

Once on This Island

2011-11-13T10:35:00.000-08:00

There's song that goes, "They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot..." In this case, they paved paradise, but brought electricity, sewage treatment, solid waste management, clean water, a team of teachers, healthcare and job opportunities for the residents of the island, while keeping as much of it as possible au naturel.

A win-win trade off, in my book. Balesin Island off Quezon province in the Philippines is a pristine piece of land that for three decades was largely left untouched, apart from an airstrip graded by the pilot who owned the island. Since sold to a corporate entity, development has been quick, but all of it sound, thanks to the capable hands of the sustainable island developer spearheading the work.

Big A and I spent a day here recently, at the invitation of said corporate entity, who are selling a limited number of membership shares to what will be a stunning vacation spot with six themed villages and the usual island recreational activities.

If we had the cash to spare, we may have purchased a share; unfortunately we've still got a large debt to pay off for the business we started a few months ago. But we hope for the next best thing - that our friends invest, and then invite us over.

Date Night

2011-11-12T18:27:00.001-08:00

Lately, every time I get home from work in the evenings, which is right about the time Little A finishes his evening meal, he comes up to me and takes me to the door to indicate we should go out.

Where we used to walk to the playground or around the swimming pool outside, these days he likes to go further abroad - specifically, down the road to where a row of restaurants and cafes is situated.

He has decided on a favourite restaurant and heads straight for it and up the stairs to a preferred table. He sits and reads his book in enough time that it takes me to order and consume something. Since these regular dates are getting quite painful on the wallet, this means a small salad, an interesting appetizer, or even just a drink.

Some nights I convince him that we could go to Starbucks instead. He likes this too, after initially needing to be carried inside and shown that it wasn't a frightening place to be.

While Little A still has a long way to go improving his communication and social skills, this is a little help in that direction, I hope. And it's a wonderful way to bond with a child.

Copycat

2011-10-28T20:09:00.000-07:00

It's the school holidays again. This one would be an equivalent to what I once knew as half-term. Little A gets nearly two weeks off school and a week off therapy, so we hied off to the mountains for a few days.

The culminating activity for this half-term was a United Nations Day programme, with children from the five classes in Little A's preschool dressed in various costumes, shaking maracas, jumping up and down and moving to different bits of music.

This was Little A's third time onstage since last Christmas, when he simply cried and tried to get off at every opportunity. This time he'd been practicing assiduously with his classmates for weeks after getting accustomed to the new piece of music, but always with his Shadow Teacher nearby to give constant encouragement.

Come D-Day, she was off sick. Little A stood onstage, crying slightly because of the crowds and the noise, but calmed down when he heard the familiar music. He didn't do all the actions, but watched his classmates and did the ones he knew best and liked most.

Big A stood right in front with the video camera and tears in his eyes. My sister, her daughters and my mum were next to him and I was a few feet back. We were all very proud.

A huge thing that will get Little A going in the speech and behaviour management direction is imitation. He does things voluntarily but rarely upon command. So the main focus of our work the past year has been to this end. It's gratifying to see some results, and we pray he continues to improve.

Making the Grade

2011-10-07T19:43:00.000-07:00

I met a good friend for tea this afternoon. She's been studying for the bar exams these past few months, but took time off yesterday to celebrate with her husband and sons because the first term's marks had been released and both boys made the honor roll.

My sister and her daughters came along too, because both girls had gotten good grades as well. While sitting at a cafe outside a large toy store, we saw countless parents with their children there for the same reason. (Little A was home, asleep.)

I was simultaneously appalled and fascinated to see this blatant display of material rewarding. While at university 15 years ago, I remember being amazed at how some classmates would boast of receiving large cash sums as a "prize" for making the Dean's List. Upon mentioning this to my parents they replied, "We never believed in using such incentives. You should earn good grades for your own sense of accomplishment, not because there will be a cash reward for doing so." They were so right.

At boarding school, earning a prize on Speech Day came in the form of a paper certificate and a book token. I loved this reward system, because it made sense. Surely those hungry for knowledge would want to enrich this by acquiring more, then only available in the form of books.

As children, my sisters and I looked forward to visiting the bookstore on weekends with our parents and picking out one book each - two if we were lucky. I cannot recall a single instance of a visit to a toy store that inspired such happiness.

While sitting outside that toy store I wondered if the bookstore at the opposite end of the mall was doing as well. I hoped so, and I hoped that more parents begin to realize what my parents knew so long ago - that books can often create a far richer sense of fulfillment than many toys can.

Worlds Collide

2011-10-01T03:50:00.000-07:00

September sped by and I survived relatively unscathed. Little A's godmother, her partner and my newest goddaughter are now back in chilly Helsinki after a visit to Manila that was all too brief. The big corporate event I was supposed to help organise was postponed because two years and a day after one huge storm hit the city, another came along and caused significant damage to the hotel that was meant to be our event venue.

Part of my duties for this event's coordination included sourcing the evening's entertainment. Dance was the chosen medium for the conference's opening number. As I did wear pointe shoes for a large chunk of my life, no one was more qualified than I to find the perfect performers.

During the search, I realised that despite the many hats most of us now wear, all of my dance colleagues have remained in the industry somehow or another. Once you've gotten it in your blood, you can never be rid of it. My dance friends now run their own schools, choreograph, teach or do related things like costume design, notation or makeup.

Coming back in contact with my local dance friends has, sadly, taken the form of securing them as event entertainment as I've been unable since having Little A to take enough time out to go to the theatre and see a performance. One simple question by the director/choreographer at the recent event meeting made me realise I truly miss this part of myself. Not the glare of the lights nor the sound of applause, but the use of my body to express what words could never adequately convey.

Since giving up professional dance, I've been asked countless times to open a school or teach young children. I don't know that I want to do that yet. Perhaps there's still enough in these tired limbs to get the blood flowing again. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future I can put my shoes on, get back into shape and once more move to beautiful music. Who knows?

Changing the Rules

2011-09-10T06:53:00.000-07:00

Independence is something all children achieve in time. Or so we hope. From taking those first unassisted steps to moving into their own homes, there are so many levels a person goes through in the course of life.

Recently I've discovered that I need to adjust to allow Little A more independence. But how does one transition from "No" to "Yes" gracefully, without seeming self-contradictory or having to offer long-winded explanations?

Some things are still at the NEVER level: touching the stovetop, iron and open flame, crossing the street, going out the front door or getting into an elevator alone, climbing out of a wet bathtub and onto the highest level of the playground slide without a safety barrier.

Others need to move to the CAREFULLY level though: stepping on and off escalators accompanied (but not necessarily holding hands), pouring glasses of water, using the toilet unaccompanied.

Apart from using the "Now you are bigger, you can try this by yourself" line, what other ways are there to take children to the next level of independence? I'd appreciate any suggestions.

Stressful September

2011-09-05T22:07:00.000-07:00

This month, I am stretched thin, nearly to the point of tearing. Metaphorically speaking, of course. My calendar is full, and choices must be made.

While one foreign-based friend has headed back to the other side of the world, another has just arrived, husband and baby in tow. Both these friends of nearly two decades are Little A's godmothers and both have not been home (they live with their husbands in cold Europe) in over two years. So spending as much time with each other as possible while they are in town is of high priority.

On the other hand, there are inescapable work requirements, plus a very important corporate event I was booked for months ago which takes place in two weeks, not to mention wife and mother duties.

So I find myself choosing, but the choices are not easy.

My book club events have taken a back seat this month to a wedding, a scheduled but sudden play date, and an important client presentation. I love these new reader friends and hope they understand but am certain they will, as they too must have kindred souls and brothers and sisters of the heart whose company they crave after being so long apart.

Next month, I hope, I will be able to breathe. But then the Christmas rush will be upon us. I will cross that bridge when it comes.

I Have a Little Shadow

2011-08-20T23:35:00.000-07:00

Now that Little A loves school and I no longer need to hang around on-site in case he comes crying and looking for me or just wants to exit the classroom, (all of which he used to do frequently) I hardly know what goes on when he's there. Since he won't tell me about his days, all I can do is drop him off and pick him every day up like a good mother.

Thank goodness for the Shadow Teacher's journal. Again, I only get two mornings a week to read five days' worth of school activities, but it's better than wondering or having to grill an already tired teacher at the end of every school day.

Her very detailed journal chronicles their activities together both in and out of the classroom. I give verbal reports on the latest developments with his various therapists and she tries to incorporate all the efforts into her work with him.

Sometimes he still surprises us. Lately he's typed "hed" for head, "otr" (otter) and "egele" (eagle) into the keyboard. Those were easy enough to interpret, and once I corrected his spelling he didn't get those words wrong again. Harder was "hipots", which turned out to be his version of hippopotamus.

One day I saw that he had spelled "time" with letter tiles, and concluded this was part of what they were learning at school about the calendar. He's been arranging his letter tiles into fours or threes, but never upon command. So he may be getting the concept of quantities, even if I didn't think he listened when I tried to explain them to him.

His Shadow Teacher reports that last week at school, the teachers were trying to determine if he could identify beginning letters by pointing them out when presented with an object. Clearly bored with that simple lesson, he quickly spelled out "corn" (a word no one had ever taught him to spell) when presented with a plastic corncob, then took it and went off to play farmer.

When he wants to get her attention in the classroom he stands in front of her and looks at her face until she makes eye contact with him, and then smiles. He's gone from being annoyed with her to having a classroom buddy to interpret his gestures and babbling.

Non-verbal communication is extremely difficult for human beings. Most difficult for the person who knows what he wants to say, but cannot express it verbally. We've had a recent run of checkups, and I've gotten a pediatric neurologist's number to see if there's anything that can be done to address what may be apraxia or dyspraxia or some other thing I need to read more about. Whatever it is, I pray that one day we discover the key and unlock Little A's mind-mouth connection so he can finally tell us everything he's been wanting to say.

The Darkest Hour

2011-08-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

There are all sorts of sayings about having to go through trials before getting a just reward. All sorts of advice, too. From fortune telling to prayer to the alignment of the stars, every belief set has its own sage wisdom.

Still, when you're at that low point, sometimes it seems like it's never going to end. Plans pan out, hopes are dashed; before even drawing breath, you're back at square one.

Big A and I were beginning to wonder if the light was ever going to come. All his professional life, he'd been in the most volatile sector of the finance industry. Well and good if you're young, single, and feeling invincible. Not so when you've got bills to pay and a family to support and one part-time paycheck just won't cut it.

After two major economic recessions, some boom years but just as many, if not more, bust ones, we'd had enough. One must learn from one's mistakes, and our little boy's needs weren't getting any fewer, no matter how thin we managed to stretch what was left in our bank accounts.

Just as we were about to scrape bottom, our prayers were answered. A business opportunity Big A had been studying assiduously for weeks took shape. The loan we needed to take on to make this all happen was approved. Lawyer drew up papers. In a couple of weeks, we will turn a corner and start a new phase of our life together.

It will be hard. It will require keeping those belts tightly notched for half a dozen or so years more until the debt is paid back. But it will keep food on the table and Little A in school and a roof over our heads. And that's all that really matters. All else is just gravy, and we know that if we cook our meat just so, when the time is right, the juices will flow and so we will enjoy that benefit too.

Like Father, Like Son

2011-07-20T18:25:00.000-07:00

I love my boys. My constant companions, they are a dynamic duo with a love/hate relationship. (Hate when the little one hogs the iPad and the big one wants his turn, or when the big one says it's time for the little one to get out of the swimming pool - though lately that last task has fallen to me, so I am the villain.)

In some ways they are totally unlike each other, in other ways they are undoubtedly father and son.

Either way, these photos through the years will always be something to treasure.

A Fitting End

2011-07-14T19:17:00.000-07:00

Cinemas worldwide will be packed this weekend, as the last film of what is likely to be the bestselling children's book series of all time hits the screens.

Harry Potter has played a huge part in many lives this past decade and a half, least of all my own. My nephew was born the year the first book was published, and read the series as avidly as I did when he was older.

I first heard about the Harry Potter books from my sister's ex-boyfriend. Curious, I bought the first book and found it an interesting read, with strong echoes of Roald Dahl. Upon learning the author was British, I asked my sister, then at university in London, to bring home the second book for me, and the third when it came out in paperback, as they were unavailable in local bookstores at the time.

By the end of Book 3, I realised that Rowling had gone beyond her literary influences and indeed created a world that was nothing less than magical. A first edition Book 4 was my first ever Amazon.co.uk purchase, with a copy that was delivered to my parents' London flat just in time for their return trip to Manila.

With Bloomsbury editions unavailable in my country, (Scholastic has the rights to publish and sell Harry Potter books in America and the Philippines) I had to find other ways to complete my collection. Book 5 was purchased online and brought home by a colleague who was in Singapore at the time of the release. Book 6 was bought at a Hong Kong bookshop (it seems that former UK colonies sell UK editions, and former American colonies sell US ones) when my best friend's family were there on holiday right after it went on sale.

Book 7, being the last, was special. I wanted to be in London, queueing up outside a bookshop for the midnight release, but my life had other plans. Little A was born two days before the final book was launched worldwide, and while my fellow fans spent July 7, 2007 with their noses buried in their books, I was in hospital, nursing and burping a newborn every two hours.

Little A's godmother took my last book home from Edinburgh in time for his christening, a full two months after its release. It was the longest wait I'd ever had to make for a Harry Potter book, but I hardly noticed it, what with colic and nappies and sleeplessness.

When I started reading, in fits as my baby slept, I didn't mind the wait at all. The series got ever better as it advanced, and the ending was no less magical than I had hoped for. These books have been reread numerous times, and will be read again in years to come.

The films are equally memorable, as they chronicle my relationship with Big A quite well. We watched every movie on the first day of release from the same seats in the same cinema until it shut down after the third film, which I had to watch on my own as Big A was at a golf tournament. He knew better the next time though, and made sure he was always free on the day a new movie was released.

We saw the last one today, and I thought it was done just as wonderfully as the book ended. And we do not bid the series farewell, but look forward to Little A enjoying it in years to come.

Fantastic Four

2011-07-07T16:13:00.000-07:00

Four years old. This year, for the first time ever, Little A blew out his birthday candles. On the day itself, we fed his classmates and gave them goodie bags, and then had a quiet lunch with his cousins and grandparents at the weekend.

Little A knows birthdays are special, and has been looking over the photographs and watching videos of previous celebrations as if to show us he remembers. He counts on his fingers and smiles sweetly when we get to number four, and sometimes brings us his birthday candle so he can practice blowing it out.

One thing we have noticed is that he is much calmer these days. The time for tantrums seems to have passed (fingers crossed!) and he understands that he can't always get what he wants, when he wants it.

Happy Birthday, Little A. May you stay healthy and happy and continue to grow in all the ways you can. We love you.

Back to School

2011-06-23T20:19:00.001-07:00

Little A went back to school last week, and I marveled at how far we have come in 2 1/2 years.

When he started playschool at 16 months, we pulled him out after 3 months, because he couldn't engage with the teachers and didn't seem interested in the group activities. A year later, I enrolled him in a preschool twice a week, and not only were his teachers terrible, he was bullied constantly.

Midway through this first semester, we finally got his ASD diagnosis. He began therapy, but when I asked if he needed a shadow teacher and a more structured school program, his clueless teachers couldn't give me an answer. He spent most of that semester crying, and I gritted my teeth and waited until he moved into the next class, hopefully with better teachers.

When the schoolyear started last year and he started attending classes thrice a week, we were finally advised to find him a shadow teacher, a process that took close to three months to complete. Once they had adjusted to each other and the regular teachers, Little A began to really enjoy school.

By the time classes ended last March, it was difficult to tear him away at the end of a day. He happily attended his summer classes, and come this month, when he has been enrolled for daily classes, he bounces into the room without even waving me goodbye.

While he still has a way to go yet before he will be "big school ready", he has shown great improvements in being able to tolerate sitting with the group, following the class schedule and the like.

Academically, he is ahead of his age group in some ways - reading and spelling, but he needs work with writing. We're working on math skills now, and hopefully he will prove as astute with numbers as he is with letters.

Saying Goodbye to Summer

2011-06-10T16:48:00.000-07:00

We managed to squeeze in a single trip before the summer ended. Our regular mountain visit took place the week before Little A went back to school.

This time around, apart from the usual time spent at the day care centre and visits to see horses (he is still afraid to ride them but loves to watch them in action), he discovered Guitar Hero. A pair of big boys were very accommodating, and allowed him to interrupt and then join their music time.

We also visited a museum nearby, and spent plenty of time in the fresh mountain air. Now we are back and ready for a new school year.

