Merry Christmas and good riddance to 2007

It's 5 am, and I've been up for 3 hours! We put the boys to sleep at 8 pm (I should say they put us to sleep ... if I remember correctly, Joaquin was still blabbing and Gabriel was complaining about Joaquin being noisy when I drifted off to lala land). I suppose 7 hours of sleep isn't too bad.

I finally found time to read my messages in friendster and upload updated photos. This year's been extremely busy, both at home and at work. Work, I can't talk much about. Home, ah ... let's see:
1. Woke up one morning to shouting and screaming -- found out that maids were having a catfight. Joaquin's yaya had to leave.
2. Joaquin had a terrible bout of asthma and we had to bring him to the the emergency room at midnight.
3. Gabriel had dengue fever, and was hospitalized for 4 days.
4. Sharon (Gabriel's yaya) told us she was planning to go to Korea and work there. (Thank God she changed her mind)
5. Arvin started a business with my niece and friends.
6. Joaquin started school.
7. We went home to Iloilo, where kids got sick after a day at the beach. The yaya also decided not to show up and stay at home ( I still hold a grudge against this girl to this day)
8. Arvin gave me an eee pc.
9. Joaquin is now toilet trained (yay!)
10. Gabriel speaks so much sometimes you want to tell him to shut up!

Latest decent picture of the kids ...

Work / Life Balance

They say you can achieve work/life balance ... or balance is how you define it. So what is balance to me? Is it working 12 hour workdays and feeling tired all the time? Get up, get dressed, spend 10 minutes with the kids, run out the door to catch an early morning call. Gulp down lunch in 15 minutes, try to drive home fast enough to catch kids awake (more often than not, unsuccessful at this), eat dinner, check email, try to have a decent conversation with husband -- fall asleep while doing so. Get up, get dressed, ... it's a cycle. Sometimes changes in pattern because of son getting up early in the morning asking for yaya. Only thing that keeps me sane is the Sundays I spend swimming with my kids and sometimes, cooking dinner (which my husband doesn't always appreciate, but that's another story). So what am I trying to say? Oh nothing, just wondering.

More pictures

More pictures of Joaquin's birthday ...

http://picasaweb.google.com/gabriel.yason/JoaquinSFirstBirthday

Downtime

Feels good to have some downtime. Joaquin's asleep and Gabriel finally has realized that there's some joy to playing by himself. This is one of the few times when he doesn't interfere with my typing on the keyboard. ** relief **

So. Since my last post, Joaquin had his first birthday. Thank god for party coordinators. Only work I did was call the caterer, call the coordinator and buy prizes. Not too bad. I think Joaquin enjoyed the attention.


A few weeks after his birthday, we bought Joaquin better sandals. I think he genuinely likes his new sandals because when he saw it, he asked (ok, signed) to put them on. He also stood with pride and took more confident strides with it. We all joke that he's like a small 10 year old now, the way he walks and climbs chairs and beds...

Today, we went swimming upstairs (our condo building has a swimming pool at the deck area). FREEZING! Gabriel was literally shaking from the cold, but wouldn't stop. To his credit, he's now more confident and jumps into the water without hanging on to my hand.

The coming week will be lots of work

Six months

When I started this blog, I said I was going to post at least once a month. Oh well. It's been six months since my last post. When you come home from work, writing a blog is the last thing you'd like to do if you have a 2 year old kid whose favorite word is mommy mommy mommy.

Anyway. We moved to our new home last October 3 (pictures later, when I get Arvin to take decent pictures). This was a week after typhoone Milenyo. Ang galing ng timing di ba? We had the place blessed last week, January 6. Very small affair. Just us, Manang, Chrissy, Arvin's parents, the maids, the kids, the priest (Fr. Paul from St. Francis Parish just blocks away from us), pansit from pansit lucban and dessert from Becky's.

This week, Joaquin's yaya is on vacation, so I'm on leave. Don't mind doing the housewife bit. Can get tiring though, when you have 2 kids crying because the bigger one won't share the toy so the small one cried. And what do you do? Take the toy away from the bigger one so now he's crying, and they're crying a chorus (CHORUS, no longer duet -- magnified when they do it together). Donah (Joaquin's yaya) is back on Tuesday. Looking forward to seeing her again.

Work is work. Arvin's in a new project and am in semi-hell by association. His late nights have a direct impact on my sleep as I have to deal with two kids (babies, reallly) by myself until he comes home. (I try not to bother the yayas since they took care of both kids the whole day). His cranky days obviously have a direct effect on me also. So I have offered to do help him out with something that will take one thing off his list of to-dos. I suppose that's what wives are for.