Importance Of Play To The Holistic Health Of Children.

When we hear the word "Play", the word "Fun" follows but there is more than that. It is through play that much of children’s early learning is achieved.

I must admit, I let my kids play with smartphones. But aside from games I mostly install educational applications on my phone, in fact, that's how my eldest learned his Alphabet.

Their toys aren't fancy in fact some of them aren't really toys like empty ice cream container, Jollibee bucket, papers and a lot more. We make the most out of what we have. My eldest who is 5 years old would build a city using this pieces of materials. They also have building blocks, toy cars, story books and crayons.

Happy 4th Birthday Kuya Tantan!

It's been 4 years now that my life became more meaningful. My life was changed big time since I held you in my arms and for that I will be forever thankful having you as my first born, Kuya Tantan. And now that you've turned 4, all I wish is for you to be happy. You will always be Mommy's little Man,Belated Happy Birthday Kuya Tantan!

We planned on celebrating both kids birthday together, however we thought that Kuya T has his own celebration of his 1st birthday so we might as well give baby A her 1st birthday party. Last SUnday, September 15 was Kuya T's 4th birthday. It was raining so we weren't able to go out so instead we just celebrated it at home with my in laws.
It was just a simple celebration and we decided to have it on merienda time. My in laws took care of the Cake and the Ice cream then I cooked my specialty, Creamy Tuna Pasta.

Half Box of  Ice Box Cake 325.00 

Half Box of Potato Almond Crunch Cake 300.00

My mom in law bought these cakes are from Becky's Kitchen. They look very simple but tastes like heaven. So far these are the only flavor that I have tasted and loved it, I would definitely try out other flavors.

Double Dutch and Rocky Road Overload Ice Cream & Waffle Cones from my sis in law

My Creamy Tuna Pasta! (will make a Recipe post for this)

 Table Set Up (extra pa yung Barbie Cake ni Athena )

 While we were singing him Happy Birthday

 He's really excited to blow the candle

 Playing with the cake

 Baby A 

 Close up? hehe

 Nice smile Kuya Tantan!

 Sige sa Mantsa!

 Takaw :p

Here's my Babies drinking their Milks before the day ends

We forgot to give him our Present during his birthday, we only remembered it the next day.

 Packed in a glittered green gift bag

Remote Controlled Race Car from Toy Kingdom
He loves Toy Cars!

A simple celebration it is but very special, I'm sure Kuya Tantan loved it. I hope that this memories would make him smile in time when he sees it. 

Belated Happy Birthday again Kuya Tantan, WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!!

After the celebration I noticed Kuya T was feverish, he's hot to the touch and was a bit irritable. That is why I wasn't able to blog about his birthday right away. But he is okay now, his fever only lasted for 2 days. Maybe it's because of the changing weather, in fact I am also not feeling well right now but I already have lots of pending posts so I'm trying to stay up as long as I can. Okay so that's it for now. Till next post!

Ciao!

Athena's Barbie Themed 1st Birthday Party at Jollibee

It only seems like yesterday when I carried another life in my womb and gave life to a healthy baby 9 months after. It was exactly a year ago September 8, when I gave birth to our first born baby girl, same birthday as Mama Mary that's why we named her Athena Mary. And I can't believe how time flies so fast, our baby girl has turned 1 already!

baby A wearing a princess barbie outfit. 

It's a very special occasion so we want this to be a memorable one, We planned on celebrating her 1st birthday with relatives and friends and with Jollibee :)

We planned about this party 2 months ahead of time.We decided to held the party in Manila although we now live in Las Pinas because our visitors are all from Manila. It was my in laws who looked for the venue, since they work in Manila, during their free time or after work they would drive around and scout for availble Jollibee branches. As early as July almost all Jollibee branches are already reserved for September parties. Good thing there's still one place that is available for September 8, 2013, it was Jollibee at Harrison Plaza. After informing us about this, we agreed to have it reserved already.