Dying Young

2011-05-21T18:34:00.000-07:00

The world was supposed to end today. For most of us, it didn't. But for some, it did. Round about the time the Rapture was supposed to take place, the husband of a dear friend lost his battle with cancer and went ungently into the good night.

Death happens. We all know that. Yet we manage, most of the time, to keep ourselves removed from its reality. Until it happens to someone we love, and we realise that it comes to regular people, not just terrorists or criminals, but everyday people who make a living, care for their families, and just get through the days like we do.

My dear friend, at age 34, is now a widow. We, her friends, are devastated, and very much aware of our mortality. What can we do, what can we say, to make things easier for her to bear? To make it less painful for her to see her husband's remains cremated and fly them to the other side of the world, where he came from, and then pick up what was left of their life together, alone?

There are no words to express this kind of sorrow. Or perhaps there are, only I can't find them yet. All I can hope for is that when he went, he did indeed feel Rapture.

The Count

2011-05-20T04:48:00.000-07:00

By accident, just the way we found out he could read, I discovered Little A could count beyond 20. He has a magnetic calendar board with the days of the week and months of the year, so he can stick on the dates from day to day if he wants to.

For a long time, he only played with the hands of the clock on this board, pointing out the numbers from 1-12. Then one day he took notice of the date numbers. More quickly than I expected, and without any help from anyone, he put the numbers 1-31 in order and looked for more. The iPad has an app that counts until 50, so clearly he's been paying attention to this. There is also a poster on his wall with numbers up to 100, and he's been pointing to these one by one and asking us to count for him.

So - reading, check! Counting, check! Next comes simple Maths. My Waterloo. I do hope I'm up to this.

Me Time

2011-05-07T20:12:00.000-07:00

As every mother knows, there are never enough hours in a day. Getting the kids ready and to and from school, driving them to and from their other activities, grocery shopping, doing laundry, cooking, and trying to squeeze in work besides - it's no wonder there is a day set aside in our honour. What is a wonder is that it is only one day in a year.

One of the things that comes last on a mother's list of priorities is herself. Where once she would enjoy a few hours a week on her own, to get a manicure, go to the gym or quietly read, there is now a whole barrage of other, more pressing, things to get done in that time. "Me" time for mothers is reduced to a ten minute bath or five minute shower, and even that is rarely uninterrupted.

One of my goals this year (and last year, come to that) is to try and get back into shape. I've put on some pounds where I don't want them to be, and feel decidedly unfit. Last year, I managed a grand total of TWO exercise classes. This year I signed up for four to start with. Two are done, and I feel like I'm inching toward that fitness goal. There's a long way to go, but if I only steal an hour and a half per week for myself til the end of the year, I may yet achieve it.

Live and Learn

2011-04-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

Little A loves the iPad. Many mothers tout it as the ultimate electronic babysitter, keeping children quiet in restaurants and such, but we appreciate it even more than the average parent, because it is shaping up to be an excellent communication tool for autistic or nonverbal children.

This month is Autism Month and in honor of this, there are numerous free apps available, all of which Big A has downloaded. Little A enjoys learning, and some of our friends have asked about these applications as their children only use the iPad to play games.

As with anything, we limit Little A's time with this gadget, and he has learned how to ask for it, and how not to be angry if it isn't his turn. While traditional teaching methods may still be the most effective, there's no denying that these modern tools are a great help. We're very glad for this one.

Skills Test

2011-04-22T20:55:00.000-07:00

Ah, summer. Here indeed, just in time for Easter. Sweltering days and still evenings, but so far the temperatures have not soared to the heights of last year, thankfully.

What is called Holy Week in the Philippines are the few days preceding Easter Sunday. Holy Thursday and Good Friday are always holidays in this predominantly Catholic country, and unlike other holidays, on these two days shopping malls are closed. Hooray! This means a real holiday for me.

Little A picked this week to fall sick - probably good timing since it was also his week off school and therapy. He had an unexplained four day fever that had us worried, but finally (fingers crossed!) disappeared last night.

Otherwise, he's been having a busy summer - swimming every day after morning class or therapy, and keeping active indoors. He's into alphabet letters, reading and words now, so I recently tested his skills by writing animal names in crayon on the floor and had him put matching figures by the words by reading them. He did every one correctly, with no help or prompting.

He's also becoming more communicative with his gestures. Tapping on my cheek with his fingertip now seems to mean "please" as well as "sorry", and prompting me to smile and say "it's okay" tells him that I've accepted his apology.

Speech still to come, but this is improvement, and we are glad.

Summertime

2011-04-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

Normally, this time of the year in this part of the world is unbearable. We can hardly step outdoors for fear of being fried, and the electric bills soar with air-conditioning units going full blast, all day long.

This year though, whether it is due to climate change or La Nina, summer is perfect. Admittedly, the sun has only come out this week (when we are usually sweltering by mid-February), but it is not as intense as April sun usually is.

Little A is in school at lunchtime thrice a week, so I use those two hours to work, walking to and from the little shop. If it was a "regular" summer, the walk would be akin to crossing a desert at high noon. But now, it's pleasant. Sometimes sunny, sometimes overcast.

As soon as we get home from school, into the pool we go. I can work on my summertime Ts - toning and tanning - while towing Little A around the pool. Then comes late lunch, naptime for Little A, and back to work for me.

Summer is shaping up beautifully. Hope yours is too.

Driving the Mummy Mobile

2011-03-31T18:38:00.000-07:00

I call it The Tank. A friend calls hers The Behemoth, though I have a feeling hers is larger than mine. No, we aren't using euphemisms for any body parts. We're talking gas guzzlers here.

A few weeks ago, my faithful car of ten years was sold. I loved that car. It was a colour one could never miss, meaning I never had to wander through parking lots just to find it, and it took me everywhere I needed safely - to and from work every day, on errands, and to every doctor's appointment when I was pregnant, including the trip to the hospital on the day Little A was born. Best of all, it got great mileage.

Little A loved the car too - he picked it out among others in a crowded lot, marked orange as his first ever favourite colour, and always chose the little car over daddy's big black truck when asked.

Still, there were signs that the orange car needed to be replaced. In the last few years, servicing costs were through the roof. Major parts needed changing. Rattling sounds wouldn't go away. Luckily, our friendly mechanic agreed to buy it for his daughter, since he knew what a great car it really was and had the ability to fix it up relatively cheaply. So what started as a servicing trip ended up being the last time I saw my little car. And I didn't even get to properly say goodbye.

I wanted another fuel-efficient car to replace this one, but given the budget we had for a "new" old one, there was none to be found. Available little cars were in poor condition, miles racked up were astronomical, or they were just as old as my orange one, meaning the same costly repairs would be needed.

Then Big A found a great deal. On a car for himself. One that was old, but in wonderful condition and with a ridiculously small number on its odometer. It was a car we could sell easily in a few years and still make good money on.

So now Big A had two cars, and I had none. The big black truck suddenly became my car, and in one fell swoop I went from carbon credit conscious girl to suburban mother in tank.

The truck is large. It keeps us safe. Little A and I are like two peas rattling around in it, and because it has so many areas to explore (a large roomy trunk accessible by climbing over the backseat), he is hardly ever in his car seat. He also insists on riding his Little Truck inside the big one whenever possible.

It is not hard to drive, and not that hard to parallel park - the turning radius is more of a hindrance than the size. But it consumes fuel frighteningly. We now get less than half the mileage Little Orange Car did. And with everything that's going on in Libya, petrol prices are sky high. So we need to make adjustments to make up for this sudden size increase in our family's carbon footprint.

Anyone with any suggestions on how to do that, please send them over.

I Am Mother, Hear Me Roar

2011-03-19T17:40:00.000-07:00

Much fuss is being made these days over a book, mainly because of the reactions this article sparked. Parents, children and parenting experts worldwide agree, disagree, and air their two cents' worth.

As a mother and a daughter, I think there are some fine things to be said about discipline and instilling a good work/study ethic in children. These days everything is so different from the time of my own childhood: instant communication versus snail mail, a worldwide marketplace and wealth of information at one's fingertips that keep one from having to even stand up, let alone discover patience and the value of looking for something in a library, and, thankfully, a growing awareness that everyone is unique and some are more special than others and need extra help.

At the end of it all though, in order to raise an individual you can be proud of, one you feel will make as best a contribution to society that nurture will allow, you do what works for you. This may be based on how you yourself were raised, on what you read or on what others say. Or a combination of all three. Every child is different, so every parenting style is too. I know mothers who treat each of their children differently in order to obtain the same results.

Tiger-raising is not strange in this part of the world, with a significant component of the population being partly or fully Chinese and many of the country's movers and shakers having three letter last names. One of Little A's friends is barely three and has daily lessons in four languages, tests every week and elocution programs where they recite nursery rhymes. In preschool. Her Filipino mother (the girl's father is Chinese Filipino) needed more adjustment to this way of learning that the child did, but both now seem to be doing fine.

Different strokes for different folks. One thing we mothers all have in common though, is the fierce determination to protect our children. No matter what anyone might say, there is a tiger in every mother.

Thinking About the End

2011-03-13T05:12:00.000-07:00

While Little A napped this afternoon, Big A and I watched a very sad movie on tv. It was an end of the world story, but this time America didn't save the day. Several children from around the globe were chosen, though, to be spared and continue the human race, presumably on another planet.

It was the story of a parent's love for his child more than anything, and it made my heart ache because the little boy reminded us of our own. It was hopeful though, in an incredibly sad way, and we took it to mean that if anything should happen to us, our boy would not be left uncared for or alone in the world.

This came hot on the heels of a very good friend and her husband flying into town unknown to all but very few family members and friends, because he is after more aggressive cancer treatments that are not being offered in their home country since he, at not even 35 years of age, despite being fit and reasonably active, was suddenly diagnosed with stage 4 cancer barely four months ago.

It is a shocking tragedy when someone is struck with any sickness, but even more so when they are someone you know and care about, and someone who should have many more years ahead of them.

We've spent the past month researching alternative treatments for him, and of course hope and pray that they will work. He is strong and positive, and determined to fight what will probably be the most challenging battle of his life. We stand beside him to give him whatever support we can.

Finally, a little note of sympathy for the people of Japan.

Birthday Season

2011-03-02T17:18:00.000-08:00

The month of March is always a merry one. From the first day to (nearly) the last, there is a birthday of someone near or dear. One niece, one nephew, two godchildren, a sister-in-law, about 10 good friends and finally Big A and myself.

Cake bakers are busy and restaurants do good business. Ideally my little shop will too. Evenings are studded with dinners and drinks, and weekends are packed with children's parties, some of which overlap and necessitate rushing from one to another.

This year, one near friend and one very far away but very dear one are having babies this month. More March celebrations for the years to come.

Happy Birthday, fellow Martians!

Special Days

2011-02-14T01:24:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, Big A and I marked five years of marriage and a decade of knowing each other. We didn't do anything fancy, but felt the special-ness of the occasion anyway, particularly when we looked back on all that had happened since the year 2000 ended.

Ten years is a long time, and yet it seems so short in other ways. Ten years ago, Big A and I were both enjoying the single life, and seeing each other in addition to other people. Six years ago, we moved in together. Three and a half years ago, Little A came into the world.

So much has happened, and in other ways, so little has changed.

May we be blessed with many more decades together, now we are a family.

Lions and Tigers and Ponies, Oh My!

2011-01-31T01:41:00.001-08:00

We took Little A to the children's zoo last week. Located in the middle of the urban jungle, it is called The Ark, since all the animals are kept in a smallish building in roomy areas behind glass (big cats), open ponds (fish, crocodiles, geese and ducks), pens (goats, sheep, pigs, rabbits and guinea pigs) or cages (small snakes, birds).

Since he loves ducks and fish, Little A spent plenty of time peering into the ponds. The eagles and owls tethered by their legs to wooden posts were slightly frightening as they had limited flight space and could hit or peck a small child. Keepers brought out an orangutan the same size as my son, but with hands and arms the size of Big A's. It was a friendly creature, but both Little A and I were hesitant to sit so close to him and have our photos taken.

A fan of horses, Little A ran towards the Shetland pony. A blanket was put on the horse's back, and despite the lack of anything to hold on to (no reins, stirrups, or rope of any kind), keepers told us he could be ridden. My little boy didn't want to, though, just yet.

We visited the second floor, where Little A fed the rabbits and large guinea pigs a carrot on a stick. He thoroughly enjoyed the swing in the recreation area, but when we went downstairs to head home, he decided he was brave enough to get on the pony.

Because there was nothing to hold on to, and I was afraid he'd pull the horse's mane too tightly, I stood next to my little boy to keep him balanced. The keeper led him once around the lower area with me walking alongside the horse, then Little A motioned that he wanted to go again.

Midway through the second round, another keeper came out of a side door. For some reason, this startled the pony, who kicked me hard in the leg and bolted around the corner, throwing off Little A in the process.

My son landed on his side on a rough concrete floor. He cried loudly, from shock more than anything else. Naturally, the few people in the building came running. Ice packs, a nurse's examination, and curious onlookers resulted. Little A seemed uninjured save for a scratch on his forehead, but I suffered a nasty bruise on my leg in the perfect shape of a horse's hoof.

Before going home, we encouraged Little A to get back on the pony, just so he wouldn't be afraid of horses in the future. He did, and went around the closed area once more. Despite his calm leave-taking, he does seem to harbour some sense of unease about the visit, as when he looks at the videos on my husband's mobile phone these days, he always chooses to skip the ones of the trip to the zoo.

Getting a Life

2011-01-19T09:40:00.000-08:00

For about 2 decades, a book called Four Bare Legs on a Bed has sat on a shelf in my parents' house. My mum bought it on one of her trips to London, but it never seemed to appeal to me and was one of the few books in the house I never read.

My mother was mainly responsible for my love for books. She stocked the home shelves well, and still buys me great titles when she travels without my asking for them. And yet, in nearly 35 years of being alive, I have never once seen her reading.

This always perplexed me, for how can a woman with such great literary taste (to me, anyway), not read the books she carefully purchases? Then I became a mother, and then I understood.

Late last year, Helen Simpson's Getting a Life came my way via Bookmooch. I recognized it had the same author as the book sitting in my mum's reading room (one review says it is in fact the same book, retitled and rejacketed for the American market), and noted that the first book won a writing award. Still, it took a few months for me to pick it up and read it.

The book now sits on my shelf and in my mind as a true gem. Simpson writes beautifully, and strikes such a chord in me with these stories that I wish every mother had their own copy, and that every father could read it too.

The author is a mother herself, and knows whereof she writes. What makes this book so resonant is that it shows how mothers are all, in fact, in the same boat, and they know this, but cannot reach out their hands to each other for support, for these hands are too busy "running the domestic circus, functioning as the beating heart of the family".

"Their needs were what was set. Surely that was the logic of it. It was for her to adapt, accommodate, modify in order to allow the familial organism to flourish. Here she was weeping over her own egotism like a novice nun, for goodness' sake, except it was the family instead of God. But still it was necessary, selflessness, for a while, even if it made you spat upon by the world. By your husband. By your children. By yourself."

I share my mother's knowledge now of "the shelves of books on the wall loaded with forbidden fruit, impossible to broach, sealed off by the laws of necessity from (her) maternal eyes. During the past five years, reading a book had become (for her) an activity engaged in at somebody else's expense."

Simpson rightly and beautifully illustrates how the family unit is in fact "a seesaw", and in order for one to take time for herself, the other parent must take up the slack, something few men are willing to do, so blindingly oblivious are they to all but their own needs and desires.

Like each story's protagonists, I love my husband. But wish he would realise just how demanding running a family really is. Still, now I feel less alone, less helpless. I know that mothers and wives all over the world feel the same way.

Wakey Wakey

2011-01-16T17:55:00.000-08:00

We seem to be reaching a scary point in Little A's life. The time when he starts giving up his nap. Scary for me, and for every one else in our home who needs those two or three quiet hours in the afternoon to rest. And breathe. And do the grocery shopping. And work.

Little A is unbelievably active. When he was tiny, Big A and I would say that we hoped he would get into parkour when he grew bigger. Boy, did we get what we wished for. His gross motor skills developed unbelievably quickly, and he was walking unassisted at 9 months. Running and climbing quickly followed. My sister half-jokes that Little A was never a baby, but was born and turned immediately into a toddler.

At 3 and a half, he is pure energy. He drinks no milk and eats no sweets, out of his own choice. I dread to think what it would be like trying to keep up with him if he liked sweets and caffeinated things such as chocolate.

Jumping off furniture is something he would do all day long if he could. He can get up places higher than his head with little more than one or two hand and foot-holds. Here he is on top of his play slide, which is about 4.5 feet high.

