Behind the Acts of Sharing Breastmilk

Welcome to the Milk Mama Diaries Carnival (September). For this month, we will tackle milk sharing and how it can nurture the community, and how this spirit of giving can be sustained. Participants will share their thoughts, experiences, hopes and suggestions on the topic.

Please scroll down to the end of the post to see the list of carnival entries.

Sharing constitutes giving and receiving. LC and I have been at both ends of milk sharing. Giving will always have more weight for me in whatever matter in life, but I guess relaying how we were at the receiving end of milk sharing is another way of showing gratitude to the generous giver.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.
– George Elliot, English novelist

Almost two months after giving birth to Little Cat, I was still struggling with my milk supply. I was also still struggling with post natal blues and to adjusting and learning about the baby. All these I had to deal with on top of the house hold chores. We don’t have a maid or yaya or anyone else aside from the three of us, so the stress-level for me is way off the charts. We would then top up with formula milk once in a while to give me even an extra hour of rest. Then there was this time, when I really wanted to have that very much-needed breather. A time away for myself.

Good thing it was also our wedding anniversary. I had more reason to level down my motherly doubts of not going for it. Hubby and I decided to get a massage and have dinner. We left LC to my sister-in-law who lives nearest us and whom we can entrust LC. We left LC with his stash of formula milk and feeding bottles good for about 6 hours.

When Hubby and I came to fetch LC, I was soooo pleasantly surprised to

The Art of Papercutting

While packing boxes for the move, I found the little boy quiet and busy with something.

See how he holds the scissors? Here are more recent photos:

Seems like we’ll be doing arts and crafts sooner than I’ve thought! 🙂

As for paper cutting in itself, do you know how intricate of an art it can be?

New Home and More Moving House Tips

We have moved! For the record, it’s our 5th residence in our 4th city (or municipality) in 4 years.

We never planned to familiarize Metro Manila this way. The packing and unpacking we did last year and the previous years feel like just yesterday! But such were the circumstances and how we dealt with them that we came to live in a different place every year.

Note to Hubby and Myself:
Next time we move house, it will be to our permanent home sweet home. Itaga sa bato!!!

We do hope the next move will be to our permanent residence. I won’t mind if it’s next year. Basta last na!

All boxes are packed, we’re ready to go… NOT!  The movers came an hour early and we were not yet done packing!

Moving on (sooo appropriate for my moving posts!?), all the previous packing, organizing and unpacking have not made us experts in the stressful task. There were still things we learned and were reminded of. After all, each and every experience – even if they’re practically the same – is a learning opportunity.

1. Plastic boxes are brittle, have carrying capacities and are not collapsible. Plastic boxes make great reusable containers, but cool as it may be,

Parents’ Cut

Because Hubby and I are no barbers. ;p It started when I had that bright idea of trimming LC’s hair myself. Don’t all moms have that creative flair? 😉 My mama and maternal grandma cut my hair when I was a kid. My sister-in-law did it too with my nieces and nephews. So why not do the same? 🙂 Unfortunately, moreso for LC, I did a bad job. Sorry LC. Hubby was laughing at me when he saw LC’s new hair do, and was pitiful for LC because he was my unwilling victim. I did not know boy’s hair should be cut near the ears! Mmm… I’ll do better next time… ? 😀 Fortunately, LC was really scheduled to have his head shaven off. He has those rashes again (how do you say bungang araw in english?) from summer heat. But instead of having a professional do the shaving, we thought we’ll just do it ourselves. We borrowed Adorable A’s clipper/razor and Hubby had his turn as the barber. The shave wasn’t perfect, but it will do.

Good news everyone! We now have the Last Airbender with us. 😉

Rambo Rambutan

I thought of monitoring how much fruit LC eats in a day. Lo and behold! When I counted that day, LC ate 3 bananas, 2 indian mangoes minus one “simot” seed (he gave it to me),

And seven rambutans.

He ate 2 of the bananas and 5 of the rambutans for his morning snack. The rest he ate in the afternoon.

Yes, yes, he eats rambutan! And he knows not to eat the seed. 🙂

He can peel and eat lanzones, kiat-kiat and dalanghita (this picture was taken many months ago) all by himself. 

33rd Manila International Book Fair

It’s the first day today. I used to go on the first day for the past years, but I came to a decision not to go this time. And probably not at all for the duration of this year’s fair.

I did plan on grabbing only a few books.
1. some worn out Adarna books sold at 10-50 pesos that sell like pancakes, and thus the reason I go on the first hours of the first day
2. Bee Polite – a follow-up of Bee Safe will be launched at the fair
3. The Power of the Praying Parent that may be sold at a discounted price at the OMFLit booth
4. UP Diksyonaryong Filipino and check other titles from university publishing houses
5. some books to start our collection of locally published but non-Adarna and Hiyas/OMFLit children’s books.

Hanging Out At The Monkey Bars

The monkey bars in our neighborhood is made of six co-centric rings. Four of them each have perpendicular axes. This parent-scary structure is for the enjoyment of all little monkeys in the neighborhood.

Now this little monkey has discovered this adventure.

This little monkey can even go up the level of the third and fourth rings.

This little monkey is a little sure of himself, and settles at the two lowest levels – much to my relief!

Not surprisingly though, he fell to the ground and bruised his head

Toddler Tip #18,347 Addendum

Keep all rolls of whatever out of reach. Example: rolls of tape or scotch tape