Domestic Diva

3 months in our new home and I'm so close to calling an agency for a helper. Fail! I swore to no yaya-helper pero hindi ko na yata kaya! Haha! When we first moved in, I thought, "Well, this is easy!" and it was, at least for the first month. Now, I have a toddler and he likes to move around a lot! A LOT!

Right now, I'm just taking a break -- I've been cleaning since 8am and so far, I'm only done with 1 out of 3 bathrooms, the kitchen and the living room. Thank Samsung for a fully automatic washing machine, I'm almost done with the laundry na din. (Read: Wala nang diapers si Nathan!!!) A mess is still waiting for me upstairs, and if I think about it more, baka tamarin lang ako. Haha!

On the bright side, who needs gym? Grabe lang ang exercise ko from sweeping and mopping the floors at akyat-baba ng hagdan.  ;) Hay. Back to 'work.'

Elayskie

Reminder.

Unfinished business.

I can't really tell you what it is, but I'm just excited that for the coming months, I'll be doing something to 'settle' it. I've been thinking about it really hard and with everything that's going on right now, I figured to give it another chance. Here's to praying I finally stick to it. Haha.

Elayskie

Hello, new blog!

When I told Bob I wanted to switch to blogger, he just nodded and didn't ask me why. He knew this means I'm going to ask him to design my blog and that he has no choice but to do it. Haha!

Thank you Dudad for designing my blog. I love it! Sobra!!

Elay

Reading is Fun!

We started reading books when Nathan was just about two months old. I know he doesn't understand the words I say or why I do a thump-thump sound whenever I say Ella the Elephant, but he has shown me his appreciation for what I do, and that's more than enough for me. :) I know he appreciates it coz whenever I pull out the book, he starts smiling and you just know that he's waiting for it.

Reading Love You Forever by Robert Munsch.

Sometimes, when he's crying really hard and we can't figure out what it is that he wants, we just show him the book "Zigby Camps Out" and he will stop crying at once! We figured that he loves looking at the pictures, and he loves listening to the sound effects (animal sounds) I make when I read to him. 

He also loves "Love you Forever" by Robert Munsch. I LOVEEEEE reading this book to him because of the song, "I love you forever, I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be." I'm also extra proud when reading this book to him coz it's a free signed copy from the author. Haha!

These are our books so far, most of the books here, I bought from booksale! :) Cardboard books for as low as 50 pesos, and some around 100 pesos. Ngayon, mas inuuna ko pa talaga tignan ang children's corner sa bookstore bago sa bestsellers. Hehe!

This afternoon, I saw that Books For Less opened a new branch at SM Masinag, and since I was there, I decided to give it a visit. Nalula ako sa dami ng children's books! I saw Dr. Seuss books for 99-150 pesos, and a whole lot of other books that I want to read with Nathan. Sobrang dami, I think I spent more than an hour just browsing around. Hehe!

I got these books for around 300 pesos lang. I loooooooooveeeee that it's finger puppet which puts a whole new fun to our reading sessions. I tried it with Nathan kanina and he loves it! I love the Elmo book, inside it has lyrics to "If You're Happy and You Know It" but it has other actions like, "Touch your nose," "Rub your tummy" and "Dance".

My dream is to own more books, and own books na nasa top 100 books for children. For now, okay na kami ni Nathan with the nice images and rhymes. It's something I'm sure we will be doing for a long time, and we will never get tired of it (I hope!).

We Choose Cloth.

This post is written for the Real Diaper Week Carnival with the theme “Real Simple. Real Diapers.”  We aim to educate and advocate the use of cloth diapers in the Philippines.  Please scroll below to read the other carnival posts about cloth diaper styles, how to’s or must haves. 

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"Ang mahal naman niyan!" 

Ask any cloth diapering mom, and I'm sure someone has said pretty much the same thing about cloth diapers at one point. Usually, this phrase comes after "Ang cute naman niyan!". 

Well, it's true that it can be a little expensive at first. You would need to shell out a little to be able to build a decent stash of cloth diapers. Believe me, Hubby's facial expression said it all when I first told him that I want to build a cloth diaper stash for Nathan.  This was after he saw Next9's website which I 'accidentally' left open on his browser. Believe me, the look on his face was just like telling me, "Are you out of your mind?! 1k for 3 diapers?!"

The thing is, I wasn't researching about cloth diapers just because it's cute. (Okay, I admit that was ONE reason). But at that time, Nathan was having really bad rashes because of his diapers. We tried brand after brand, we changed every after 2 hrs but we got the same results.

So, to give him a 'preview' without having to spend that much, I asked that we try Chino Pino's first. It's pretty much the old school lampin but it's pre folded already and it has velcro closures that made it a lot easier to put on Nathan. In just a week of switching to Chino Pino's, the rashes were gone. Yay!