I am very thankful that my in laws are helping us out, because I really can't go out as I am taking care of 2 kids and is currently pregnant. But hey did you know that reserving a Jollibee Party can be done online? Yes, you can check it here Jollibee Online Party Reservation.

There are only 3 steps.
STEP 1: FIND a STORE

Just enter the required field.

STEP 2: PLAN YOUR PARTY

      a. Choose Your Party Theme                                      b. Party Favors 

For the Party Theme, originally my mother in law chose the Hello Kitty theme but we changed it to barbie but subconsciously I was thinking about Princess theme, which they don't have (lol). Then we were informed that we couldn't change it back to Hello Kitty anymore, so we just stick to Barbie. 

There is a Party Fee of Php1,250.00 and that includes:

• 1 Jollibee Mascot Appearance 
• 20 Game Prizes
• 1 Message Board
• 30 Balloons 
• 10 Boxes of Crayons

We had Party Favors Add-on, a set of Barbie Theme favors with an additional payment of Php 210.00 and it consists of the following: (We reserved for 30 pax) 

• 30 pcs Party Hats with Name Tag
• 30 pcs. Invitation Cards
• 30 pcs. Tray Line

Thy also offer Loot Bags, which consists of Barbie themed items worth Php60. But we didn't avail of it, because we thought of having our own souvenir.

c. Choose Your Food Packages

You could have food add on's on the existing Food Packages.
Prices are VAT inclusive

You have an option to create your Meal, which is what we did and here's what we chose:

• 30-pcs REgular Coke for a total of Php900.00
• 30-pcs of Chocolate Sundae for a Total of Php750.00
• 30-pcs Regular Yum for a Total of Php840.00 
• 30-pcs Chicken Joy with Spaghetti for a Total of Php2,910.00

a total of Php5,400

 All of our guests are J's relatives since mine are all in the province. We invited some of our colleagues from our previous work but non of them made it, too bad they were all Athena's Godparents. Also I'm thankful that my friends Ruby and Karen made it to the party, they are the only guest from my side. Although our colleagues didn't make it we exceeded the 30 head count, our guests including us are 46 in total. So 

additional 16-pcs of the food package. 

d.  Theme Cakes by Red Ribbon

For the Barbie Theme Cake you can choose from Chocolate or Mocha 

Medium size is 900.00

STEP 3: PAY ONLINE

You can pay for the full amount or make a Php3,000 deposit and just pay for the balance right after the party. 

Okay so for the cake, I find their cake so small so we didn't avail of it and checked somewhere else instead. But the cake couldn't be served to the guest, it's only for display. 

Fondant Barbie Cake which we ordered from Aling Noni's, 

we also ordered our wedding cake from her.

Mini cupcakes with Personalized Toppers from Delishaes Cakes.

There is a story behind these cupcakes, I won this from their Facebook promo contest last July and decided to add this to baby A's birthday...lucky eh? You can check my post here. These cupcakes are supposed to serve as giveaways/souvenirs but then we thought that it should be something for keeps that's why we didn't have it individually boxed. But since we were all busy we weren't able to prepare any giveaways anymore :(

Jollibee also provided a tarpaulin but we can't have it so we just made our own.

Cutie Athena, photo taken when she was just 10 months old.

Special Delivery + Athena's Visit To Her Pedia + Pig Out Day

Yes! I am able to blog again, 2 days in a row. Lucky me, J's off to work so the computer's mine! (lol)
By the way right I told you that my baby Athena got better during the dawn of Monday? Well it was only for a few hours so Monday morning we went to Perpetual Help Medical Center to visit her Pedia.

