Art Accessory

You can’t blame me for being a little excited about my son’s developing capability in drawing. Combine a parent’s anticipation with her frustration in the craft, and you have one proud mum.

Besides that adorable sketch he made of his Mama, we have a few other documented attempts:

[top to bottom] A face, another face, a third face, a bicycle, and a tiger.

Well, I got even more worked up when, while browsing through my favorite sites, I found this: Doodle Tags.

They scan a your child’s doodle and make it into a tag for you. The Doodle Tag is made of recycled silver, about 1-inch in diameter. Along with it, you also receive a rubber stamp (and stamp pad).

What a proud way to wear your child’s art or remember it by as an endearing keepsake. It’ll also be a creative and fresh idea as as a present for those ever-doting grandparents, aunts and uncles!

[via oh-dee-doh | about Doodle Tags]

Time out

Yesterday, I took the day off. No cooking, no cleaning, no laundry. I figured, I’m exhausted, I deserve to do nothing.

So Matthew and I played, watched videos, slept. We tagged along with Mia to Brothers Burgers for lunch—a healthy meal of salad and grilled chicken (for me) and small flame-grilled burger sandwich (for him). For dinner we cheated. Bought hotdogs, juice and chocolate milk at a convenience store. Played some more. Shot some footage with the video camera. Slept late.

I’m still waiting to get back to my chores. I really, really should. But today, the gray skies are beckoning: it’s a day for napping, it seems. And you know what, things will fall into place and the world will keep on turning.  It’s time to stand still for a while.

My portraits

I belong to a family of artists, it seems. My boys are gifted in the visual arts (among other things), and they’ve already created their own impressions of the woman in their lives.

Armand did these a couple of years ago. He still sketches often, but we don’t get to save a lot of them.

You’ll recognize this as an oft-used avatar.

I found this in his sketchbook.

Matthew drew this last month.

As he was working on it, he said, “Mama.”

Too bad I can’t return the favor. There’s a reason why I write and don’t draw!

Name that tune

Everyday, Armand and I become amazed at how much Matthew is growing and changing. These days, you can hear him singing—even literally break out in song—with his standard repertoire which includes Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, ABC, Row Row Row Your Boat, Thomas the Tank Engine theme, Dora the Explorer Theme, Go Diego Go Theme, Star Wars theme, and The Imperial March.

Another song that he seems to enjoy a lot these days is Old MacDonald. He sometimes would make up his own lyrics (well, he does adlib a lot, actually) to make a joke. Like “Old MacDonald had a farm E-I-E-I-O. And on his farm he had a… mama!” And then he’d look at me with a naughty glance to see if I’d laugh.

One night, a very long night of trying to get him to sleep, we ran out of songs. Armand and I were both in bed with him, and began talking about random things. Such as the fact that the G.I. Joe movie is coming up, and hey, that Snake Eyes character is going to be played by Darth Maul! Armand started singing the theme (we sing anything we please to the boy, sometimes), ” He never gives up, he’ll stay til the fight’s won. G. I. Joe will dare. G. I. Joe… A real American hero. G. I…”

Matthew readily chimed in, “…E-I-Ohhhh!”

Playing tag

So I’ve been tagged!

The rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment to Candy’s blog (she’s the one who tagged me) once you’ve posted your three sentences.

I have to admit that I have several books that are “nearest”, stacked beside me. It’s pretty random: The Complete Book of Breastfeeding, Your Baby’s First Year (I recently used these 2 books as references for work, fyi), and Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House. And then there’s this, The Tent by Margaret Atwood which is really the book I’ve been reading.

On page 123, sentences 6 to 9 read:

King Log has retired to a villa in the Alps, where he is at present sprouting a fine crop of shitake mushrooms and working on his memoirs, one word at a time. Logs write slowly, and log kings more slowly than most. He has engaged a meditation guru who encourages him to visualize himself as a large pencil, but he can only get as far as the eraser.

And now, to continue the game, I am tagging

• Bambi at Dani’s Treats
• Ganns at gannsdeen
• Gen at hunger pangs
• Nines at Via Filipina
• Toni at Wifely Steps (oops, she’s done it already!)
• Ina at Ruined for Life

On supermoms and queenly privileges

New mother Salma Hayek shares an insight that a lot of us would do well to keep in mind.

“I know for myself, I want to be supermom and work really hard, be very good at work, lose all the weight, and all the while you’re not sleeping, and still putting a lot of effort into the relationship and being romantic,” she says, referring to Valentina’s father, French mogul Francois-Henri Pinault. “If I don’t get it all right, sometimes I get frustrated.”