But eventually, we outgrew the chino pino. Nathan's thigh -- well, people call it "Pata" for a reason eventually became too big for the chino pino. Hubby said maybe it's time to try out the modern ones. I swear I did a happy dance when he said that. :)

Ang-mahal-naman-nyan-rebuttal number 1: If you do the math, you'll see it's not expensive at all.

Cloth diapers are reusable. Which means, if you stick to it, you'd probably never buy another disposable diaper again EVER. I always say din, since Nathan is our first child, the probability of our second (maybe even third) child to use the same CD's are high! Investment ang tawag dun. :P

If you change disposable diapers 12 times a day and keep doing that for a year, this is what it will cost you:

Drypers: PhP7/pc = PhP30,576/year
EQ Dry: PhP6/pc = PhP26,208/year
Huggies PhP9/pc = PhP39,312/year
Kimbies: Dry PhP6/pc = PhP26,208/year
Pampers Comfort: PhP7/pc = PhP30,576/year
Pampers Baby Dry: PhP8.25/pc = PhP36,036/year
ProKids: PhP6/pc = PhP26,208/year

Confession: I didn't do the math. Next9 did.

Ang-mahal-naman-nyan-rebuttal number 2: It's really good for the environment.

When I was trying to convince hubby to switch to cloth diapers, I asked him to guess just how many years it would take to decompose a single disposable diaper. He guessed 50 years, and based on my research, 50 years -- even when it sounds soooo long already, is just a quarter of disposable diaper's life. It takes 200 years, some data I've read said it takes 500. 200 or 500, maski nga 50 lang e, that's still a very long time! That means by the time Nathan has his own grand grand kids, the diaper we used on him would still be sitting on a landfill somewhere!

It actually felt good when we started using cloth diapers. It was nice not seeing disposable diapers on the trash can. I know it's just a small contribution, but still it's something, diba? At least Mother Earth has one less disposable diaper to worry about because of us. Pwede na yun!

Ang-mahal-naman-nyan-rebuttal-tip number 3: Ang cute kaya!

Kasama talaga to sa reasons why we like cloth diapers. Haha! Because of cloth diapers, Nathan is ready for a photoshoot anytime! :P When we were using cloth diapers na, I realized how

ugly
 different it looked like when Nathan was just wearing disposables. Sure, disposables have prints too but it just looked... well, different.

Cloth diapers now come in different colors, in different prints. Some were even customizable, and if you're really crafty, I'm sure you could do loads with plain cloth diapers. Can I add, sobrang nakakagigil yung butt ni baby pag naka cloth diaper, ang tambok! :)

[caption id="attachment_129066" align="alignnone" width="423" caption="Nathan says "OK"."][/caption]

***

So there, that's just three of the many reasons why we chose real diapers. It took a little explaining of course to convince hubby, but I'm happy to say that he's my number 1 supporter now when it comes to full-time CDing. Yes, we do full time! We use cloth diapers 24/7. Yay!

He now knows the benefit of cloth diapers and would even answer back for me whenever someone says "Ang mahal naman nyan!". Minsan may iba pang statements like, "Mukhang mahirap i-maintain, or magastos sa laba" pero with a little explanation, nagegets din naman. :) Proud moment ko lang is when he explained it to our friend, akala ko di siya nakikinig sa explanations ko e!

If you haven't yet, I suggest you give it a try din. The secret is to just buy just a few first and then decide which system works best for you. Oh yes, cloth diapers are so modern now and we have different systems pa! I suggest you look into it first. We're really far from the oldschool lampin na. Another yay for that!

There's a group called Modern Cloth Nappying Pinays (every cloth diaper addict mom is in that group) and you can ask them questions and for sure you'll get really good answers. I joined the group when there was just around 80 members, now it's around 700+ na! Galing! If not sa group, just google and research lang, you'll be surprised at how many moms are doing it already. (I used to watch videos on youtube on how to strip diapers! Haha)

Anyway, ang haba na nito. Just think of this as me saying na, real diapers can be intimidating at first, but still, it's something worth trying.  :)

***

Please check out other entries for the blog carnival:

Next9 Baby's The CD Revolution

Tickled Mom Clarice's Stuff you need for an easier CD-ing life

Buntis' Milo's stash of real diapers

Happy Tots Studio's Matteo's Diaper Story

Hoo Goes Where's Real Diapers Our CD Journey

MrsBry's Z loves: Next9 Cloth Diapers

This Mom's Life's Transitioning to Cloth Diapers

ms. Masungit's Cloth Diapers? Where?

