Day 31: Accomplishment

At the start of the year, I began Project 365 in response to MrsG's challenge. It took a week before I finally pushed myself to begin the project, hence having 7 entries in my very first post.  I have to admit that it was indeed a daunting task in the beginning and there were days that I missed updating it but somehow I managed to get back on track.

Today is the last day of the month and I cap the first 31 days of 2010 with the word "accomplishment".  I borrowed the image here from www.zazzle.com and found it to be a fitting description of the past month.  Every single day that passes leaves some accomplishment, no matter how small.  Before January bid a bow of goodbye, we had to battle certain health issues that reminded us to always be careful with what we eat and feed the kids.  It also made us come face-to-face with fear when we thought a simple misstep could have caused a serious injury.  Sometimes the everyday rustics of life tend to make us complacent and this should never be the case.  We should always be on our toes...always alert to whatever life throws at us.

With January enclosed in memory, I look forward to the next 11 months with so much vigor and excitement...and I wonder what other adventures are in store for little Miss Promdi...

Day 30: Cat Eyes

If there's any facial feature that my children has inherited from me, I would say it would be my eyes.  Those big, anime rounds of dark brown are definitely mine.

Growing up, I came to realize that it was my eyes that people would usually notice about me.  They would also reveal certain moods I had at any given day.  My eyes are always the dead give away whenever I try to hide sadness or anger.  I'd have to say, my husband has certainly mastered all my looks and stares and knows exactly how I'm feeling just by looking at my eyes.

Looking at my children now, I believe their eyes are the true windows to their souls.  You could certainly know their moods just by looking at their eyes.  I know for a fact that hubby is very happy that our children inherited this facial feature from me...I just hope that along with it, a 20/20 vision which I wasn't able to take advantage of (I have a congenital defect in my sight...my left vision is very blurry).

Day 29: "We're going on a trip..." (sung to the tune of the theme from Little Einsteins)

The day started very early for me...I woke up at 5:30 am to prepare breakfast, pack our lunch for the field trip and set up the kids' backpack of personal stuff.  By 7:00 am, I was ready to wake everyone up to take their baths and eat breakfast.

 

When we arrived at the school, everyone was already in their vehicles, ready to leave.  Jarred's homeroom teacher was already ringing me when she saw our car on the other side of the road.  I guess we arrived just in time.

Our convoy of about 8 or 9 vehicles filled with preschool children, teachers, school heads and parents began our trip toward the first stop which was Nasipit port.  At the port, we were toured on board the M/V Cebu Ferry 2.  We were able to see the captain's bridge and vessel's navigational equipment.  After that brief tour, we began an unexpected long and bumpy trip to Jurassic Park in Carmen, Agusan del Norte.

At first I didn't realize that our destination would be a faraway beach resort, nestled in a small town off Carmen.  It wasn't really supposed to be such a long and bumpy ride had the road to our destination been cemented.  It was, after all, only 14 km off the main highway.  So, what normally took 15 minutes to travel became an hour and a half due to bad road condition.

When we arrived at the resort, we thought that the trip was quite worth it.  It was built around a ridge and below was a breathtaking view of the sea.  Tired from the road trip, we quickly scouted for a place to set up our little picnic and had our lunch.  It was a beautiful place but hardly one that I'd consider safe for preschoolers.  The ridge sides were kind of steep and everyone had to very careful while walking.  I would've allowed my two older kids to swim as I did pack their swimwear had the skies remained clear.  When it seemed that rains would befall us, I decided against the idea and just agreed with the rest of the group that we had to go back home earlier than scheduled.  Rains + bad roads = not good.

The field trip's theme was "Enjoying God's beautiful creation" and indeed, Jurassic Park proved to showcase such beauty.  Maybe in the future, we'll have a longer time to spend there and enjoy its wonder.

We weren't able to take much scenic photos as hubby got busy with macro photography of such unusual subjects.

Day 28: The show must go on...preparing for a field trip

Even though I wasn't back to being my 100% self, I had to muster much needed strength to prepare for my son's field trip.  After all, this is going to be the first time that the entire family will accompany him and the entire preschool of BFCS.  

Since it was BYOB (bring your own baon), I decided to cook "Visayan Humba" for our lunch at Jurassic Park.  Humba, being similar to the Adobo, does not spoil easily and gets yummier as leftover.

I whipped up quite a huge batch so it pretty much solved our dinner and still had so much left over for our lunch tomorrow at the field trip.

Here is my recipe for Visayan Humba:

1.5 kg combined pork hocks (pata front) and belly, sliced and washed

1 1/2 heads of garlic, crushed

2 tbsp canola oil

3 pcs bay leaves

1 tsp black peppercorns

2 pcs star anise

1 tbsp salted black beans

2 tbsp dried banana blossom

1 cup vinegar

3/4 cup soy sauce

salt

2 tbsp brown sugar

water (optional)

In a casserole, heat up oil then saute garlic until fragrant.  At medium flame setting, add in the pork and some salt. When the meat is half cooked, add in the bay leaves, peppercorns, vinegar, soy sauce. Mix well and simmer under low fire.  When the meat is fork tender, add the salted black beans, banana blossom, star anise and sugar.  Simmer until sauce gets thick.  Adjust seasonings (vinegar, soy sauce and sugar) to taste.  If it gets too dry, add some water.  Serve hot with rice.