It took nearly two years to get him to sleep decent stretches at a time, so it seems too soon for my sanity for him to give up his nap. My mum says I stopped napping before I was three, so we should be glad Little A still naps regularly. With a little bit of luck, we'll reach his fourth birthday before he fully gives up these precious afternoon sleeps.

2011 in Books

2011-01-10T17:59:00.000-08:00

This year, my reading challenge is simple - to read 50 books from what is now a huge - 70 book - TBR (To Be Read) pile. After the 50 are done, I carry on reading, and by the end of this year hopefully on my reading list will be 20 classics, 15 award-winning books and at least 5 Filipino-authored books. Plus a much smaller TBR (a dozen books at most.)

Big A is beginning to despair of ever getting his well-organized home back, and has already had the contractor in to see where additional bookshelves can be installed. He also gave me a Kindle for Christmas so I can theoretically store all further book purchases on one slim machine instead of all over the apartment.

The problem is, not all the books I want to read are available in e-book format. Plus, it's a machine. One spill of water, coffee or whatever liquid means my entire digital library is inaccessible, and I have to fork out far more than the cost of a replacement book to get it fixed. I will also be reliant on having a plug socket to keep it alive, though the battery life is amazing. Most importantly, I need to be sure my active little boy doesn't accidentally sit on it, step on it or drop it.

In my book (pun intended), the e-reader will never replace paper. They can, however, live harmoniously side by side. In halving my library between digital and printed formats, I do a little bit more to save the trees, plus keep my flat just that much further away from being submerged in books.

Happy Holidays!

2011-01-09T23:48:00.000-08:00

This was Little A over the Christmas holidays. He loves the drums at his grandparents' house and plays them enthusiastically every time he visits - provided there are people to clap for him, of course.

He also discarded the cards on the My First Scrabble set soon after opening it, choosing instead to spell something without anyone's help. Straight from the shower, he ran to the tiles and when I came in to put his clothes on saw that he'd spelled a new word correctly and completely. Until now his favourites have been "duck," "musical ins" (short for instruments) and the usual "cat," "dog," and "Thomas" for the train.

His teachers at school don't believe he can spell, as he still hasn't shown them what he can do, given that the alphabet boards in the classroom only have one of each letter. Big A and I though are certain there are many more words he already knows, and we can't wait until he spells them for us.

Another Year Over

2011-01-01T00:09:00.000-08:00

Hello, 2011. Here you are already. As a new year has begun, I look back on the one just gone.

2010 seemed to fly by, but within the 12 months, many things happened. Big A started a new job midyear and then resigned in November. Little A started therapy - twice a week OT, and in the last quarter of the year added a weekly Speech Therapy session and thrice a week sessions with a home behaviour specialist/ shadow teacher.

He still does not speak, but he now reads and spells many words. He still loves to jump, run and climb, but can now sit still in a restaurant and allow us to eat a quick meal. He tolerates noisy places and birthday parties and has become more consistent in following instructions.

We did not travel out of the country in 2010, a first since Little A was born. We did make several local trips, to the mountains and the beach. I read 200 books, and the little shop that started in November 2009 just celebrated its first birthday. I managed two exercise classes and a few more book discussions.

All in all, a good year. Looking forward to the new one, as at the end of this month, Big A and I celebrate 10 years of knowing each other and 5 years of marriage. We also have milestone birthdays to look forward to. Cheers to a bright 2011!

Finish Line

2010-12-24T10:00:00.000-08:00

Early this year, I decided to join a few reading challenges. Here's how they turned out:

1. The Quantity Book Challenge - as of Dec. 24th, 2010, I have finished 199 books. This number earned me the Most Voracious Reader Award at my book club's Christmas party earlier in the month. Yay!

2. The Chunkster Challenge - did better than I thought on this one, with a 5th hefty tome completed last month. Since the rules require a review, pardon my brevity:

- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (471 pages, read March 3-8)- a man's book, if there ever was one. War and love from a very masculine perspective. Classic Hemingway, with very vivid descriptions, and his wonderful prose style. This book struck me as written from a very personal experience, which made it all the more moving. Everyone should read this book.

- The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris (572 pages, read April 6-7) - sequel to her first, and very enjoyable novel Chocolat, this book brings back familiar characters and places them in a similarly challenging setting, particularly with little Anouk beginning to grow up. Harris writes her own version of magical realism, and this book is worth a read for those who enjoyed the first one.

- Middlemarch by George Eliot (795 pages, read May 19-24)- It took me years to get around to reading this novel, but when I finally did, I was not at all disappointed. Interesting characters, a readable plot - one just needs to be in the right frame of mind to read this, because one started, it will be enjoyed and appreciated.

- The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks (480 pages, read May 24-28) - interesting premise, but not-so-excellent execution. Too many things going on at once, and it seemed like everything had already happened before (in a television series or another book). Read during a weekend beach trip, and it was good entertainment.

- Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (650 pages, read Nov.1-8) - A brilliant slice of life in the time of the Sun King, but I did wonder why it was called Wolf Hall when the Seymour family didn't feature particularly strongly in the story, though they would play a significant part in the period following where the novel ended. History, politics, intrigue, and one very compelling, intelligent and admirable man.

3. The A-Z Challenge - here's a list of the new authors and titles I've read this year.

4. Filipino Books - the five I read in 2010 were:

- Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco

- Noli Me Tangere by Jose Rizal

- The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker by Gilda Cordero Fernando

- Connecting Flights edited by Ruel de Vera

- 12 Little Things Every Filipino Can Do To Help Our Country by Alexander Lacson

5. Classics - I managed 22 new reads and rereads, listed below:

- The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

- Beowulf

- The Invisible Man by HG Wells

- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving

- Middlemarch by George Eliot

- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

- My Antonia by Willa Cather

- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

- This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

- Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger

- Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

- Noli Me Tangere by Jose Rizal

- Towards the End by John Updike

- Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

- The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

- Macbeth by William Shakespeare

- Therese Raguin by Emile Zola

- The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

- 1984 by George Orwell

6. 20 Award Winners - a combination of new and rereads, I didn't think I'd finish this year but managed 21 in the end.

- Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (Booker)

- Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (Guardian Fiction)

- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (Newbery)

- The Stories of John Cheever (Pulitzer)

- Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary (Newbery)

- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (Nobel)

- Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco (Man Asian)

- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Pulitzer)

- The Dancing Girl of Izu by Yashari Kawabata (Nobel)

- March by Geraldine Brooks (Pulitzer)

- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Pulitzer)

- The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (Newbery)

- Soliders in Hiding by Richard Wiley (PEN/Faulkner)

- Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia McLachlan (Newbery)

- Holes by Louis Sachar (Newbery)

- Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Booker)

- From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by EL Konigsburg (Newbery)

- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle (Newbery)

- A Ring of Endless Light by Madeline L'Engle (Newbery Honor)

- The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness (Guardian Children)

- The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness (Costa)

That's all for the books I've read this year. As for the books I purchased in 2010, well, that's another challenge altogether.

Clap Clap

2010-12-22T21:35:00.000-08:00

Unlike other babies, who applaud at the littlest thing, Little A was never much of a clapper. He learnt how at the right time but preferred to watch other people doing it, and when commanded to clap would bring his hands together once or twice at most.

Like all other parents, when he does something properly or well, we applaud him. He enjoys this, and sometimes makes us just sit down and clap while he performs for us.

Most recently, he has discovered another use for clapping. Since he still does not speak, but realizes that clapping makes people feel good, whenever he bumps into me, spills or does something by accident, he claps repeatedly while looking at me with a worried face, as if to say, "I want to make it better." Lately, he claps when I scold him as well, as if to say, "I know I did wrong, it won't happen again." He doesn't stop until I tell him it's okay, and show how we can fix whatever went wrong.

Most cultures use applause to show appreciation. In his own wordless way, my boy does so too. I know he claps to show us that he knows how much we care.

Connecting Flights

2010-12-11T18:30:00.000-08:00

The Filipino diaspora has been widely documented over the past decades. People are undeniably one of the country's largest exports. Step into any hotel or hospital in the world or onto any large ship in any port and you are likely to run into not one but several Filipinos.

Whatever the reason for their travels overseas, be they education, work or wanderlust, travel they do. "Connecting Flights" is a collection of poetry and prose pieces by contemporary Filipino writers in English edited by Ruel S. de Vera, an award-winning writer himself and my former university professor.

A slim volume, this book features the Filipino voice writing from elsewheres ranging from Russia to Hong Kong. For me, the crown jewel in the collection is Yvette Tan's story Seek Ye Whore, a retelling of Ira Levin's "The Stepford Wives", the book for which this blog is named. Her version puts a fine twist on the traditional story, and is, from a female point of view, infinitely preferable.

Another wonderful piece is Charlson Ong's Of That Other Country We Now Speak, a fine story that merges myth and legend with real life, and showcases the Filipino's belief in one having a definite effect on the other.

Karla P. Delgado's Barcelona Breathing resonated with me, as I too found myself when at school abroad, and hope to return to the country I call my second home one day.

On the whole, this book is worth a read, whether you are Filipino or a foreigner, an armchair traveller or a real one.

Coming Up to Christmas Break

2010-12-11T00:35:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, Little A's preschool will have their annual Christmas program. He started attending a little over a year ago and had a difficult time adjusting, so last year's program was something we didn't even consider him joining. Since then, we've had a whirlwind of a year.

This time round, he's as ready as can be. We'll find out on the day itself whether or not he will perform, but he's been practicing with his classmates and his shadow teacher. Yesterday they did a rehearsal at the nannies' Christmas party, and he only had a panic attack towards the end of the number, due to the sheer volume of people crowding a tiny space.

I haven't seen the parish hall where the show will be taking place, but I do think Little A will perform better on a stage than simply in front of large crowd. In a few days, I'll post the outcome.

Learning Curve

2010-12-02T04:44:00.000-08:00

December already. Argh. The first birthday of the little shop saw the opening of a second, albeit temporary, one for this Christmas season. This meant hiring new staff, training new staff, observing the new staff, and keeping up with the corporate orders and retail customers.

Also, Little A went back to school and had to adjust all over again. A one-month break from thrice a week classes resulted in a behavioural backslide that extended to his therapy sessions. Suddenly he was having major mummy separation anxiety tantrums that required a gradual (two week) weaning-from-my-immediate-presence process.

Now that he's nearly back to his school-happy self, it's only a week until the Christmas holidays begin. So we will do this all over again in January.

Never mind. No one ever said parenting was easy, regardless of whether one's child is typical or not.

On a good note, he learned how to read and type the word "duck," his current favourite thing. One day, he pointed out something on a text heavy page, and I said, "Yes, those are words, and letters." He looked at me, disgusted, put the page down, went to his bookshelf, opened a book, took it back to me, pointed to a specific word on the text page again, then to a picture in the book.

I looked closely at the size 6 font and saw he was pointing to the word "duck." Then he pointed again to the picture of the duck, in a totally different book. To show me he could knew what the word said. I was beyond proud. My boy may not yet speak, but that he has begun reading, and typing, means that perhaps he will soon find a new means of communication.

The Summer Book

2010-11-12T22:17:00.000-08:00

No matter what part of the globe one calls home, summertime contains a certain magic. For me, it means talc-fine white sand shores, warm, clear blue water and a breezy spot in the shade to which I retreat when the sun blazes too brightly.

For an impetuous young girl and her physically fragile yet mentally agile old grandmother, summer is a tiny island off the Finnish coast where they, together with the young girl's father (also the grandmother's son), are the only human inhabitants.

Tove Jansson's The Summer Book was her first adult novel and is touted as her best-loved. Never out of print in its native Scandanavia since initial publication in 1972, this short and very bittersweet read draws largely from the author's own life. Perhaps this is what makes it so special. There is a saying that truth can be better than fiction, but this novel marries them so perfectly it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Jansson's prose is the kind I love, though credit must certainly be given to her translator. She uses simple few words that tell a great many things. Descriptions are anything but flowery and her narrative is straightforward, yet each chapter, on average four pages long, is a short story in itself.

"A small island, on the other hand, takes care if itself. It drinks melting snow and spring rain and, finally, dew, and if there is a drought, the island waits for the next summer and grows its flowers then instead, the flowers are used to it, and wait quietly in their roots."

The best part about this book is the relationship between the two women. Grandmother knows Sophia so well that she can defuse a potentially dangerous situation with a few simple words. She is wisdom personified and equal parts common sense and imagination. Sophia is a temperamental and capricious child, but is also wise beyond her years in a way children these days seldom are. Their exchanges are alternately hilarious and heart-wrenching.

Readers looking for a feel-good story about a grandmother and granddaughter will not find that in The Summer Book. This novel is philosophical in a very understated way, and re-reading it will bring new insights each time.

Though my introduction to Tove Jansson was though her utterly captivating Moomin world, I have firmly joined the ranks of her adult reader base. I look forward to reading more of her books, but sense I will return again and again to this tale of summer.

*A special Thank You to the two wonderful book bloggers who organised NYRB Reading Week. I hope it becomes a regular event held worldwide more than once a year.

Long Holiday

2010-10-24T21:28:00.000-07:00

Little A missed a week of school due to roseola, which meant he had one more week before school broke up for two weeks of holidays. The last day would be trick or treat day, and then there would be an afternoon party to mark the beginning of the break.

While I was looking forward to getting him back to his new routine (speech therapy once a week after school, and the thrice weekly shadow teacher), powers beyond my control had other plans.

On Monday there was a typhoon, which meant classes were called off at the preschool level. On Wednesday, his class was scheduled for a home visit, which meant that in lieu of regular classroom activities, a playdate at one student's home would happen instead. On Thursday afternoon, the teachers announced that there was an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease in Little A's classroom, and parents could decide whether or not to let their children come to school the next day.

Having suffered through hand, foot and mouth disease once already, none of us wanted to go through it again, and Big A said under no circumstances was Little A to set foot in school the next day. This meant his holidays had started two weeks early.

A month off school for Little A then, but not a holiday exactly. Therapy sessions go on, and so shall the shadow teacher's regular home visits, which are still something Little A is adjusting to. Perhaps when classes resume in November, he will look forward to going back.

Seeing Spots

2010-10-23T09:06:00.000-07:00

When Big A and I got home from work last Tuesday evening, the Au Pair told us rather worriedly that Little A's front and back were covered in some sort of rash.

This was hot on the heels of an unexplained 24 hour fever two days previously. I checked the rash and checked the baby books, and it looked suspiciously like it could have been measles, german measles or roseola. Little A also had a cold, his eyes were bloodshot, and he had slightly soft stools in the days since the fever.

He never had his MMR injections, what with the whole autism-vaccination issue, so I worried it could be either of the measles, neither of which I've had, nor my Au Pair or Cook. (Big A phoned his mum, who said he'd had the measles as a child.)

Luckily, Little A's pediatrician was at the nearby hospital the following morning. We went for a visit, and she told us it was the least scary of the three - roseola. The rash would be gone in 2 days, and then he would no longer be infectious to other children below age 3. A good thing, since my mum's 60th birthday was that Saturday, and it would have hugely disappointed her if Little A had to miss the celebration.

While the rash was gone by Thursday and he was back in good spirits, though sleeping slightly longer at nap and nighttimes, I kept him home from school on Friday to be sure. Thankfully, he is back to normal, though he hasn't been back to school since then, which is a different story altogether.

A Little About Me

2010-10-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

It is a sad day when the second of two British boarding schools you have attended in your life is taken down to become a housing estate.

Last in, First Out

Ten years after I left, the school where I had spent five of my teenage years moved from Surrey to Birmingham, thanks to a tie-up with a prestigious British ballet company. It was bittersweet, as the Surrey campus had been its home since the school was founded, and had seen the likes of Sarah Brightman and Jenny Agutter walk its halls as students. In my time there, a few of us made it to the stage or screen.

Most of the staff, who had been there for decades, did not follow the school to its new home, or perhaps were not invited to, which is a shame as some of them had helped to create fantastic performing artists. Today the campus is a housing unit, but no longer for budding dancers.

Prior to studying in Surrey, I spent six weeks at a Sussex school in 1998 as a trial for the entire boarding school experience. This school, which had its own roster of famous alumni, shut its doors at the end of the summer term in 1989, and many of its students (as well as some of the teachers) went on to Elmhurst, so upon my arrival at the latter, it was nice to see many familiar faces.

Despite closing as a school 21 years ago, the campus remained untouched until very recently. It was with great sorrow that former students said goodbye to what will always be a very special place in their hearts.

Germs, Begone!

2010-10-10T18:42:00.001-07:00

Dear Santa, For Christmas this year, we would like to be well. All of us, please. Thank you.

