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.

Changes

Goodness gracious. Almost been a month since my last post.
Tons of stuff have happened since then. Let's see :

1. We have acquired a condominium unit in Ortigas ... targeting to move in by August (or thereabouts, depending on how soon we can pick a contractor and how soon the poor fellow will be able to deliver).

2. Gabriel's yaya retired -- 2 years na so itchy feet. Asked to go home to rest, so there. We have a new yaya now. So far OK, but Gabriel ran a fever starting yesterday.

3. Started on PMP review classes -- can you say hell. On top of my day job, I'm required to take these project management review classes and take a PMI certification exam soon after. Ugh.

4. Other resignees at work -- quite a few people that I actually care about at work left the past few weeks. It really saddens me that such a diaspora is happening. Sometimes I catch myself thinking ... why doesn't this person leave instead of that other person? ;)

Birthday gift

Yesterday was my birthday - guess what the two boys gave as a gift. High grade fever! Both Gabriel and Joaquin had 40C fevers yesterday. We're bringing them to the doctor today.

Kiss!

Gabriel's really fascinated with Joaquin and wants to kiss him all the time. We let him, but Joaquin ends up eating his nose. to illustrate:

Family Planning

Arvin and I keep joking that we're the poster family for not having a lot of children. The pictures below were taken on one of the nights when we're trying to get Gabriel to sleep AND keep from squishing Joaquin. Camera wasn't enough of a diversion.

Gabriel's first birthday

I obviously haven't spent much time on our home computer. Almost a year late, here are pictures of Gabriel's birthday. i post ko lang ang mga pictures nga may mga tawo. I'm sure those are the only pics you'll be interested in. Here goes.

Morning of Gabriel's birthday -- as if reading the newspaper. See the sheepish smile. He enjoys playing with the newspaper a lot.

















pictures with the Yuchingtats



Putting straws in partner's hair










Pictures of Alex Lim family




with Angeli and Redg

Europe

Long awaited Europe pictures ... one year late! :) This post is especially for Chrissy and Rhoda who haven't seen their pics yet.

Eating along the river. (Seine ba?)



Eto naman sa pont alexander


And another going to the army museum ...



That's it for now. I have to search for the other pictures yet.

Swimming Lessons

Gabriel started his swimming lessons last Tuesday ... alas, it's also exercise for the Mommy!

The picture below was taken using my not so good camera phone. We should have better pictures this Saturday when Daddy's there with us.

Joaquin's Baptism (03/04)

Pictures from Joaquin's baptism.

Joaquin slept most of the time. He was up to feed before the baptism and slept all through lunch.

Gabriel was thrilled with being in the mall. He enjoyed playing around the fountains in Market! Market! He also "rode" in the escalators all the way through the fourth floor and was shouting yehey all the time. Yaya Azon also gave him tokens to play basketball in the play area. Needless to say, he was exhausted by 2 pm :

My Birthday

Today is the first day of my life in the world of blogs.

How yesterday, huh? I used to be one of those people who was one of the first to test out tech stuff, but I lost my appetite for things technical after I gave birth. Being with a baby / toddler is so much more fun than sitting in front of an inanimate object.

On the other hand, there's some merit to spending some time alone and rediscovering my love for writing. And so it goes. We'll see how this thing goes ...