Smart Little Lady

My daughter stopped in the middle of her internet privilege (which is about two to three hours every weekend, spread throughout the day). She turned to me while I am reading my emails on my laptop and said excitedly Joe Jonas (of The Jonas Brothers) is talking to them at Meez.

I looked her straight on the face and asked her what did I tell her about the world wide web.

"Good point, mom. He's a busy man. He has no time to play. It couldn't be him." She left Meez Nation and just continued doing her avatar.

Now my turn to bug her. I told her I am "friends" with Paulo Coelho (a celebrated author of several books) through our Plurk.

My daughter, teasing me, asked, "how'd you know he's the real Paulo Coelho?"

I was caught by surprise with her reply. "No, he's for real."

She asked, "how'd you know he's not fake?"

I told her the profile has a link to his blog and the blog links to his official site.

She was still teasing me and said, "anybody can make a site, mom."

I pointed out to her what makes a valid site and certifies its real owner. "This contains all his works, even e-books and where he can be contacted, videos showing his interviews....."

In a matter of fact voice, she told me to be careful. "You wouldn't know."

And she left, went back to the PC, seemingly unconvinced.

What does this particular situation tells me? It tells me we exchanged roles for a while there. Kidding aside.....

1. My daughter and I have a great bond that she shares with me even the littlest excitement she feels and the same thing goes for me.
2. She listens well, learns fast and applies lessons earned quickly. Wise thinking for the little lady.
3. Of course he is the real Paulo Coelho but I can't stop grinning. My daughter's reply got me. Well, it happens even to the best mommies.

I am thankful my daughter is growing up a beautiful, smart, active lady, sometimes moody and silly but loving and sweet in her own way.

Bonding Moments

There is a bonding time for me and my daughter everyday even for a few hours or minutes. There are planned bonding moments but a lot of times they are spontaneous. They are just the normal activities we do after dinner on weekdays or anytime of the day on weekends.

Sitting on the couch after dinner and talking about how each of our day was is a great bonding moment. I get to know what happened in school. I browse on her notes and tutor her if needed. She gets to know what I am doing too. I share a few stories about my fun moments with my colleagues. I would like her to be familiar with the people I spend the day with. She knows some of them.

We spend an hour or so watching our favorite shows on Disney, Nickelodeon, NatGeo, ABSCBN, even MTV. We channel surf. A habit his Daddy detests. Haha. Lately we enjoy watching cooking shows together - Giada's and Iron Chef.

On weekends, there are times we bake or make shakes.

We go to the salon together most of the time. There is an unwritten rule - she gets to choose my nail color.

We go shopping! This early we get to give each other suggestions on what is a better find. This is also one of the ways I share with her what value for money is. Good buys are not exactly branded or expensive.

We both read a lot. Fully Booked, Power Books or National Bookstore are always in our agenda when we go to the malls. It is a sacrilege not to pass by in any of the three.

We love dining out, trying out different pastas. It's our habit to get food from each others' plates if we order different foods.

We watch movies together. This time we plan to watch The Jonas Brothers' 3D Concert and You Changed My Life. We find Sarah a nice girl. :)

It runs in the family. Digital cameras were non existent yet many years ago but we always have a ready film we can use anytime that we feel like taking pictures. I carried it with me as I was growing up. And I seemed to have passed it on with my daughter. We both love taking pictures. We do that, anywhere, even at home, anytime of the day that we fancy taking each others' pictures. It's so much fun!

One bonding moment I want us to do this summer is physical fitness. I want to further explore her interest in kid's yoga. She read it in one of her tween magazines a few months ago. She got more enthusiastic about it when I started attending yoga classes. I demonstrate to her some poses I did and we watch basic yoga poses in youtube. I am scouting for a yoga class for kids and moms near our place in time for her summer vacation.

It is important that we have our own quiet time, both mother and child, but bonding time is greatly anticipated. After a full day, bonding with my daughter is a comforting thought. I always say this, it greatly balances my day.

***More sharing of bonding moments of mommies with their children at Mommy Journey.

Pink and Blue, Oh Why?

A few days ago I changed my template for this blog, Life Bliss. I am in a perennial search for a nice, working template. More aptly, I would like to try different templates every now and then.

It's just like a home. You want to redecorate it from time to time. You want to move a few things here and there. You want to repaint it, or sometimes, you want total renovation. That's what I do with my blog templates. It sets my mood to post in a way. We all want comfortable homes, don't we? We all want a change of surroundings once in a while to further excite us, move us, motivate us. Those are the rationales why I see myself changing templates several times in a year. I'm blogging for more than two years now. I will take screenshots of my templates from this time on, for posterity. :)


But this particular template called Baby Blue is way different from the templates I prefer. This makes me feel I am in a nursery, with blue and pink blankets all over. But well, it's cute. It looks happy and contemporary as my husband says. Fits the tone of my content which is mostly about family bonding.