Today marks the start of the 4th week of family illness. One thing has followed another. First Little A came down with a 3 day fever that led to a cough and cold. Less than a week later, Big A caught the flu and I contracted sinusitis, all while Little A was still recovering from the first bug. Late last week, when we thought we were back on the road to health, we all started sneezing and realised we now had the common cold, though Little A had a fever again over the weekend.

Add this to: the coming Christmas rush, a second store opening in a week's time, new staff to hire and train, my mum's 60th birthday this weekend and, for Big A, a huge moral dilemma at work that has made him realise that, despite idolising Gordon Gekko from the moment he saw the first film 15 years ago, (the one that inspired him and countless other young men across the globe to get into stockbroking and investment banking) he did not turn into an unbridled capitalist after all, and you get a household that is limping along and doing its best to get back at full speed.

On the Little A front, we're getting into the new routine. He has started once weekly speech therapy, and his shadow teacher is coming thrice a week and accompanying him to school. They are still getting used to each other, but we're all crossing our fingers that this turns out to be a good mix of teacher and student.

Here's hoping this month, or hopefully even this week, sees us back in the pink of health.

This is the Way We Pack Away

2010-10-05T05:14:00.000-07:00

Little A enjoys packing away these days. Hooray!

The flat we live in requires a place for everything, and thankfully my son is learning to put everything in its place. He helps with the household chores by stacking tins in the shopping trolley at the supermarket, making sure we have certain vegetables, arranging rolls of toilet paper on the storage rack and refilling the container of cotton buds that sits on the bathroom shelf.

I've also caught him opening the drawers where his favourite toys are kept, taking them out carefully with both hands then shutting the drawers with his hip. Just like his mother.

His favourite of all activities is finding every single coin in the house and slipping them one at a time into a particular drawer. Big A and I always know where to look when we need change.

Days Go By

2010-10-03T00:18:00.000-07:00

It's been a month since I last posted anything, and I only just realised it.

In a month, we've been down with the flu and are just recovering, and been to a barrage of Little A's doctors - regular pediatrician for the flu, developmental pediatrician for a quarterly checkup, special ed doctor for psychoeducational assessment as recommended by his preschool directress and finally, evaluation by a speech pathologist.

We're now beginning the phase of increased therapy, which according to my reading is still far short of the 25-40 hours per week recommended period for intervention for children with autism. From just 2 hours per week of OT, he will now have an additional hour of Speech Therapy and close to 8 hours of home and school-based behavioural coaching/shadow teaching.

After Little A's parent-teacher conference in August, it was strongly recommended that we get him a shadow teacher (something I asked about last year but no one listened to me then) so that he could focus and attend more during class time to bring him up to the level of his age group in terms of social skills and learning.

The search for the shadow teacher, who will also do at-home behavioural coaching (something like ABA), took an entire month. The queue for a speech therapist's evaluation took several months. OT is going fine, but we've all noticed that after an initial marked improvement, Little A's progress seems to have plateaued. Add to this the fact that the clock is ticking and he only has until age 5 (6 at best) to maximize this period of super fast childhood brain development and here we have the urgent need for more intervention as soon as possible.

Since we live in a Third World country, the cost of all this comes out of our pockets. No state subsidies of any sort in our part of the world. Still, Big A and I have decided we will take out a loan if needed to pay for all this, because we only have 2 more years to help Little A catch up as quickly as he can. And these costs are staggering. Every treatment is billed on an hourly basis. Not per month, nor per semester. Per hour.

I am inundated with paper, lists upon lists, as we have plenty of home-based work to do with Little A and I'm trying to come up with a coherent across-the-board programme for the au pair and myself to execute on a daily basis. My mum, bless her, has enrolled in an Early Intervention course, auditing classes once a week at the university she taught at and got her Master's Degree from many years ago.

This is very much a group effort. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and we're now putting together Little A's power team. Wish us luck.

Retail Therapy

2010-09-04T03:48:00.000-07:00

There are women who don't like to shop. I don't personally know any of them, so perhaps they are an urban myth. Everyone I know possessed of the XY chromosome pair, and even certain XXs, get some enjoyment, if only the fulfillment of purpose, from finding, choosing and acquiring certain material objects.

For most people, some kind of shopping is a necessity to survival. We need to purchase groceries, petrol, clothing, presents, school and office supplies. We want to purchase entertainment objects such as books, magazines, cinema tickets and music cds.

Some people may enjoy this choosing and finding more than others. The acquiring part is understandably most painful as it requires parting with hard-earned money, and perhaps this is what sours the entire shopping experience for some.

Still, it is the sense of enjoyment that stays with one most when a particular thing is purchased. Whether it's a new tech gadget or a beautiful dress, a hot-of-the-press first edition or one's own home, one cannot deny a sense of happiness that comes with the acquisition.

Shopping for necessity is part and parcel of a wife and mother's existence. Shopping for enjoyment is a rarity. Shopping for a bargain is the best of all. So for the first time this year, I purchased three dresses and a top at a sample sale in a neighbour's flat. It was like stepping into a little piece of heaven, seeing rails upon rails of Marc Jacobs, Gucci, Chanel, DVF, BCBG, Bebe and more at unbelievably reasonable prices.

I am thrilled with my new things as owning a DVF dress has been on my life's wishlist for decades. The Marc Jacobs was a complete bonus and an utter delight. Now I have something worthy to wear with my few gorgeous pairs of shoes, one pair given by my husband every two years for the past three. Ah, the joys of being a girl.

Hurts and Hugs

2010-08-21T19:46:00.000-07:00

This month, Little A's teacher has given me two notes. These notes are the school's form of calling parents' attention to disciplinary problems involving at least two children. The report is called "Hurts and Hugs."

In the first instance, Little A was excited about some music being played and in his delight he yanked at his classmate's hair. Twice. The second time, he was again overjoyed at a movement activity going on which had the whole class in a frenzy, and apart from a powerful hug, he bit the same classmate, a quiet little boy, on the ear.

Making Like Mike

Little A's teeth HURT. I have been bitten more than once, sometimes because he was angry, other times because he was excited. My nose has suffered, as has my shoulder and both upper arms.

Each time, we tell him not to do so, and lately he has been biting less. But I guess that day he really was happy. We have also noticed that he is rougher with people he is fond of - his dad, myself, other children he likes.

After the biting incident, when I re-entered the school and saw the other little boy in tears, two other mothers who had witnessed it said it really wasn't meant maliciously. Little A, and the other boys, were just very, very excited.

Still, I am glad these reports are provided. What I do wonder though, is why I was never given a single Hurts and Hugs slip between November and May, when Little A was pushed regularly and deliberately by a big bully of a boy who is thankfully no longer in his class. The first couple of incidents I was prepared to overlook, but it would get such that the boy would go out of his way to seek out my son just to give him a strong shove that always sent him tumbling to the floor.

Last year's teachers, huge disappointments both, never did a thing about it. I knew it wasn't just me making something out of nothing because another student's father called the teacher's attention to it one time when it happened in front of the entire school. I am thankful that my son, at least, does not hurt deliberately. He may not be many things yet, but one thing he is not is a bully.

Busy Days

2010-08-21T01:40:00.000-07:00

This is the second crazy month for me, with little time for anything other than work. Still, here we are, doing the best we can. Little A has been unpacking cupboards and leaving trails all over our flat. Where it used to just be mess, now it's often organised mess. Certainly an improvement, and something to smile about as he is very careful, particularly with the Noritake china.

Burn, Baby, Burn

2010-08-03T07:30:00.000-07:00

Big A rarely falls ill. This is a very good thing because, like many men, he acts like he is at death's door every time he catches the common cold. This time though, he's pretty sick.

Since Little A has moved himself back onto our bed after a few months of sleeping on his own on the floor, his preferred sleeping spot is nestled next to his father. So naturally, he is now suffering from the same cold and cough combo as his dad.

Last night I wanted to ease both of their breathing difficulties and brought out the steam vaporiser, set it up and got it going. All was well until at about 430am, when Little A woke up, got down from the bed to get a drink, and decided he wanted to touch the vent from where the steam as issuing.

Of course he burned his hand. Of course there was screaming and crying. Of course it was not yet 5 am. He even tried to get into the sleeping au pair's room to show her his injury. I knew it was bad because he actually held on to the ice pack, something he normally never allows to come into contact with any part of his body.

After an hour, he fell asleep. Later that morning he woke up and didn't seem too bothered by the red and juicy blister covering part of his little hand. I told his teachers about the burn in case he didn't feel up to holding crayons or paintbrushes or his spoon, but when I peeked into his classroom midway through the class, he was seated at the little table, colouring away with no apparent discomfort.

For the rest of the day, he used his hand as usual. I hope the burn heals without the blister opening up, so that I don't have to worry about him touching dirty things with an open would, which he enjoys doing. Fingers crossed!

Move Over, Martha

2010-08-02T06:17:00.000-07:00

Stepford Mum is in the house. The month of August is the turn of Little A's class to be featured on the school's notice board. A blank patch of wall is decorated in turn, month at a time, by each of the ten classes. More accurately, it is decorated by certain mothers in each of the ten classes.

As I am the only mother who regularly stays at school during Little A's classes, (a few come to drop off and pick up their kids, but most just leave their nannies in charge of the school run) I ended up in charge of this month's decoration. A meeting was held to discuss the theme and how we would execute it, but only three out of twelve mothers turned up.

Wanting to be democratic, we three held a little discussion and then the rest was left in my hands. I sent a letter out to the other parents explaining what was discussed and asking for feedback, assistance and financing for the materials needed to put this grand scheme together.

Running with Scissors

Most of the parents, save one set, sent their "payments" within the next few days. That week, I was busy with my trusty pair of 15-year old, still-sharp scissors as I cut out, one by one, letters to the words "I am the world's greatest," a dozen balloon-shaped sheets for each child's parents to decorate, five sets of colourful party buntings, and, at the last minute painstakingly put together what turned out to be a bonus art activity for the children - little paper "cakes" with their names on to adorn the matching balloons.

Serendipitously, Little A's classroom theme is "Party," and since the shop I run sells gift packaging materials, it was easy to get most of what we needed at great prices. An exhausting round of bookstores and a scrapbooking shop provided the rest of what was needed.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed the work, despite being a total amateur in the crafting department compared to my highly artistic graphic designer of a sister. Putting it all together in one morning, on the other hand, would require more than one set of hands and I really wasn't sure any of the other parents would turn up to take part in this activity. So I recruited the help at hand.

Army of Nannies

On D-Day, I walked into the school with both arms full of bags, dropped off Little A at his classroom, then stood in the middle of the waiting area and called out, "Nannies of the Pink Room!" like a drill sergeant.

They responded immediately, and I set them to work. Anyone who has ever employed a good one will know that a capable nanny is second to mum only because she didn't actually birth or nurse the child she is in charge of (though some mums don't even do the latter.) If there were less-than-capable nannies present, the efficient ones quickly took them in hand.

While I gathered and put together the "cake slices" and balloons, the nanny battalion put the backing paper together, assembled the paper streamers and stuck the balloons on the sides of the sheets. They then assisted me with the placement of the lettering and the balloons and cake slices. We finished in plenty of time, and when Little A's class came out to see it, his teachers were very pleased.

Parents are competitive. Nannies are too. If there was a prize for the best decorated notice board at Little A's school, we'd be a shoo-in for first place. Already, the mothers of the next class to take their turn have asked me to help put their design together. Crafty mum, that's me.

Music Man

2010-07-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

When children are but a few months old, they begin to show their preferences in terms of toys and books. Later on they pick which food they eat, which nursery rhymes to listen to and which videos to watch. The point is, little people know what they like.

My son has always loved classical music. When he was in the womb, I listened to it most of the time, partly because as a trained classical dancer for most of my life, I enjoyed it, but mostly because of the whole Mozart-brain development theory.

I continued to play classical music when Little A was born, and the first videos he watched (and consequently grew totally addicted to) were the Baby Einstein and then the Little Einstein ones.

When he began to recognize shapes and images, he took great notice of musical instruments - brass, percussion and strings. He studies photos of instruments very intently and sometimes carries them around with him. One of his all-time favourite books from age one to this day is Zin Zin Zin A Violin, which has kept him occupied on plane, train and car rides as well as at home, for hours.

Little A recently inherited a 1/16th size violin that his two cousins have outgrown, to his great delight. Visits to their house have seen him sitting in a corner with both violins in front of him, serenading the rabbits in their cage.

While he seems a little young yet to begin music lessons, we are hoping the love for music remains, and that in time he will make music as well as he enjoys listening to it.

Three's Company

2010-07-09T19:48:00.001-07:00

This week, I will bake more cakes than I have in the past six months. My boy is three, and we are celebrating in our own little way.

Unlike my artsy younger sister, who could give Martha Stewart a run for her money in the crafting department, I have neither the talent nor the patience to cut out a gazillion crepe paper streamers and glue them into intricate shapes with added tiny accents. That said, Little A would probably love running through a flat with crepe paper streamers dangling from the ceiling so maybe I should get out those scissors.

My Martha moments come in the kitchen. Since this is birthday week, I am baking, baking, baking, with plenty of help from my dear food blogger friend.

On Sunday, I made a chocolate cake for myself, a yogurt cake for Big A's family (it was his grandmother's birthday as well, and 96 is certainly a milestone) and cupcakes to take to school for Little A's classmates the next day. The last were with a little help from good old Duncan Hines since I didn't have enough butter nor sugar to make the frosting from scratch.

This afternoon, I will make another chocolate cake, and a gluten free sponge cake for tomorrow, when Little A celebrates with his cousins. That way he can have his cake and eat it too.

Three years have been chronicled in this blog so far, with many more to come. For his third year, I wish my little boy good health and happiness. He knows how much he is loved.

Read On

2010-07-01T15:29:00.000-07:00

I am all for promoting children's reading. Whether it's a creative but copyright-infringing knockoff or a simple homemade picture book, anything that gets kids away from the television and turning pages cannot be bad.

These two little books were products of a book swap I recently took part in, and now happily live on Little A's bookshelves. Both brand new, both overlooked, these books represent two of the best things about children's literature and just go to show how some people's trash is other people's treasure.

One is just one step above a picture book, with lovely illustrations and simple text that makes for perfect bedtime reading for a young toddler. The other is verse, one of the best things for young children's language development. All of my favourites by Eugene Field, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson and even Mother Goose are in this slim volume. The lilting cadences that come with reading verse out loud calm me down, and certainly lull my cranky son into quietness.

I only wished there were more copies of these books at the swap. I would have snapped them up and given them to my godchildren this Christmas.

Best of Both Worlds

2010-06-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

There are some perfect pairings. Chocolate and peanut butter. Tea and biscuits. X and Y. For me, one of these perfect pairs is books and shopping.

I love to read, and, as a woman, shopping is in my DNA. Over the last few years, I've accumulated a few books that combine two of the things I enjoy most. While all of these books are gems, my current favourite is The Virago Book of the Joy of Shopping.

Beautifully packaged in black and that shade of blue popularised by one of the most well-known jewellers in the world, this book brings puts together a big picture by tackling every aspect of shopping from a fabulous selection of women writers. Taking the form of extracts from fiction (characters by Helen Fielding, Patricia Highsmith, and of course, the Shopaholic herself), non-fiction and even letters and diary entries by the likes of Jane Austen and George Eliot, this book is one that every woman should have, and will love.

The Best Things in Life are Free

2010-06-29T19:07:00.000-07:00

Baby kisses. Warm hugs. People who remember your birthday. Yes, it's true that money needs to buy most of the things we need to survive, but sometimes we get great things without needing to fork over any cash at all.

Recently, the bookstore nearest my little shop was renovated. In the months since Christmas it looked terribly shabby, with dusty shelves, no new books (and consequently, nearly no customers) and a general air of neglect. With a competing bookshop rapidly expanding its number of stores, this one needed help, badly.

Luckily, the people running the store realised this and quickly took action. The newly redecorated shop is bright and cheerful, with well-stocked shelves. The management also kickstarted business and showed off the new look with a fantastic promotion - a book swap.

For the weekends of June, old books with pages intact (apart from school texts, reference books and a few other exceptions) were accepted by the store and in return customers chose as many books as they gave back from a roped off area containing tables of unmarked remainders, brand new sealed books that didn't sell too well, and the titles others had returned.

Over three consecutive Saturdays, I exchanged 27 books that I'd read but didn't love and couldn't give away for 20 spanking new books and seven secondhand ones that I'd been wanting to read (or never even heard of but looked interesting) and couldn't believe I'd gotten for free. Some of the new books have been put aside for presents, others may be swapped again once I've read them. Apart from the fact that I still have too many books for the number of shelves in my flat, a bookswap is really a no-lose situation. I hope the bookstore makes this a regular thing.