Day 27: Assurance

Our original plan of consulting the pedia for only one child turned out to be for all three of our children.  While keeping watch in the wee hours of the morning, the youngest one surprised us by retching so suddenly.  But since it seemed isolated, it was thought that maybe "hindi lang natunawan during dinner".  

However, several hours later, while prepping the eldest for school, he too had retching bouts while taking his bath. Hmmm....this is not good.  But thinking that maybe it was just an anxiety symptom before going to school, we let him leave for today's school activities.  A couple of hours later, the school calls to say that he's been vomiting in school and doesn't feel well.

Oh no! And so, we took all three to the pedia to seek professional advise.  After eliminating all the symptoms associated with head injuries, child #2 was cleared.  A big thanks to the big guy above for that!  And since all of them had been exhibiting similar symptoms, the pedia thought that they may have eaten something that didn't agree with their body.  Armed with prescriptions and instructions, we were now more confident that there was nothing serious to worry about.  Of course, we still had to be vigilant and make sure that dehydration won't be a problem, thus the help of ORS (oral rehydration salts) and an antiemetic medicine.

Day 26: Keeping Watch

The previous day's events pretty much mapped out our lives this day.  Anxiety still loomed around as we kept watch over our child's behavior and activity today, taking mental note of every detail.

Every second, a whispered prayer is said...

And when, at the end of the day, there is doubt...trust that an expert will be your source of assurance.

Day 25: Peril

When you have young children in the family, you tend to become OC when it comes to safety.  However, there are instances wherein accidents do happen and we just have to make sure that we know how to respond timely to that kind of situation.  Today, it was a flight of stairs and missing a step that gave us quite a scare.  As a parent, your heart will keep racing and you won't be able to sleep a wink until you can know for sure that nothing serious has happened to any of your children.  It took a watchful eye for symptoms, the expert advise of the pedia and a whole lot of prayers before we could give out a sigh of relief.

I did learn a lot about bumps and falls in children during this entire experience.

• keep calm and never panic 
• watch out for symptoms of drowsiness or difficulty in rousing the child from sleep 12-24 hours after a bump or fall
• take note of any vomiting and if any fluid or blood is trickling from eyes, ears or nose
• look for any problems with coordination 
• check if pupils are unequally responsive
• monitor the child for incoherence in speech
• always consult a physician if you observe any of these symptoms

It is during these times that I come face-to-face with the fact that the joys of parenthood also come with great responsibility and you can never be too careful when it comes to your own children.

Day 24: Indoor Clothesline

The recent erratic weather condition has left me with loads of laundry (almost 3 weeks full), either for washing or drying.  Thank goodness the sun made a brief appearance this morning until mid afternoon.  I was able to have 3/4 of the load folded and pressed.  A quarter remain hanging on the makeshift clothesline in the terrace.  It's the only covered space we make use of whenever rains threaten to fall and deem sun drying useless.

Day 23: Guessing Game

When I started this 365 project I had to look for photo organizing/editing software I could use so I could add text to my photos and make it easier for me to look for photos in my hard disk.  Right now, I'm making use of two programs...one is an online photo editing software at www.picnik.com and the other is a free downloadable software called Picasa.  Picasa is the one I used to make the collage here.  

When I  was organizing my photos, I was amazed at the face recognition feature wherein it grouped together the pictures by person.  While skimming through the person albums, I discovered some photos of my kids jumbled up...those of Jarred's went to Cailie's, CeeJae's went to Jarred's...it dawned on me that the software would group the pics into a person's album based on the likeness...so it meant that at one point in their lives, my 3 children actually looked alike.  Aha!!!  Why not make a collage of 3 photos showing all three of them at relatively the same age.  So, the finished product is what you see here. Jarred, Cailie and CeeJae at about 8 months old. Can you try and figure out which is which? What similar facial features do they all share?

Day 22: Love, seasoned by time...

I was searching through my hard drive for photos and I chanced upon these two here...
The larger photo was taken last March 2009 during my birthday our anniversary (the two occasions are 2 days apart, hence the slight confusion) and the smaller one was maybe circa 2003 or 2004.

Although you could see very similar faces (alright, give or take 5 lbs...), the more recent one shows so much more character. Maybe we were more innocent when we were younger? Or we didn't know as much?  And of course, the experiences were much different.

Ours is a love that has withstood the harshest of weather and continues to grow and evolve at present...much like the dishes I concoct in my kitchen, we've been seasoned so ever gently by time.