What women need to keep in mind, rah-rahs Hayek, is that “you just did the most amazing thing a human being can do, which is give the opportunity for a new life. We should feel like queens and give ourselves a little bit more of a break.”

(via MSN)

Wanted: Playmates

Now that my son is spending day in and day out with me, I am truly beginning to understand how much he needs to be with children his age. It doesn’t matter if they merely engage in parallel play, have a difficult time sharing toys, or decide to speak in gibberish together. My toddler is in need of a social life.

We’ve constantly noticed how his eyes twinkle when other children our in the area. Strangers or no, it seems that Matthew feels kindred ties with his similar-sized tykes.

Once, at a friend’s son’s birthday party, Matthew attempted to strike out on his own on one of those plastic slide-tunnel-house contraptions, alongside rowdy older boys. At one point, I almost panicked: there was my two-year old being squished by three eight-year olds… until I noticed the giant smile he had on his face. To him, he was part of a group, his own barkada of boys having fun.

Can you spot him?

Another time, we went to Tiendesitas on a whim and to escape cabin fever. We grabbed a couple of fruit shakes and decided to watch The Jerks who were performing onstage.  Normally, Matthew would be quite entranced by a live band. His attention was diverted however by a brother and sister duo who were running around. (They must have been 5 and 4 years old.) Matthew decided to join in on the chase—never mind that they alternated between ignoring him or banning him from their table. He was having the time of his life.

In Boracay, for the holidays, we were lucky enough to be next door to a couple with a son the same age as Matthew. It didn’t matter that the Luka did not speak English. After breakfast one day, Matthew had taught him the chorus to Queen’s Bicycle Race.

In the world he knows, Matthew has about just two other regular playmates, and when I say regular I mean it in the sense that they’ve played often enough to know each other by name. The first is his cousin Iñigo, who is a month younger and my brother’s son. The problem is that they live quite far and even if we try, we’d be lucky if we see each other once a month for the boys to play.

The other playmate is our friends’ three year old son, Sancho. From barkada gatherings to out-of-town trips to spending some holidays together, I suppose you can say that these two have bonded over their short years.

I would have said that there was another one, three and a half year old Mikel, who is my brother-in-law’s step-grandson (don’t ask), but a recent playdate made us see some sort of antagonism coming from Matthew. Which is rare and very out of character. We’ll give it another try though.

What I’m interested in, though, is something like structured regular playdates. I’m hoping I don’t need to resort to Gymboree and its like soon; the expense can be quite big, actually. And if that becomes an option, I may as well look into preschools. While I still appreciate Gymboree, I find that it focuses more on the child-parent (or in other cases, the child-yaya) relationship, than child-friend one, because every child is supposed to be accompanied by an adult (except for the special class for older kids).

Recently, i’ve been reading up and blog-hopping on other options, and this one caught my eye: How to Start a Children’s Art Group on the Artful Parent. I like the fact that it gives the concept of art in child’s arena a very pragmatic view: the kids are not expected to do art the entire time and actually spend most of the time playing together. And the adults have a chance to interact and have grown up conversation, that is if they’re not trading notes on toilet training and temper tantrum handling. In any case, any other parents out there interested?

The other thing I have on my wishlist is quite simple: a playground to run around in with other kids. That may require moving to a gated village, but that’s not happening anytime soon.

I suppose this is what we get for learning to live so independently and isolated that seems to be requisite in this city. It used to be that we could knock on neighbors’ doors and then be on a bike ride or play patintero in the driveway. Now, our kids have a social calendar that takes effort to fill up—a responsibility I should seriously look into.

Easy evening after a long day

After such an exhausting day, I am just glad to be able to sit down and put my feet up. Rest is in store, for sure, and gratitude too for the little accomplishments we managed today.

1. “I want to make wee-wee” (although what he really meant was poo, which he did, sorry for the TMI) — Matthew’s first voluntary effort to go potty. (We bought him his potty last week, and while I need to get my program better planned, it’s nice to know that we’ve already had some progress.)

2. Cooked dinner from whatever was left in the fridge and pantry, and resisted going out. Like I commented on Toni’s blog about wanting to cook better, I like things easy and I hate complicated steps in cooking. Obviously, I’m not the cook in the family.

3. On time naptime and bedtime. Tonight was particularly nice, Matthew just snuggled while I read a book (not to him!) and he settled down easily.

It’s nice to end the day and week on a good note. And to put things in better perspective and keep my spirits up, I have this wacky pic on my desktop to chuckle about every time I see it.