Hand Me Downs

2010-06-29T05:53:00.000-07:00

Recycling is good. Little A is lucky to have an older male cousin who provided him with nearly all the clothes he has worn since he was born. The only new clothes he has worn were presents, and the only clothes we have bought for him were purchased in the last year - shoes, underwear, vests and shorts mostly.

Little A turns three in a few days, and he still has enough hand-me-downs to last for years to come. Amazingly, many of the things have come back in style, such as this Toy Story t-shirt, over 10 years old and from the first movie (the third installment is in cinemas now.) The FIFA World Cup kit from 1998 is also significant as the current year's championship is underway.

I wish my mother-in-law had saved some of Big A's clothes from when he was little, as I'd love to photograph his son wearing them decades later. I have made sure to pack away some of Little A's things that were given new, like his Marimekko shirts and his Chelsea football kit. Perhaps one day his son will wear them too.

Testosterone Overload

2010-06-25T05:22:00.000-07:00

I flip through the newspaper every day. I give the headlines a glance, read the stories and opinion columns that interest me, skim over the business and entertainment sections, take note of interesting ads and usually read the lifestyle pages in full.

The single section that interests me the least is the Sports page. I don't live under a rock, so I do know that sporting mania is going on right about now, what with the NBA finals and US Open just finishing and the FIFA World Cup and Wimbledon going on simultaneously and the British Open taking place in a few weeks. I have a vague idea of which players are hot, and which teams deserve to win, but I can't seem to muster the passion for the game that keeps many of my friends rooted to television screens night after night. Not the same kind of passion that makes my heart skip a beat when the bookstore goes on sale, or when I try on a beautiful pair of red-soled shoes.

I imagine my dad, with a wife and three daughters, had a hard time spending close to three decades in a house where female hormones ruled and it was all about the arts, with no one to talk sports with him until his sons-in-law came along. With two males in my home, I may need to get into the sports scene soon.

Honour Thy Father

2010-06-11T05:58:00.000-07:00

I'm not one to write full-out reviews, but when a really good book comes my way, I can't help but want to force it upon other people.

Currently in an American classics phase, I realized it had been a few years since I'd reread Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. That I picked it up two weeks before Father's Day was pure luck, because the reread made me realize that this novel, more than any other I've read, pays homage to fathers in such a beautiful way that no other novel even comes close.

In many books, young adult or otherwise, the father is nearly or completely absent (as in the case of the boy wizard, the boy genius, the teen demigod, the Little Women, and many more) or just in the background (as in the case of the clumsy mortal, her paramours, and countless others.) One of my other favourite books, Roald Dahl's Danny, Champion of the World, also pays tribute to the father figure, and as you will see in the photo, both these books have been read again and again in the 25 or so years they've been on my shelf.

Harper Lee places the father front and centre, in a position where he truly lives up to his title of head of the family.

This quote focuses on the book's central theme:

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of giving the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

As does this one:

"Sometimes I think I'm a total failure as a parent, but I'm all they've got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him..."

This book was written by a woman, so some may argue that she puts the father figure on a pedestal. But most who read the book come away awed and inspired. Read it. If you aren't moved to tears, then you don't have a heart.

Woman's Work

2010-06-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

There is a saying that goes, "A man may work from sun to sun but woman's work is never done." How true, as this song from about 1692 shows.

Times have not changed much since then, except now women go to work outside the home as well as within it, making their lives that much more difficult.

Big A starts a new job next week, and Little A resumes preschool. We've made the most of the summer with little breaks to beat the heat, and now it's the time of year for the rains to resume.

The days pass, and soon Little A, no longer very little, will be three. Some things have changed, but others remain the same. The laundry piles up as the larder empties, meals must be planned and made and bills paid. Indeed, a woman's work is never done.

Postcards from Paradise

2010-05-29T00:28:00.000-07:00

The summer heat is going nowhere, and when our bedroom air conditioner went on the fritz, we dug out the gift certificate for the two-night island resort stay Big A won last year at a golf tournament, booked the flights, and hied off to have some fun in the sun.

This was Little A's first beach trip, so we weren't sure what to expect. He loves to swim but has never experienced salt water, and only recently started walking on grass, so we wondered how he'd take to sand, even the talcum-powder fine version found on Boracay Island.

As for Big A and myself, the last time we'd gone to this beach together was in 2002, and much had changed on the island since then. It had gone from a little known paradise to a fully commercialised locale complete with Starbucks in just five or size years.

The resort we stayed at was on the opposite side of the island from the hustle and bustle, and we did appreciate the tranquillity, especially after a visit to the other side for dinner with my best friend and her family.

Little A loved the Kid's Adventure Zone with its giant slide and soft play area. He also loved being in the water, and didn't seem to mind the saltiness (though he was very careful not to swallow it). He didn't like the sand at all, and for some reason did not really enjoy our beautiful hotel room.

On the whole, it was a lovely two days, apart from being delayed and then diverted to another airport for the flight back. We do hope to visit the beach as a family again, and perhaps stay a little longer next time.

To Each His Own

2010-05-22T07:20:00.001-07:00

During our last little family holiday, I came across this comic strip in the newspaper. Since these are the days when we can make digital copies of everything, there was no need to clip it out, though in hindsight, maybe I should have done so and pasted it into Little A's baby book.

My son will be three in six weeks, and he has yet to begin speaking properly. He's continuing to make progress with Occupational Therapy, but we are still waiting for him to start talking.

The comic strip made me realize how much we judge people based on what is considered to be "the norm". What is "the norm", anyway? And who invented it? Who said that man couldn't be an island when and if he chose to, for certain periods of time?

Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes strips are so clever that there was even a philosophy teacher who did a short course on them every year at the university I attended. I salute people like Watterson, who dare to question what others set as the way to do things. Naturally, I wish for my son to experience the same things his father and I did, but I also realize we do not fully comprehend that in his own way, his experiences may be fulfilling enough. He has his joys and his frustrations, as do we all, and perhaps, for now, that is enough.

Running in the Family

2010-05-14T18:35:00.000-07:00

When I was about 3 years old, I ran away from home. Food allergies and lactose intolerance made me a very picky young eater (chimpunk-like, I used to masticate bits of meat and then spit them out later), so there was always war at mealtimes. I'd endured the "no leaving the table until you finish your meal" tactic by falling asleep on my plate several times, so my mother, in desperation, went for the "this is my house and if you want to stay here, you need to follow my rules" approach.

To my three-year old mind, it was made perfect sense. I didn't want to follow the rules by eating my dinner, so I had to get out. I got up from the table, went upstairs, and packed a small bag with my favourite pillow, some underwear and a toy. Then I walked downstairs and out the door.

My mum just stood at the upstairs window and watched me go. My grandparents lived next door, so she was sure I'd just go over to their house. When I walked past it and started to turn the corner, she panicked and chased after me.

I remember clearly that I was heading for the church a few blocks down the road. Whether that was because it was God's house and therefore somewhere else to live or because there was an adjacent school and the nuns might take me in, I really don't know. As my mother dragged me home, I argued that I couldn't go because I was not going to eat my dinner.

Last night, Little A followed in my footsteps. Six weeks shy of three years old and still not speaking, I have no doubt that he does understand most of what's going on, and that my three year old logic and his may have been along the same lines.

I explained that he would be punished briefly for something naughty he'd done, despite the fact that he'd been wearing his "I know I did something wrong and I'm sorry face" and kissed me by way of apology. I told him it was going to be a quick punishment because he needed to learn his lesson. In response, he walked to his room, picked up the toy cash register that had been mine as a child, and walked to the front door wearing nothing but his underwear.

He looked so determined to leave that I opened the door for him, whereupon he walked to the lifts and waited for one to open. I then said he couldn't leave home without a shirt, shorts and shoes at the very least, and this is when he started to scream. Nanny quickly came out with clothes and dressed him while he screamed bloody murder and no doubt made the neighbors wonder if I was a child abuser. One of them came out to go downstairs.

The man smiled down at my son, as if he knew exactly what I was going through. When the lift doors opened, he and Little A stepped in, followed by ever-reliable Nanny. I waved goodbye and went inside to wait.

A few minutes later, I heard the front door open and the sounds of Little A's crying. I went to the door and told him his punishment time was over. He walked into the bedroom and picked up the book he wanted read that night. I started to read and, just like that, we were friends again.

Election Fever

2010-05-06T23:19:00.000-07:00

Just four days apart, the two countries I consider my homes (the Philippines and the UK) are holding elections. The UK is done, just waiting for the final count, with everything happening smoothly, calmly, and in a typical British fashion.

In the Philippines, however, it is a totally different story. There is no work on election day, a liquor ban two days earlier, and the air cannot be seen for the thickness of mud that is being slung about. Candidates are using anything to fuel the fires and it is just getting so damn ugly that it seems disheartening to even vote for any of them.

Two days to go. And then an interminable wait for the winners, which no doubt will be questioned because of rampant cheating that has happened before and the failure of new machines that will be used for the first time on Monday.

What a joke. There is a song playing in the background of my mind, and it is "Send in the Clowns."

Vacation Time

2010-04-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

The searing heat of these sizzling summer days makes living in the city very uncomfortable right now. A recent hike in power rates has also raised the ire of most people, who discovered this month that a minimal increase in consumption has resulted in a 50% increase in rates. Not a good combination.

Little A's nanny went on her annual holiday last week, which meant no work for me at the shop and full-blown Cinderella-with-child mode at home. Big A tried his best to help by taking Little A swimming every day, having his mum cook us a week's worth of meals to store in our freezer, and, best of all, booking us a 4 day holiday in the mountains.

We timed the car trips around Little A's schedule, wanting the bulk of the 5 hour ride to encompass naptime. Things worked out perfectly. The weather was perfect, and Little A discovered that grass is not the enemy after all but rather fun to walk on as he trekked up and down around the pine trees. Every morning, he spent an hour with me at the Kids' Club before we went on family adventures. We slept well, ate well and best of all, I had no cooking or washing up or washing to do - until we got home.

Now, it's back to reality until Nanny gets back midweek, and until the next little mini-break.

Munch Munch

2010-04-17T23:54:00.000-07:00

Everyone is all about healthy eating these days. No fat, no carbs, no meat, no dairy. My husband and I are lucky to be blessed with fast metabolisms, which Little A appears to have inherited, but I do believe in the importance of a balanced diet for the entire family and make sure that every meal served on my table has some vegetable content or side dish.

It doesn't help that I married a caveman who claims veggies are only for rabbits. He does eat the few things - lettuce in salads, sandwiches, tacos and the occasional piece of roast veg - but the only time he will eat an entirely vegetarian meal is when his mum sends over a dish made from the fruit of the Moringa plant cooked with red peppers, onions, garlic and ginger. He consumes the entire bowl, without sharing, with a massive plate of white rice.

Little A, thankfully, is a veg eater. He has a frightening like of tinned meats and bacon but dislikes sweet things, so refuses fruit of any kind, along with cakes, chocolate and other sweets. His only snack food of choice is unsweetened corn flakes. Since he has long stopped drinking milk and no longer eats anything with casein, I worry that he doesn't get enough of the nutrients he needs. His sporadic medical checkups indicate that his growth is on track, and he is taller than most of his classmates as well as full of energy, and as he sleeps and poops well, I suppose there is no need for concern.

My sisters' daughters and many of my friends' children are terribly picky eaters, refusing most foods except for bread, french fries or plain pasta and pizza. Their parents keep the kids' diets as balanced as they can with plenty of milk, so I suppose I out to be nothing but thankful that my son eats well. And so I am.

Moving Forward

2010-04-12T04:57:00.000-07:00

Our follow-up visit to the first Developmental Pediatrician we consulted took place this afternoon. Following the BAER hearing test last December, we visited an ENT to check whether there was anything wrong with Little A's ear. All there was was a buildup of earwax that caused a blockage, which explained the "peripheral hearing loss".

The Dev Ped was very pleased with Little A's improvement over the course of his past 3 months' twice weekly Occupational Therapy. His eye contact is much more consistent and he is less hyperactive, actually sitting down in a chair for a length of time (though this could have been because he was past his naptime and was actually quite sleepy). More importantly, he sat down to complete every tabletop task assigned to him with a minimum of prompting.

The Casein Free Diet seems to be working, so the next step is to remove gluten from Little A's diet, which is much more of a challenge as it not only takes 9 months to be fully eliminated from the human body, it is present invisibly in so many foods, from soy sauce to cornflakes, Little A's only snack food of choice.

The doctor also told us to get in the queue for a Speech Therapist, as this is the only thing Little A is really still lacking. In the Philippines, only 30 individuals are licensed as Speech Therapists every year, and of those 30, most seek greener pastures abroad. So they are a limited and therefore valuable commodity.

This week, with summer in full swing, Little A resumes preschool for a 6.5 week period, along with his continued twice weekly OT sessions. We're keeping our fingers crossed that things continue to move forward.

Bully for You

2010-03-26T07:43:00.001-07:00

At his cousin's second birthday party this afternoon, Little A got pushed a couple of times and smacked around the face by a boy twice his size and probably thrice his age.

The party was a long play session at The Little Gym, which meant there were about 2 dozen children aged one to twelve jumping, running, swinging and throwing things in a large room with padded floors. Plus one adult for every young child and a few teachers. Loud music, screaming kids - pandemonium, in other words.

Little A likes these types of parties, where kids just do their thing and there is no one to force them to play games or sit down. He thoroughly enjoyed himself right up until the end of the party, when some big boys decided to turn two large cushions on their sides and ride them like horses.

He ran up to them, wanting to have a turn. One boy told him to go away because they were already there ahead of him, but he ran forward again with a big smile. At this, another boy pushed him roughly away.

Little A then turned to the other cushion, which had fewer boys crowding it. The boy who'd pushed him already reached over and gave him another shove.

Once can be an accident, but twice is intentional. When the cushion was at last available and Little A bouncing happily on it for about two minutes, the boy ran over from the other size of the room, smacked him on the mouth and pushed him off it so he could get back on.

My son is no sissy, and never complains with rough play or even mild pain, but this smack must have hurt because he put his hand to his mouth and cried for a few seconds. If the party hadn't been at an end, I would have Had Words (to borrow the capitals from a former schoolfriend and fellow blogger) with the boy's mother. But children and parents were leaving and there was general chaos so I just left it.

My sister, the host, was outraged on hearing what happened a couple of hours later, when I discovered that the bully's fingernail had left a nasty red mark on Little A's cheek. Apparently the boy was a brother of one of her son's friends, and had she witnessed the rough play she would have asked the big boys to leave the play area.

I am thankful my son is not an aggressive boy. He loves to hug and goes up to random strange children in shopping centres sometimes. At the playground in our apartment building, he stands at the top of the slide and doesn't let anyone past him to slide down until he's hugged them. While he can hug a little too tightly, I feel that this is miles better than shoving and smacking. And for a boy to be doing this to a much smaller child speaks terrible things of the people who are raising him.

Dreaming of the Dream King

2010-03-16T05:08:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, Neil Gaiman returns to Manila for a two-day visit. He first came to the Philippines in 2005, when I was fortunate enough to be working for the bookstore that made the trip possible. As then-Media and Publicity Manager, my job was to schedule his interviews, which allowed me to spend a little more time with him than the people who queued for hours just to get a book signed.

Most people who read will agree that this man is more than just the Dream King. One of the best modern-day living writers, he has won countless literary awards and crossed over into scriptwriting, children's and young adult literature as well as storytelling. (Audiobooks narrated by him are fantastic.) He's even done something with stamps.

I first discovered this author in the late 90s. While homesick for the UK and trawling the bookstore aisles, I spotted a novel that featured both a London I longed for and one that was even better than my imaginings. Neverwhere remains my favourite Gaiman book to this day, if only because it features the city I love most in the world.

At any rate, early this morning (I woke up to soothe a fretful Little A from 5-630am and then got another couple of hours' sleep) Neil Gaiman starred in my dream.

As I remember, we were in a large room for some sort of writing workshop before his booksigning was to take place and I mentioned needing to leave early so I could buy one of his books and have it signed later. He gave me a why-don't-you-just-give-it-to-me-now-so-I-can-sign-it-instead-of-joining-the-queue-of-hundreds-later expression.

Then he was offered a granola-type food, which he took, ate and promptly said he loved because it reminded him of a childhood favourite snack, flapjacks. Shortly after this, I woke up.