On regular days, I like simple templates, white, not much color around really. Professional and neat, bordering on boring. Nothing distracting or extravagant. I don't like pastel hues nor too dark colors. But between pastel and dark colors, I'd choose the latter. So why do I have this template which is just-not-me?

I want to deviate from my usual preference once in a while. Like how I do with my wardrobe or my hairstyle. This is a generic template which I tweaked to suit my taste somehow. I really don't know how long I will use this, or how short. Time is not a question in terms of configuring templates. I can do this even in the dead of the night after all my work is done.

This template is too dainty sometimes and it looks broken on IE6 and lower versions but perfect on FF and IE7. Haven't tried checking this on Opera or Safari. I guess they look organized there too. Well anyway, I just have to think aloud by posting why I chose a template which is a far cry from my personality. I don't cringe when I open this blog so that's a good sign that I am getting at home and this template just might last for a few months.

Writings on the Paper Mat

Dining places which are children friendly always get a nod from me. I appreciate it that the owners (and their marketing and operations people) take initiatives to make the place comfortable for children. That makes perfect sense especially if the restaurant is generally catering to families.

Burgoo is one of them. They have the ready paper mat and crayons so guests can doodle as they wait for food. My daughter anticipates this whenever we dine there. She writes, she draws and makes borders.



I can see that not only kids do this. Even young couples and teenagers. It's fun as long as the food does not take that long to be served.


For mommies familiar with Plurk, maybe you can relate. I registered for phPlurk so I can update through text. (For the record, I am not really addicted to Plurk but I enjoy interacting with my mommy friends and other bloggers that I am familiar with. I usually plurk at night when all else is done.) I used to plurk even through text - what I am doing or where I am like when we were having our lunch at Burgoo. My daughter showed what she had written on the paper mat. She said her mom plurks a lot. Kids are very much aware of what we are doing, even the trivial things we do. :)

Have a Seat, Will Take Picture

As I have shared with one of my posts, my daughter and I bought her dress for the school dance more than a week ago. I also bought an entire set of clothes to update my wardrobe. As if our feet were not sore yet from checking all the shops, we managed to do go around the mall for our dinner and some other buys for the house.

We chanced upon a set-up in a corner at the fourth or fifth level of the mall created to further beef up the Valentine season. Anyone who wants to have a picture taken is free to use it. It's cute. My daughter loves the chair because it is similar to the car seat in iCarly, one of her favorite shows from Nickelodeon.



Belated Happy Valentine's Day! Hope you had a good one or at least, you did not get stuck in traffic the night before and on the actual date.

Shopping Tips That Work for Me

These are the things I learned through the years when doing some serious shopping:

1. Leave husband behind. :D It's sweet, of course, if he wants to come along but it just might be good for his health if he stays in one place or stays at home. My husband, for one, is not keen on long walks. It's something about his knee.

Most of the time it's just me and my daughter who goes shopping. Husband is spared of the long wait while me and my daughter is spared from being asked every minute or so when are we ever going to buy anything. Fair enough for the parties involved.

2. Wear really, really comfortable shoes or flip-flops if you are going to fit so many shoes and if you know you will spend the entire day or even half of the day going around the mall. I ask my daughter to wear flats or slip-on rather than sneakers. Untying and tying back the shoelace consumes time when fitting different shoes.

3. Wear clothing which you can slid on and off easily when shopping for clothes especially dresses. You know you are going to try so many of them several times so it will help if you can change fast.

4. Stick to budget. Oh, this is hard. But worth it. You'll be proud of yourself everytime you accomplish this.

5. Eat before leaving. You save some money since there will only be either a snack or a dinner you need to spend for. Also, to have all the energy you need as you go through the whole shopping process.

6. Regularly check the number of bags you are carrying to ensure you have all of your shopping sprees intact and not leaving them somewhere (in a restaurant for example).

7. Better yet, slip smaller bags into bigger shopping bags so you don't actually have to carry so much bags.

8. Have a list of the things you will buy and do a logistics planning of where to go first, second and so on. This saves a lot of time and energy.

A week and a a half ago, my daughter and I scouted for a dress she will use for their dance in school. The theme for this year's field demonstration is ballroom dancing. She has a lot of dresses but none of them can be classified for ballroom. Her gowns are too long and layered since they were used on several wedding occasions being part of the entourage. Another thing, most of them will not fit anymore.

We have no choice but to look for a new dress. We did find at least two good designs but they were beyond my budget. Since she needs the dress, I am ready to buy any of the two only if there is no other choice. But it is in my nature to sweep the entire mall before I settle for what I may call a good buy. And now that there are two malls near my place, only for this particular search, I need to check if there is a better buy in the other mall. That was how I planned it. I need to buy a new set of wardrobe for me too anyway plus a pair shoes for me and my daughter. We planned to go back the following weekend after her mastery examinations are all done. It's shopping time.

My daughter and I spent the whole afternoon last Saturday to finally buy her dress, my wardrobe and our shoes. We left no stones unturned in our search for our best buys. I am happy to note we were able to get ourselves pretty things that we actually need after a couple of hours. And they are all within my budget. Nice!