The Odyssey of Dinna's nurturing rafael: the cloth diaper chronicles

The Articulate Pen's Making the Switch to Cloth Diapers

The Common Mom's Surviving the Holidays with Cloth Diapers

Tickled Mom Abie's Cloth Diapers. A Quick Review of the Different Systems

Swept Away's What We Love About Cloth Diapers

Chronicles of a Nursing Mom's Going out of Town with Cloth Diapers

Organized Junk's Out and About with Cloth Diapers

Baby steps.

"Just let go", I've been telling this to myself for the past few days. Nathan is in the phase where he wants to roam around and just grab things and explore. We were at the supermarket one time and he refused to be carried, instead he wanted to be put down so he can walk, assisted syempre. He also refuses now to be held at both hands when walking, gusto niya one-hand assist nalang. And though I'm really proud of this achievement and milestone, I can't help but still feel a bit OA. HAY I really feel that I don't make sense at all pero, ang hirap pala!

Excited for tomorrow!

As I've said on my previous blog, we will be celebrating Nathan's first birthday tomorrow. It's going to be really simple, with just a few family and friends. I'm really excited on how things will turn up tomorrow since everything -- and I say everything, is a labor of love. Haha!

Every bit of decor is DIY -- and since our printer broke down few months ago, we had to make use of what we have. Thankfully, I have a very creative husband who knows exactly what to do with a piece of paper, oil pastels and lots of other stuff available.

Nakakatuwa kasi we have Easter Egg hunt in the morning, and all the eggs are created by Bob. Paper Mache! DIY ba kamo? :)

Hayy sana when Nathan grows up and gets to see his first birthday party, he'll be reminded of just how Mommy and Daddy worked real hard to make it special.

Oh hello, blog!

Halos nakalimutan ko na meron pala akong blog.

March has set a record -- pinaka stressful na month at sana wala nang mag-attempt mag break ng record. Just a day after Nathan's confinement, si Papa naman ang sinugod namin sa hospital. He suffered from a major stroke. It was the scariest day of my life din, never thought I'd go through that at all. On hindsight, everything on that day was carefully planned and timed by God. Nung hapon na yun, nagtataka ako bakit wala pa si Papa (He was supposed to go here in the morning), then I called him on his cellphone. It rang once and he didn't answer, so I called again -- this time, he answered and the only words he said was "Punta kayo dito anak, inaatake ako". Then silence.

That 5-second silence was scary. The thought was scary. We were fifteen minutes away from Papa. Mahina pa naman ako sa mga ganitong pagkakataon. Pero it all felt like I was on auto pilot. I called the guard house of Papa's subdivision and told them to go to our house and call an ambulance. Sa isip ko nun, at least may mauna sakin sa bahay since malayo pa kami. I also called our Ninang, who was our neighbor din and told her to come to our house. She was about to leave na daw buti nalang nakatawag ako agad. She said when they got to our house, the screen door was locked so they had to force it open, then they found Papa lying on the bedroom. God was so good na hindi na niya inallow na makita ko pa yun. Siguro kung inabutan ko si Papa na ganun, baka dalawa kaming isusugod sa hospital.

Ang nakakatawa (at least for now) dito e sa panic namin mag-asawa, iniwan namin si Nathan sa kapitbahay namin habang kami ni Bob e nakasakay na sa kotse ni Ninang para isugod sa hospital si Papa (ambulance never came). Parang nakisama naman si Nathan kasi hindi daw siya umiyak, as in nakaupo lang daw sila nung kapitbahay namin at ni isang beses e hindi nagwala si Nathan. Buti nalang dahil sa taranta namin, wala kaming dala man lang na gamit ni Nathan. Walang milk, walang diaper -- kahit pampunas nga ng tulo laway wala. Hayy, thank you Anak for being cooperative on that day.

Anyway, we stayed in the hospital for 10 days. Longest 10 days of my life. I was crying every night. Halo-halo na yung emotions ko. I felt worried for Papa, tapos namimiss ko mag-ama ko who had no choice but to stay at home. So ako lang mag isa nagbabantay kay Papa. Ang hirap! I would never wish for this to happen to anyone, not even my mortal enemy siguro. (Kung meron man).

I guess that's every child's fear. Good thing about this story is that ours ended up well. Papa recovered well, and now -- almost a month after the incident, nakakalakad na siya and nagagalaw na rin niya yung left side ng body niya na nung una e ni makaramdam, wala. He's on continuous PT sessions, 3x a week for now but we're hopeful. Pinag-mop na nga ng sahig nung isang araw para maexercise. Haha!

Anyhooo-- Birthday ni Nathan kahapon! One year went by soooooooo fast. I will blog this on another entry dahil it deserves a separate post.

Nakakamiss din pala mag blog. :)