I have no idea if Neil Gaiman likes flapjacks in waking life, although they are an authentic British snack, but I feel very honoured to have the King of Dreams himself visit one of mine. Tomorrow, I will likely join the thousands of fans waiting to see him in the flesh again.

From Baby Steps to Leaps and Bounds

2010-02-27T00:20:00.000-08:00

Two months of the year have gone already, with evidence of this apparent in the change from cool, breezy weather a couple of weeks ago to cloudless skies and hot afternoons that signify the early start of an El Nino summer.

In our little world, much has happened as well. Little A has completed two months of occupational therapy, and in another month we visit his developmental pediatrician again to provide a progress report. Honestly, Big A and I are amazed and proud of how much our son has accomplished over the past two months.

During therapy sessions, Little A was initially uncooperative and had to be forced, with a lot of whining and outright tantrums, to do what was needed. Slowly though, he came around. He now enjoys the therapressure brush protocol, though he sometimes gets annoyed that it disturbs him from playing, and has gone from a hyperactive child who refused to sit still between tasks to one who sits quietly much of the time and plays with one toy while the next activity is being set up. He completes his tasks with minimal prompting and only complains towards the end, when he has tired of the repetition.

At preschool, he has gone from hating the classroom environment (and throwing a long tantrum every schoolday for most of the class period) to walking in happily and sitting down during circle time. He still does not give story time his full attention, but I am hoping that will happen in the next few months.

At home, he has decided that he will no longer spend all his nights in our bed. He makes up his own little bed on the floor with our help, and spends 50% of his nights there. He has stopped trying to climb into the swimming pool at every opportunity and eagerly watches any and all swimmers, pulling at the hands of children in swimwear to show them he wants them to get into the water.

We still have a way to go to get him to speak, but there is time in which to work on this, and thus far time has been telling that further improvements are on the horizon.

Reading 2010

2010-02-22T21:40:00.000-08:00

Another reason I've been so remiss about posting lately is because I've been burying my nose in a book whenever possible. Some of the book bloggers I follow have been posting their reading challenges for the year, and while I thought I was Mistress of the List, apparently I've been falling short for years by not keeping a chronicle of all the books I read.

So for the sake of quantifying my reading this year, I hereby declare that I will complete the following reading challenges:

1. The Quantity Book Challenge - I put down 75 books, which is very doable since I estimate I read well over 150 per year, rereads and children's books included, but not counting picture books.

2. The Chunkster Challenge - 4 adult books of at least 450 pages each, not including short story or essay collections.

3. The A-Z Challenge - 26 new authors (ones I haven't read before) with last names starting with each letter of the alphabet.

4. Filipino Writers - 5 books by Filipino authors written in either English or Filipino

5. Classics - 20 books: 10 new reads and 10 rereads

6. Award Winners - 20 books, any combination of new and reread, that have won a literary award.

7. TBR Challenge - all books read for these challenges will come from my To Be Read pile, the stack or mountain of books most readers accumulate faster than they can read them all.

To help me achieve this goal is a nifty little notebook given by my sister as a Christmas present. A cloth-covered hardbound little book, it was printed specifically for the purpose of logging one's reading material. 2010 is underway, and so the challenges are being faced, one book at a time.

All's Well That Ends Well

2010-02-22T04:36:00.000-08:00

I have been horribly remiss about posting this year. Only the fourth entry in two months, tut tut. The latest reason is that Little A and I have been down, then up and about, with a nasty cough and cold bug for a month now.

It started with a sore throat and phlegm that had me coughing and then took my voice away for nearly a week. Little A caught the cough first, then came down one morning with a fever that wasn't particularly high but persisted for nearly five days. Our pediatrician, who is also a pediatric pulmonologist, said it was nothing to worry about and would go away in its own time. The day after we visited her though, Little A felt so unwell that he just lay bed all day and slept on and off. He would drag himself to the table and try to eat (by the second day of the fever his appetite had gone from very good to practically nonexistent) and then go back to bed and just lie there.

Alarmed, we consulted, by phone, another pediatrician, who said more or less the same thing ours did. After two days of this lethargic lying about though, my mum decided to go the old school route and take Little A to our old pediatrician, who should be retired but is still practicing. This doctor thinks prescription drugs cure all, and promptly diagnosed bronchitis for us both and prescribed Little A two types of cough syrup, a course of antibiotics and a solution for the nebuliser that we had to administer five nights in a row. As my pediatrician three decades ago, he sent me off with a prescription for the same course of antibiotics and the grown-up version of the cough medicines.

Big A, who had this entire time been banished from the sickroom and was spending nights on the couch, insisted that I take my meds immediately. I did, and the antibiotic killed all the germs, good and evil, in my body so effectively that I came down with a cold and sinusitis the day after I finished the course, and only finished coughing a full week later and sniffling a few days ago.

We only gave Little A the nebuliser treatments, and his cough went away in another week or so, but then he came down with a cold a few days later. He still has a runny nose but thankfully has gained his appetite back.

Apparently, we weren't the only ones who suffered through this. My sister was coughing for weeks as well, though she never lost her voice. I am still recovering mine, weeks later. Still, I am thankful that neither Big A nor the au pair had to suffer through it. Let's hope it's another half year at least before the next bug hits.

Today is Day One

2010-02-01T23:06:00.000-08:00

Metaphorically speaking, that is. I have not found the time to post recently, so the "real" Day One was actually 4 days ago. Day One was the new diet start date for Little A. No casein. No gluten will follow, but I'd rather do one thing at a time and see what works.

A fortnight has gone by since we took Little A to another developmental pediatrician for a second opinion. She was quick and frank in her assessment and diagnosis - Autism Spectrum Disorder. Our first dev ped had said "Communication Disorder," but this was just apparently another way of saying the same thing. And since we've already begun twice weekly occupational therapy, there is little else we can do now, except try the diets. The most common is the GFCF one, but other options are the Candida diet and SCD.

Thanks to the Internet and my photographic memory, I am now learning all I can about ASD in as little time as possible. Big A says he knew deep inside that this is what was different about Little A, and I suppose a part of me knew it too, as long before we even began to suspect anything, I had already stored literature on the vaccines and autism link, and showed them to my husband, who promptly refused to let Little A get his MMR jabs.

Both dev peds admit that Little A shows few stereotypies. Hyperactivity, yes. Hand flapping and other actions that fall under stimming, not noticeably. He likes to rock as much as the average child, and does not spin things obsessively. I have a friend who constantly pulls her hair out and others with their own little habits.

There were, however, red flags that we were never told about. Not pointing, pulling to show, these were things I thought were cute. In fact, I even thought that his not pointing would save me from later having me to teach him that pointing is rude, even if it is natural. The texture sensitivity and his intolerance of loud and crowded places that made going to children's parties impossible we just put down to natural quirkiness as there are many non-autistic children who don't like mud or sand or noise.

Still, it is official now. So, again metaphorically speaking, this is day one. All we can do is work with him, try what we can, and pray that the interventions work quickly and effectively. The rest is up to Little A.

I Dream of Miele

2010-01-13T23:32:00.000-08:00

Living in a small space requires appliances that are meant for hobbits. My dream of owning a Kitchen Aid, even if we could afford it, is tempered by the fact that there just isn't anywhere in our kitchen to put it. As it is, our turbo broiler needs a stepladder to access it on top of the kitchen cupboards when it is to be used.

As far as laundry goes, I would love a washing machine that can fit all my sheets (Super King-sized duvet cover, flat sheet and 8 pillowcases) in one load, but that would likely entail a top-loading machine that we just don't have room for. My washer and dryer are stacked one on top of the other, but the machine just can't seem to handle man-sized clothes. My clothes and my son's are no problem, but when Big A's come into the picture I need to add more soap and 3 more rinse cycles just to get them properly clean.

When I wash the bathmats the machine goes mad, "doing a Transformers" as my husband calls it, launching itself all around the tiny utility room like a demented bronco and requiring at least 2 people to hold it in place. I had to stop it mid-cycle last time and the au pair and I had to take the mats out and rinse and wring them by hand. No easy feat.

Real Stepford wives never have laundry problems, as part of their abilities include washing, wringing and probably spinning the clothes dry with their bare hands and then ironing them perfectly, something I can only dream of doing passably well. I heart that the au pair can do what the twice a week laundry and ironing girl used to as ironing is my one failing as a good housekeeper.

So, add to my list of wishes when we win the lottery - a Miele.

Better Late Than Never

2010-01-08T16:08:00.000-08:00

I am usually a stickler for deadlines. That said, I missed the one on this reading challenge by well over a week. It has hung over my head constantly, since I have read the books but not found time to post my reviews, so following my tried-and-tested formula of sleeping less and doing more, I am finally catching up.

My reasons for not being able to post on time are valid - the new business, Little A's speech delay issues and my day girl's sudden disappearance from my household just before the New Year. (What was meant to be a week-long holiday with her family turned out to be a lifetime of motherhood as she discovered she was pregnant by her boyfriend.)

Still, better late than never, so here are my World War II books read (or re-read) in 2009:

1. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky - I loved this book. Not only did she believably capture the day-to-day lives of civilians during the war, the appendices at the end of the book were far more moving than the fiction as they told, though letters between herself, her husband, her publisher and others, how Nemirovsky herself became a vicitim of Nazi persecution and eventually perished in a concentration camp.

2. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry - written by one of my all-time favourite children's authors, this book tells from a child's point of view how confusing and important it is to keep a secret at a time when people close to you could suffer otherwise. A poignant story (based on facts) of courage and friendship written in Lowry's beautiful prose.

3. Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr - barely 65 pages long and published in large print, this simple story of a lively 11-year old who never walked and only ran until she was diagnosed with the "Atom Bomb disease" made my hair stand by the end of it. Another touching story of courage and friendship from a different perspective than the traditional European one.

4. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - ranked on many a best-books list since its publication in 2006, this telling, from the perspective of Death, makes for an interesting read, particularly since it features a young girl who, as the title claims, steals books.

5. Dancing with Eva by Alan Judd - an interesting story of Eva Braun's fictional secretary and a high-ranking Nazi official who meet many years later and recollect the end of the war.

6. Fatherland by Robert Harris - an inventive, imaginative tale of the Third Reich as it would have been had the Nazis succeeded in achieving their goals. But even in the Fuhrer's ideal world, nothing is perfect.

Two of the books I wanted to re-read but refused to rush through just to make the deadline were Kazuro Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. On my best books list since I first read them many years ago, both are on my list of rereads for this year.

Reading challenges are fun. I hope to find the time to join more of them in 2010.

Onward to the Next Decade

2009-12-30T20:53:00.001-08:00

Another year nearly over. Wow. Lately I've not had much time to post, with a new business to manage, a flat to run and a family to look after. Christmas came and went without my once feeling the holiday spirit. I did get all the presents bought, wrapped and delivered, but that is all in the course of a woman's work.

The past two months have been a flurry of activity. In mid-November, Little A visited a developmental pediatrician to assess the cause of his speech delay and see what course of action would be best to take. The doctor advised Occupational Therapy for behavioural modification and sensory integration, as Little A is very sensitive to textures - hating grass, sand and most forms of fabric upholstery, refusing to wear shoes - and does not respond to instructions nor interact much with others.

We visited a couple of therapy centers and managed to choose one and squeeze in the evaluation before they closed down for the year. Little A also started preschool two mornings a week at this same time. Yesterday, we took him for a sleeping hearing test called the BAER, which measures the brain's response to sound at different levels.

Little A's left ear was fine, responding from a level of 25 up to 90 decibels. His right ear, which the neurologist in charge of the examination told us is normally the dominant side, was less responsive, only showing a reaction to the sound at a high 95 decibels.

The formal report on the test will only be released next week (or next year, depending on how one looks at it) and will be explained to us by Little A's pediatrician, who will also recommend a suitable course of action.

It is a small load off my mind to have seen that there may be a physical reason why Little A isn't talking yet. We still don't know what the final diagnosis will be, but whatever it is, we are praying it is something we can address early and well enough to give him the chances he deserves as he grows older.

I have much to be thankful for for the past year, but even more to hope for in the one to come. Here's hoping a good decade for our family is up ahead.

Ring Bearer

2009-12-12T02:10:00.000-08:00

A week ago today my little boy walked down the aisle, hand-in-hand with his father, bearing not the pillow with the rings but his favourite Baby Einstein DVD case.

I was very proud, like all mums must be when their children first take part in a bridal march. When we were first asked if Little A would be the ring bearer at my cousin's wedding, I accepted with great trepidation and told my aunt in all honesty that I doubted he would cooperate. At that stage he was refusing to wear shoes, not at all given to following instructions and rarely walked but mostly ran.

In the months leading up to the wedding I tried on a couple of occasions to make him walk down the hallway of our little flat carrying a small pillow but had no success. If he walked, he would throw the pillow aside. If he carried it, he would hug it to his chest, run down the hall and crash into the couch, laughing.

Two weeks before the big day, I borrowed the top he would wear from my best friend from childhood, the same top her son wore to my wedding. The native Filipino dress top, called a Barong Tagalog, was long-sleeved and made of slightly scratchy cotton. Every time I tried to put it on Little A just to check it for size, he would pull it off. I was already unsure he would walk down the aisle, let alone with the rings and now half-dressed as shoes were still a no go.

On the day of the wedding, we had to wake him from his nap to get to the church on time. He had slept two hours and woke up cheerful. Always eager for a car ride, he enjoyed the trip to the church but weekend traffic meant we arrived just in time. I ran him into the church where the march had already begun, and got him into his top with surprisingly little fuss just in time to push him down the aisle. A little confused, he looked at me with a puzzled expression, as if to ask what exactly he was meant to do. Right then, Big A came up, took him by the hand and off they walked, just perfectly.

Later on, I helped him deliver the rings for the priest to bless, and this time he wanted to climb the stairs to the altar. During the photo session following the ceremony, the other little boys and girls stood at their places obediently while Little A had to be chased away from the priest's chair and hauled back bodily to the steps where the photos were being taken, several times as he attempted escape more than once.

Nevertheless, I considered the event a huge success. Next on the list, performing at the school end-of-term concert. That one is still a dream.

Meme Time

2009-12-02T21:56:00.000-08:00

I am really not a tech-savvy person. Honestly, I don't even know what the word "meme" really means, but gather it's kind of like the Internet version of an old-fashioned slam book. Mushamommy tagged me, and while I have no idea how to tag anyone back, I do have a few minutes to get through the questions, so here goes:

Do you think you're hot? Thankfully, my husband does, but as for me myself, it depends on what I am wearing :)

Upload your favourite picture and explain why you love it - for now, this one of my happy little boy.

What was the last song you heard? Old MacDonald Had a Farm

What are you doing while working on this game? Alternating between working and trying to put my son down for his nap.

Favourite nickname - The one my husband uses, which I will not repeat here :)

What kind of person are you? - An impatient one. I'm all for efficiency and can't stand red tape or incompetent people. I have few friends, but those I do have are good ones whose relationships I truly value. I'm quite practical and love a good bargain. I've learned that having few good quality things is far better than dozens of cheap ones, so my closet is not like the average woman's and contains less than two dozen pairs of shoes. I try to live life without any regrets.

Favourite song - Top 3 - Prince, When Doves Cry, Dire Straits' Your Latest Trick and The Cure's Love Cats.

Favourite food - Chocolate and raw fish. I can eat sashimi every day.

Most stressful thing for me - Juggling work, family and worrying about finances

3 Items that must be in my purse - Wet wipes, wallet and keys. Mobile phone instead of wet wipes if I'm not with my son.

Favourite colour/s - neutrals

Not-yet fulfilled dream - having a book published

Favourite city - London, if it wasn't so bloody expensive to live there.

Since I do not know how to tag anyone, I hope the few people who read this blog will consider themselves tagged.

Busy Busy

2009-11-29T21:46:00.000-08:00

Another month has just flown by, and I have found little time to write the things I've wanted to post about. Ah, well, such is life and a working mother's priorities.

The past few weeks have been crazy, and I've survived by reducing my number of sleeping hours per night to 5. I actually forgot to pay my au pair and day girl last payday, and only realized this when they had to ask my husband for money for their twice-monthly market trip.

A Day in My Life before mid-November:

8am - Wake up, read paper while Little A plays, check email, make work calls, have breakfast, do laundry if Monday or Thursday

10am - Off to the supermarket, bank, Gymboree or whatever set of errands need doing, usually with Little A in tow.

1pm - Home for lunch and Little A's nap. Time online, working and surfing.

Afternoon - meetings if there are any, more errands if needed, snack time for Little A and more play. Reading time for me if he has a long nap.

730pm - Dinner, bathtime then downtime until bed.

1030pm - Lights out

12pm - Everyone usually sleeps

A Day in My Life since mid-November:

630am - Wake up with Little A, turn on laptop, answer emails, pay bills online, make calls. Do laundry if I have time to load the washing machine or laundry pile threatens to overwhelm the flat. Ignore newspaper. Have a quick breakfast when I can squeeze it in in time to -

1030am - Take Little A to preschool if Tuesday or Thursday, otherwise off to the mall to open the store if needed, or do errands or have meetings. When we are faced with imminent starvation, go to the supermarket and race through the aisles throwing things into the shopping trolley while simultaneously texting suppliers or work partners and making calls.

1pm - Drop Little A off at home for lunch and nap, head to the store to put in a few hours training and overseeing the staff, interviewing new applicants, handling all the admin work, dealing with both the mall management and customers and doing all sorts of retail business things without once sitting down, until -

730pm - Home for dinner and to see my son, who by this time thinks he has done something horrible and is being punished by not being able to see his mother. Watch Little A play or eat while frantically answering emails, printing reports and the like. (The laptop and printer now live permanently on the dining room table). Perhaps get to play with him for 10 straight minutes if I'm lucky.

830pm - Back to the mall to close the store if needed. Otherwise, bathe Little A and go back to paperwork, as the inventory updating is even worse than laundry pile.

1030pm - Lights out. Shut Big and Little A in the bedroom and continue work, or pay bills online, make Christmas lists, organise presents etc. Spend half an hour putting Little A to sleep, then sneak back out to the laptop.

1am - Turn off lights, pack away whatever messes Little A has left in his room and the living and dining room. Shower and fall asleep with hair soaking wet.

Somehow on paper it looks less hectic than it actually is. Maybe I'm missing something out. Don't have time to think about what it is. Little A is down for his nap and I've got to man the store now.

Frequent Traveler

2009-11-13T02:40:00.000-08:00

I am amazed at how some mothers can blog so frequently. Just looking after my one child, keeping our small flat in order and having partial charge of a new business venture leaves me with little time to eat, sleep and even breathe. Still, all work and no play makes Jill a dull girl and Jill's toddler and husband sad people, so time must be alloted for "recreation."

With a trip to Hong Kong that needed to be taken before mid-November, (originally scheduled for a trade fair some months ago, the sudden onset of H1N1 worldwide required a postponement of a trip booked on what should have been non-rebookable, nonrefundable tickets) we found ourselves airport-bound for Little A's 5th overseas adventure.

Since he was born in July 2007, our son has been to Hong Kong twice a year. Two October journeys were Big A's business trips that we tagged along on, and the January trips were family ones for my parents' wedding anniversary and Chinese New Year, respectively. This one was partly work for me, and partly a nice break.

This trip also marked a couple of firsts for our little family. It was the first trip taken after Little A was completely weaned and since he decided to stop wearing nappies completely. With visions of wet pants dancing in my head, I packed three sets of trousers and shorts and a couple of nappies just in case, plus his favourite non-spill sippy cup, an assortment of books, and an entire box of his favourite biscuits for a half-hour car ride, two hour airport wait, two hour plane trip, half-hour train ride and ten minute taxi.

Amazingly, Little A did not have a single wee accident the entire 3-day trip. While at home he had to be taken to the toilet periodically or he would pee on the floor, all throughout the long weekend he would indicate when he needed to go, or go to the toilet himself and pull his shorts down and wait for someone to lift him up to reach the seat.

I was overjoyed. Perhaps it was the layout of the hotel bathroom, or the blue water in the loo (the toilets in the hotel were treated with disinfectant that turned the water bright blue), or even the fact that there were less distractions in the form of toys, videos and the like. Whatever it was, I was the proudest mum on earth.

Apart from the toilet training, Little A was perfectly behaved on the aeroplane both ways. He sat quietly in his seat, watched his Mickey Mouse videos, read his books and ate his snacks. Granted, the flights were short and he did do his share of sprinting in the airport and on the train into Hong Kong city, where he refused to sit anywhere but the luggage rack. Still, we were expecting much worse and were pleasantly surprised.

We have been back home a week now, and apart from one accident the night we arrived and another the next day when his nanny didn't take him to the toilet in time, Little A has kept his pants dry. He still needs to be taken to the loo every couple of hours, but I am hoping that soon he will be just like he was in Hong Kong and walk to the bathroom himself when he needs to go. Next week he will do a trial class at preschool. If that goes well, he will start attending twice weekly sessions. My little boy is not so little any more.

Best Buys

2009-10-29T03:41:00.000-07:00

With November just around the corner and a soon-to-open small business that should see plenty of demand as the Christmas holidays approach, I am trying to finish up my Christmas shopping before the seasonal rush begins.

I normally begin this shopping in July and August, when the local bookstores have their annual sales. Little A's wardrobe gets more and more packed with presents until the time comes for them to be wrapped and distributed to boys and girls both naughty and nice.

Needless to say, majority of my presents every year are books. And while some may be unappreciated (and hopefully re-gifted) by those for whom reading is not a huge priority, others are read and enjoyed, some of them time and time again.

For my nephews, nieces and godkids, I get titles I have loved from a young age and still do, books that I think should be on every shelf. A few of these are not often available in local bookstores, so it is always pure luck to find them at my favourite secondhand bookshop. Some of them can be had for a song, and I snap them up eagerly.

I hope this year's recipients enjoy their books. After all, as Carlos Ruiz Zafon said, "Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not for the merits of who receives them."

Growing Up

2009-10-26T02:41:00.000-07:00

About a month before he turned two, I was determined to get Little A sleeping through the night and weaned, if it was possible to do both at the same time. Up until that point, he still nursed to sleep every nap and nighttime and managed 2-3 feedings a night plus one upon waking up in the morning. It was starting to drive me crazy.

The first few nights of denying pre-sleep nursing meant plenty of crying and throwing himself about the bed until Little A collapsed with exhaustion. Within a fortnight though, the crying decreased to whining and then to just cuddling next to me until he fell asleep. Hooray! The nighttime and morning feedings continued, though, as did the naptime one unless we weren't home and he fell asleep in his stroller or car seat.

I then applied one of the techniques detailed in Elizabeth Pantley's No-Cry Sleep Solution, decreasing the length of nursing time with each nighttime feeding, and eventually just refusing to feed at all. At first, Little A would go from half-asleep to more awake and protest loudly, but within a week or so, he learned to put himself back to sleep because there was no boob to be had, and then, joy of joys, he simply started sleeping longer until he was making it through the night. Hooray!

Morning feedings were quickly eliminated by taking him out for breakfast before he could complain too much, but surprisingly, the naptime feedings were the last to go. Perhaps Little A wanted to hold on to this last bonding session as long as he could.

When we are at home, at naptime Little A comes up to me, takes my hand, leads me to the bed, lifts his arms up to be carried onto it (though he is perfectly capable of climbing up himself) and then pulls me down next to him. He cuddles into my side and makes sure I do not leave until he is well and truly asleep.

Even when he no longer nursed to sleep, I had to be there every time it was naptime, unless I was not home, in which case he fought off sleep as long as he could before giving in and sleeping in his stroller. Some days he simply refused to nap at all.

Last week, my growing boy managed to fall asleep twice on the bed for late naps without my being next to him. The au pair let him play quietly on the bed until his eyes shut from tiredness.

Today, I was sitting at the table reading while Little A finished his lunch when he just walked off down the corridor. A few minutes later, I peeked into his room but didn't see him playing there. When I looked into our room, where Big A was on the bed watching tv, I saw Little A at the foot of the bed, reclining. Big A waved me away and called me in two minutes later to show me our son sleeping quietly. Little A had climbed on the bed by himself, held on to his favourite dvd and lay down. He turned his head to look at his dad and then shut his eyes and was asleep instantly. He knew I was there ready for the regular naptime routine, but chose to grow up today and go to sleep without mum, on his own.

I looked down at my sleeping son, feeling a mixture of pride and sadness for the little person who once depended on me for nourishment and comfort and is now well and truly on the way to being all grown up.

Nighttime and Nappies

2009-10-21T21:58:00.000-07:00

An old schoolfriend recently had a baby boy. At six weeks she was marvelling at how he slept through the night in 6-hour stretches and at three months he is sleeping 11 hours a night.

I was very envious of her non-sleep deprived state. Little A only started sleeping 6 hour stretches just before he turned two, and sometimes that was a single stretch per night, meaning he and I were up incredibly early while he played for a few hours before napping. Slowly though, he learned to sleep longer. Coupled with the end of night-time feedings, he can now sleep the full night through, and if he does wake up, he goes back to sleep without needing to wake me up.

This victory was not yet celebrated when he decided, for the second time, (the first being when he was about 20 months old) that he no longer needed nappies. The first refusal stage lasted a few weeks and was solved by switching to pull-up nappies. This time, we thought he might be ready to start toilet training.

Little A quickly learned that the bed, couches and rugs were no-wee zones, but would go on the floors instead, stubbornly refusing to make it to the bathrooms unless he happened to already be in there for a bath. Night-times, however, he has generally remained dry, allowing him to sleep without nappies most of the time. He only wets the bed at night if he is very tired and has had a long day that is different from his usual schedule.

In the morning and after his nap, Little A pees in the bathroom, but we are still working on regular daytime wee times. I hope that this continues to work as forcing him into nappies now results in two-year old tantrums, and anyone who has raised a child will know how tiresome these can be.

Searching for Greens

2009-10-20T18:15:00.000-07:00

Two weeks after back-to-back storms lashed the northern Philippines, flooding an island slightly smaller than the size of England and causing landslides, massive population displacement and now, leptospirosis, I went to the supermarket to find many areas empty.

The tinned meat section was cleared out, which was fine by me as most of that had gone to relief goods, but the produce section was woefully vegetable-free because most of the vegetables we buy are grown in the north, which at the time was inaccessible by road due to the floods. Parts of the south had flooded as well, so the salad greens normally sourced there were absent as well.

What veg there was was marked up by about 4 times its regular price. Three layers of price stickers showed massive price increases in the span of a few days. I purchased only what was absolutely needed, and went home with bags full of meat and fish but very little vegetables. No carrots, no potatoes, no greens.

One good thing brought about by the floods was an abundance of fish, and while prices of these hadn't decreased, supply was better, giving a wider variety of choice.

Weather reports warn of a new typhoon headed our way, due to make landfall tomorrow. With most of the country still reeling from the last two storms, we pray that this one will sweep by with a minimum of damage.

After the Rain

2009-09-29T00:39:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday started out as a regular day. Since the Philippines has only two seasons, wet (June to November) and dry, (December to May) rain at this time of the year is not unusual.

By midday though, it was clear that this wasn't your average rainy day. It had been pouring steadily since Friday night, and at noon of Saturday, the area around the corner from our apartment building was cordoned off because the reservoir underneath had overflowed, causing waist-high flooding on the street and submerging the cars parked in the basement of the nearby buildings.

When Big A went online and turned on the tv to a news channel, we saw the flooding was widespread. In two more hours, water engulfed the metropolis, leaving thousands stranded in traffic, at work or home or on their rooftops. Tropical storm Ketsana, named Ondoy in the Philippines, was larger than 2005's Hurricane Katrina and left just as much devastation in its wake, albeit on the other side of the world and in a country with nowhere near as much resources as the mighty USA.

For the past three days, people have volunteered their time, SUVs, boats and personal services to rescue those still stranded. Centers have sprouted up in each city to collect and distribute relief goods to those in need. Stories of modern-day heroes are being published, along with images of despicable politicians and next year's political hopefuls using the tragedy for their own publicity purposes.

It is a sad, sad thing to think of, and see, so many people who have lost their homes, their belongings and worst of all, their loved ones. Let us do all we can to help.

Guides to (Parenting) Life

2009-09-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

While I love to read, as any one who knows me will agree, I am not much of a how-to book fan. I prefer to get such information online, where it is usually more current and contains helpful testimonials of other people's real-life experiences, not to mention the opportunity to communicate with them. I am also an avid researcher, usually reading reviews of a product or book before purchasing it.

When I was pregnant, I was the only person I knew who did not buy or read what is recently considered the ultimate pregnancy bible. Reviews of this book said it was too technical and tended to scare parents-to-be by detailing all the possible ailments and problems that could crop up in the course of a pregnancy. I signed up for an online weekly pregnancy newsletter towards the end of my first trimester, and this combined with my prenatal checkups seemed to be enough.

A friend gifted me with a slim volume on pregnancy and the homeopathic alternatives for dealing things like morning sickness and the like, and I found it very informative, especially since I firmly believe in natural medicine, particularly when one is pregnant. I also found a book on breast-feeding at a used bookshop, and purchased this as I hoped to do what my two sisters had failed to with their eldest children and breastfeed purely for at least six months. This book contained plenty of testimonials, but in the end I found that real-life experience was my best teacher.

At a baby shower, another book was given to me, and I read this anxiously as my due date drew near and I realized I did not know how to deal with crying, burping, bathing and all the rest of it.

Once Little A was born, I found little time for reading between monthly visits to the pediatrician, endless nappy changing, colic, crawling, walking and feeding. We had one book, given as a present at Little A's christening, and I did refer to it from time to time to be sure he was on track in terms of growth and development. Lately, I've acquired a couple more books to help get him sleeping through the night and toilet trained. This small collection completes our baby and toddler reference guides.

However, as with all things baby-related, the books will be outgrown as Little A gets older. I've already passed on the natural pregnancy and breast-feeding books to one mum-to-be and the book covering baby basics to another new mum friend. The sleep book will soon be mailed out to another parent in need, and the toilet training book still has to prove its worth. As every mum and dad discovers, the art of parenting cannot be learned from a book but must be experienced in the light of each parent and child's uniqueness.

Walking Down the Aisle

2009-09-13T00:08:00.000-07:00

In one of my earlier lives, (or so it seems as the me-of-now is so unbelievably different to the me-of-two-and-a-half-years-ago) I was a wedding planner. On weekends, while Big A played golf, I would put on a dress and heels and assist a friend who was a full-time wedding coordinator. She did the phone calls, follow-ups and all the rest of it, and I served as the much-needed second body on the day of the actual event. It paid good money to supplement my day job and I enjoyed it, despite the aching feet that inevitably came at the end of the 8-12 hour day.

One of my duties was to make sure everyone got down the aisle. My partner stood at one end, cueing each person on when to start walking, and I stood at the other, making sure they smiled, knew where to sit and, in the case of the children, walked sedately without any major meltdowns. I saw many a tot and toddler all dressed up, and in my memory of four years' worth of weddings, there were no tantrums, refusals or other like incidents.

Then I became mother to a small boy and realized how truly amazing this phenomenon actually was.

A few days ago, I found out one of my younger cousins will soon be getting married. My aunt called to ask if Little A would be the ring bearer. I was flattered and thrilled, but wondered secretly if I could manage to train my son within 3 months to a) follow instructions, b) walk while holding on to a pillow containing two of the most important items needed for a wedding without throwing it in the air or on the ground, and c) actually walk down the aisle of what will certainly be a crowded (by Little A's standards, seeing as there will be more than 10 people present) church.

Unlike his 18 month old cousin who is as obedient as they come and performs on cue, clapping, smiling, scowling and reciting things, 26 month old Little A only follows instructions if he feels like it, which is when his father shouts or when I lose my temper. He has yet to talk properly as he babbles constantly but still doesn't form proper words. Instead of pointing to objects when asked, he takes the asker's finger and places it on the objects he wants named. He still does not like loud, tight or crowded places and always makes a fuss until we leave when we are in one.

Our pediatrician is giving him a couple more months before having him evaluated for Early Intervention. A lot can happen in a couple of months, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's all the "right" things that do.

The Great Escape

2009-09-03T02:17:00.000-07:00

Two days ago, the au pair had the day off. It was errand-running day, so after breakfast the family got ready to leave. Big A was doing some last minute work at his laptop, so I alternated between brushing my teeth, putting my clothes on, packing Little A's bag and checking up on him as he watched tv and played in the living room.

We live in a first-floor flat with two terraces that open out into the building's swimming pool and playground area. On windy days, we open the French doors to let the breeze blow through the house. The living room doors are blocked by heavy blinds, and Little A knows that when he wants to get out, the blinds need to be lifted by a grownup first. Not that that stops him trying to do it himself. It was a windy morning, so one of the glass doors was open.

During my fourth spot check in five minutes, Little A was gone. I called out to Big A while checking the other rooms, bathrooms and kitchen. Big A ran outside to look there. Little A was nowhere we could immediately see, and I heard Big A asking the gardeners and maintenance men nearby if they'd seen him anywhere.

One of the men on a gondola halfway up the side of the building shouted down, "There's a child over there, by the swimming pool!" When Big A turned the corner, he saw our son walking along the edge of the pool the way he usually does while holding on to one of our hands. When Little A reached the shallow part at the corner, he heard his father calling out to him. As soon as Little A saw his beloved swimming companion approaching, he sat down at the edge and lowered himself into the water.

I know the statistics, about children drowning in less than two minutes in less than an inch of water, and I thanked Little A's guardian angel for keeping him from falling into the deep end without anyone to see it happen. What did amaze us though was how he managed this escape.

Besides getting past the window blinds, Little A scaled a fence that was taller than himself for the first time on his own. He'd previously tried climbing this fence but always made sure someone was nearby to help him, and he never climbed up to the top and down the other side, even with assistance. Clearly, not doing does not mean being unable to in this case.

Big A and I didn't know whether to scold or praise our son. I told him that what he had done was never to be repeated without a grownup present, but I know he knows that when grownups are present he would never need to scale a fence because they would always help him over it. Still, he is at the stage where climbing anything is a must-do, and his amazing balance allows him to do this at lightning speed. In two steps he is atop a table that is nearly twice his height. This means he needs to be constantly watched, not just from minute to minute but every single waking second.

Errand-running was then delayed by an hour, as Big A was forced to join his son in the swimming pool while I wondered how on earth Martha Kent survived raising a toddler who must have been quicker and more daring (though also more indestructible) than mine.

A Reading Challenge

2009-08-28T00:20:00.000-07:00

Since what spare time I have is mostly devoted to reading and I follow a couple of book blogs, I recently became aware of a World War II themed reading challenge. After some consideration (and the fact that I've already read and own more than 5 books set during WWII), I decided to participate.

WWII has always been an interesting subject for me, especially since Nazi Germany was the main subject of my 'A' Level History exam, which I sat (gulp!) 15 years ago. I did hesitate to join this challenge though, because I'm not much of one for writing book reviews. I enjoy reading them, but on the whole feel that reading is such a subjective matter that it's hard to say with conviction that a book is great or awful or something in between.

I've read reviews extolling books I thought were rubbish and trashing books I thought were great. More importantly, rereading books has shown me that perceptions change with time. Certain books that blew me away upon first reading didn't impress me at all when re-read, while other books just seem to get better every time I re-read them.

Still, the WWII themed reading challenge is one I will rise to. My books to re-read between now and the year's end will be:

Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

Dancing With Eva - Alan Judd

Number the Stars -Lois Lowry

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes - Eleanor Coerr

Fatherland - Robert Harris

The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje

The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

If I can get a find these books that were left at my parents' house when I moved out a few years ago, I will also re-read:

The Summer of My German Soldier -Bette Greene

Boy At War: A Story of Pearl Harbor - Henry Mazer

My copies of Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Schindler's List were borrowed by different people years ago, and I suspect I will never see them again. This is the saddest thing about lending out books you think are wonderful and want to share with other people. Many don't respect ownership and forget about them, or re-lend them out. I thought I'd learnt my lesson but still have a list of beloved books I hope will some day be returned to me. Others I have simply replaced with new copies.

Time is ticking, and while Little A sleeps, I must get reading.

Lady Luck

2009-08-26T05:24:00.000-07:00

There is that very well-known saying about a door closing and a window opening. It seems to apply to things other than romantic relationships and employment situations. This year, my family have been extraordinarily lucky when it comes to winning raffle prizes. At a time when both Big A and I are out of a 9-5 job, the little perks that come with winning these prizes make our day.

The Cruise that Could Have Been

A few months ago, my husband and father played together at an annual golf tournament. During the awarding ceremony, families were invited to attend, so Little A, my mum and I trooped along. The food was good, but the place was crowded and it seemed to take far too long to call out the winners. After the announcers said that succeeding prizes would not require winners to be present, we bundled a sleepy little boy into the car and headed home.

20 minutes into the 45 minute drive, Big A's mobile rang. Someone on the other end was shouting "Where are you? You just won an all-expenses paid, business-class return airfare included, 7 day Alaskan cruise! You need to be here to claim it or they'll award it to someone else!"

Apparently, the tournament's major sponsor decided at the last minute to award a special door prize which required the winner's presence to be valid. Special indeed. They had to draw three names before someone actually won the damn thing. Big A's name was the first one called but as we had left, we forfeited this chance.

Consolation Prize

Not long after this wonderful opportunity at a cruise slipped us by, Big A played at another golf tournament. This time he won, and was present to claim, two sets of hotel stays courtesy of the sponsors. One prize was an overnight stay for two with breakfast at a premier city hotel and the other, oh joy, was two nights at a spanking new, beautiful (and extremely expensive) beach resort. Both stays were valid for one year from the issue date, so we have two lovely mini-breaks to look forward to.

Apart from these fabulous prizes, Little A and I managed to win some little treats as well. I submitted a short paragraph to an online contest and won a delicious slice of cake from a charming bakery, and emailed Little A's photos to two entrepremums and won him some stuff without even knowing there were contests ongoing. We won a magnetic wooden puzzle and some great clothes.

We're keeping our fingers crossed and buying lottery tickets every week now. Who knows, we may just hit the jackpot, with the way our luck is going.

A Blast From the Past

2009-08-10T00:09:00.001-07:00

Lunch at my parents' house yesterday. Little A plus his six cousins, my sisters, our husbands and my mum and dad made for an entertaining Sunday afternoon.

While Little A was being his antisocial self, playing alone upstairs while his cousins were in the pool, I was attempting to sort through the dozens of boxes that filled what was once my bedroom and is now a massive storage area.

My mother is a pack rat. So is my mum-in-law, apparently. I wonder if this is something that is passed on genetically or acquired over time? Big A and I are anti-clutter and live in a flat that is severely lacking storage space, and since I periodically have urges to spring (summer, autumn and winter) clean, things are pretty much in order at our flat. Still, there are things one needs to keep. Mementoes from the past that one wants to look over from time to time. Things you treasure - photos, old letters and such. I found one box full of mine, hidden quietly in a corner of my old room, and took it home to sort through.

In this box were pieces of my life over the past 33 years. Most of my milk teeth and two molars that were removed prior to my having braces at age 18. The tin piggy bank I had filled with coins in childhood. My timetable, GCSE exam schedules and some notebooks from school in the UK. A few old diaries. Still sticky puffy stickers I'd saved of 80s toy characters. Four albums and half a dozen envelopes of stamps. (I wonder if those will be worth anything now, and hope I can find out.) Finally, the little leaflets that came with my most precious toys, toys that would fetch a fair price now on eBay, some of which are still intact.

The brochures I kept were those of my pink rosebud-bodied Fisher Price Mandy doll, Rainbow Brite and her friends (I had Rainbow Brite and Twink, Shy Violet and IQ Sprite, and Starlite), the original Strawberry Shortcake dolls (mine were Apricot and Hopsalot, Apple Dumplin' and Tea Time Turtle and the ballerina Strawberry Shortcake), a first-release Popples plush toy, the Wild Puffalump elephant that sat on my bed at boarding school for 3 years and the birth certificate of my Cabbage Patch Kids doll.

Funny how some habits start young. I still keep the leaflets and instruction manuals that come with Little A's toys, and wonder if one day they will become collector's items too. Time will tell.

Yellow

2009-08-02T00:19:00.000-07:00

Yellow is typically known as the colour of cowardice. For one woman and one nation, however, it is the colour of courage, honesty and a return to democratic rule.

Many years ago, an activist was brutally slain on the tarmac just as he stepped out of an airplane. His widow, a housewife and mother, picked up the cudgels and eventually overthrew a corrupt dictator who had been in power for 21 years. She became the country's first woman President and Time Magazine's 1986 Person of the Year. A yellow dress was her trademark, along with the "L" sign formed using the thumb and index finger. The peaceful revolution now known as People Power has gone down in history books and serves as a benchmark for non-violent protests all over the world.

Today, an entire nation mourns the passing of this amazing woman. While her period in office was not an easy one, and the country she once led still remains largely mired in corruption, what she achieved was rather phenomenal and no easy task.

I was seven years old when Ninoy Aquino was assassinated and nine when Cory Aquino became president. While I may not remember the dictator's rule as well as my parents do, I have a fair few memories of the days leading up to the EDSA Revolution.

I remember going to my dad's office in the center of the business district and throwing yellow confetti straight from the shredding machine into the streets via the fire escape, as the people below shouted for Marcos to step down. I remember walking along that street with hundreds of other people, wearing a yellow Ninoy shirt and chanting "Laban! Laban!" (Fight! Fight!)

I remember my parents stories about guarding the ballot boxes during the 1986 snap elections, especially my mum crying as she told us how my dad and his friend stood up to armed goons by throwing chairs at them to get them away from the ballot boxes while she and the other women hid in the restroom with their boxes, just to keep the votes safe.

I remember my parents telling us to pray, again and again, as we made what seemed like hundreds of sandwiches for them to take to EDSA as they joined the human barricades. I remember spending days at the house of some Australian friends who lived right down the road from the military chief who eventually changed sides, joining the people and helping to bring down the dictator. Later, this man became the 12th President of the Philippines, after Mrs. Aquino's term ended. I remember the impromptu street party thrown in front of this man's house when it was announced that the dictator had fled and the people had won.

This was history, though I was too young to know it. Now, as I recall those days, I feel awed and proud to have been a tiny part of it.

Much work must still be done in this country to make it a true democracy and the nation its people dream it can become. I hope and pray that this happens within my lifetime. Meanwhile, it is safe to assume that this amazing woman, who led a nation, is now happily reunited with her husband in a perfect afterlife where there is no corruption or political strife.

For the nation in mourning, yellow will always remain the colour of courage.

The Next Great One

2009-07-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

For about a decade now, readers and publishers have been searching for "the next Harry Potter." The HP phenomenon turned a single, struggling mother into one of the richest women in the writing world (and an OBE at that) and drew thousands of children and adults worldwide away from television and videogames and back into reading.

I must admit, in the beginning I wasn't sure if she could do it - sustain and develop plot and characters interesting enough to complete the 7 book series, let alone imagine that the series would join the ranks of such Greats before it as The Chronicles of Narnia and The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings.

The first three Potter books, to me, contained strong echoes of Roald Dahl's work, which I have always loved. I read them in quick succession as the series was interesting enough to keep me hooked. The fourth book was published as the third went to paperback, and from then on, I knew it would only get better.

JK Rowling succeeded wonderfully in creating not only a set of brilliant characters but an entire new world, one readers willingly embraced, as evidenced by the abundance of fansites dedicated to the series, not to mention record-breaking book sales and movie adaptations.

Even before the last couple of books in the series were published, the hunt was on for the next great one. There have been many contenders but in my book (pun intended), none have quite matched up to the hype accorded to them.

Perhaps the most recent popular series is the four-part sparkly vampire story that appeals mainly to female readers. Apart from the fact that this series too was penned by a young woman who shot from obscurity to worldwide fame, there is almost no comparison between the vampire-human romance and the wizard-Muggle saga.

However a reader might view these up-and-coming potential contenders, the great thing is that more books are being published and read, which is really what matters. While I'd love to read them all, there are too many books and too little time (and money) to do so. Here's are the ones I have had the chance to read and my brief take on them:

- Michelle Paver's Chronicles of Ancient Darkness - the first book didn't grab me, so I didn't continue with the series.

- Zizou Corder's Lionboy - a great trilogy, highly recommended for boys and girls aged 8-12

- Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials - this trilogy reminded me of Tolkien's LOTR. The movie adaptation of the first book was not so well-received, but the books are well worth reading, more than once.

- Christopher Paolini's Inheritance series - with an author who was published at age 17, this series garnered a fair bit of media attention. The first book was fantastic, but the second dragged quite a bit, and I have yet to read the third.

- Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books - I think these are fantastic. Man and magic meet again, but in a very different world than Harry Potter's. Wonderful, wonderful reads, highly recommended to all above age 10.

- Isabelle Allende's Nadia/Alexander trilogy - this 3-book series doesn't have an official name, but the books are Allende's first Young Adult ones and earn a full five stars from me. With her trademark style of magical realism, this author grabs the reader's full attention and presents a very satisfying tale, one I have read again and again.

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan has also been well-reviewed, and is next on my Young Adult fantasy book wishlist.

With the state of our groaning bookshelves and the new additions that will surely come as time goes on, I can only hope my son develops the same passion for reading that I have. They say the best way to teach is by experience, and since Little A sees mummy reading whenever she can, perhaps he will follow suit.

Cough Cough

2009-07-13T23:46:00.000-07:00

Little A is two now. His birthday party was a smashing success, with all the children enjoying themselves thanks to a big bouncy castle. The birthday boy wanted only one thing - to go swimming, so we allowed him to do so while the rest of the guests played pass the parcel.

Later in evening after his party, he started to cough. A real, smoker's-type cough. His first official not-connected-to-a-cold real cough. Two days later, we took him to the doctor. Our pediatrician, who is also a pulmonary specialist, is on holiday for a month, and the doctor who took her place prescribed Combivent in a nebuliser thrice a day for five days and Virlix syrup at bedtime. The diagnosis was bronchitis - viral or allergic.

Desperate to stop the cough and fearful of the possibility of pneumonia, we purchased the meds and borrowed a nebuliser. Little A cooperated at first; he likes biting things so we made him practise with the nebuliser mouthpiece before connecting it to the machine. Cooperation didn't last long though. The compressor's noise annoyed him and he would run away whenever we turned it on. In the end, we kept it running and just wafted the smoke in his general direction. This happened thrice out of what my husband and I decided would be 10 doses instead of the prescribed 15.

Since the cough showed no signs of improvement, I took the sneaky route for the next 3 doses. When Little A fell asleep, I attached the inhalation mask to the nebuliser and that way made sure the medicine got into his system.

Then I read up on Combivent. (Note: according to my sister and best friend, our pediatrician only prescribes saline solution for use with a nebuliser. However, since Little A's cough was pretty bad, I figured the doctor knew what she was doing prescribing a stronger drug.) What I read totally freaked me out.

Combivent is an asthma medicine, most commonly used to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. My son does not, to my knowledge, have asthma or any sort of pulmonary disease. Combivent cannot be used by those with soy and nut allergies and can cause severe allergic reactions, including swelling of the face, nose and throat and anaphylatic shock. Furthermore, the dosage given to my son is recommended only for people over 12 years old, and the drug is not recommended for children below age 12.

More frightening still are the possible side effects: chest pain or heaviness, difficulty breathing, dizziness, nausea or blurred vision, loss of feeling in the left arm and shoulder, increased blood pressure, hypertension and death. My son is two years old. He doesn't even say Mama, how can he tell me if he's having difficulty breathing or can't feel his arm anymore?

We stopped the Combivent doses after reading all this, completing 6 doses in all. One week later, the cough is slowly getting better. We are still keeping close watch over Little A - he never had a fever and his energy level and appetite are the same, so we pray this was just a cough brought on by swimming in cool weather or a virus. When our regular pediatrician comes back, we will take Little A to see her.

Meanwhile, I have learned my lesson. Never give your child any meds without reading up on them first, and seek a second opinion if you feel the need.

Logging the Hours

2009-07-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

There was a lovely article in the newspaper yesterday that probably didn't make the deadline for the Father's Day issue. It was written by a single father to two adpoted sons. One of the things he wrote was that when it comes to babies and very young children, quantity time is what matters. I couldn't help but agree.

Babies develop attachments to those who constantly care for them. As toddlers, separation anxiety develops with the fear of being apart from these people. The writer mentioned that when his son fell and hurt himself, he ran howling straight past him into the arms of his nanny, breaking his father's heart. While he longed to spend more time with his kids, he couldn't because he had to put in long hours at a demanding job as the breadwinner of his family (unmarried, he lives with his mother, siblings, nephews and nieces, his adopted sons and a host of nannies and househelp.)

Now that he is out of work, my husband has been spending much more time at home, and with Little A. After 18 months of hardly seeing his father, Little is used to having his dad around the house now, and looks for him when he is gone. I am the caregiver, his father is the playmate. Their favourite activity involves my son holding on to his father's hands, climbing up to his chest, then pushing with his feet so that his body is hanging upside-down. This game, repeated endlessly in the evenings, is the source of much laughter and muscle pains.

Sooner rather than later, my husband or I must find a more permanent means of income. This will no doubt involve one of us (Big A, more likely) spending more time away from home and our son. He is older now, but still very much in his formative years, and will certainly suffer some emotional trauma from this change. We will all have to make adjustments and find new ways of maximizing our time together. Until that day comes though, we will enjoy spending all the time we can in each other's company.