There were no laboratory exam ordered, just a physical examination since Athena doesn't show any signs and symptoms aside from fever so it could be just her body's response after she has been exposed to the pool water and in an open area. So I just have to continue her Paracetamol, Sponge bath and monitor her and if the fever doesn't subside after 2-3 days bring her back in. It was past 11am when we finished, it was already hot so we went straight to Mcdonald's it was just beside the hospital. We ordered fries and coke float for snack, then went home after. Since we just had our snack we were all full so we decided not to cook lunch anymore. We're used to eating rice every meal but since we didn't that day we ended up eating and eating, as in kung anu-ano na lang. We ate bread, there were some left over boiled bananas from breakfast and pancit canton (te he). So I just decided to cook something good for dinner, our favorite Sinigang na Hipon, yum!

Yum! I'll be making a Recipe Post for this :)

This is J's all time favorite kaya ayun nagbaon pa sya sa work hehe (he works night shift). Later that night when I left the computer on, siguro kinalikot ni Kuya Tantan na pasaway ayun na-virus po ang PC! A message is appearing asking for a payment and a code then automatically restarts tapos ganun ulit. Kaya Monday night I wasn't able to go online na except on my mobile.

I woke up early this morning for my baby's medicine, yes she's still sick :(

Tempra Paracetamol, Thermometer, Fever Patch and Towelette for Sponge bath 

I checked on the computer hoping it's ok na pero ganun pa rin. So I just ate breakfast with the kids.

Here's what I ate; Itlog na Maalat with rice and Hot choco

Right after breakfast, there came a knock on our door. Si Kuya Guard with a Special delivery for me, yey! Since I recently won in a few contests I was guessing what could this be, so I immediately opened it up. Hehe who am I to kid around, syempre I took a photo of it muna :)

The packaging. Can you guess what it is?

Tada! Godiva Products.

I won this from 

Green Home Elements one of the many bloggers who hosted a Pasko sa Agosto Giveaway. What I like about these products is that they are all Whitening and it indicated there it's best for discolorations caused by pregnancy. Nice right?

Then J arrived home ate breakfast then immediately fixed the computer, good thing he's an IT :) but it was only fixed later that day na because he slept pa.
So finally, I'm able to go online to check updates and blog. Though I can't stay online that long coz I need to attend to my baby girl coz she's still sick. Tomorrow we'll be taking her back to her pedia. I'm really hoping and praying she gets all better in no time, it's her 1st birthday na this coming Sunday, Sept. 08. The venue has been reserved na, everything's almost set oh except her dress pa pala. Hay basta all I want right now is for her to get well.
Alright enough said, i'll be hitting the sack now. Till next post. Good night!

How We Spent Our First of September

It's September! Start of the Christmas countdown and it's the birth month of my 2 baby loves, oh how time flies so fast. For the past days I've been meaning to blog, I had a lot of ideas to blog about but unfortunately a lot of things had happened which hinders me to do so. During the weekends, J's rest day so he gets to use the computer the most. I refuse to use the laptop because it's just to slow, as in sasakit lang ulo ko! So it left me with a lot of pending posts.

Well anyway to start off, I just wanna make kwento about my transition from August to September. 

I ended August with a drama. The night of August 31st right before it struck 12 midnight I was announced as 1 of the 5 winners of Avon Brassiere, so I felt really great. But just right after that, J and I had a petty fight, but throw in a pregnancy and a little bit of raging hormones even the smallest of things could be a big deal. And guess what I did, I locked the room and took the key with me. Since my in laws were sleeping in the other room J slept on the living room (te he). 

But the next morning which is the 1st of September, seems like nothing happened we were again okay, I told ya it's the hormones lol. We should have gone to the church but I actually woke up a bit late so just decided to go to the market.Then after we had lunch since it wasn't that hot we decided to go swimming, yes all of us.

Emo (hihi)

I don't know why, but Kuya Tantan is so scared, grabe maka-sigaw pag dinala sa tubig

:)

Enjoying the water with Daddy

She's lovin' it!

It was fun! Afterwards we then headed to church but left baby A with my in laws since she fell asleep. We went to Las Pinas Bamboo Organ Church, it's the closest church to where we live and the only church I know so far. I felt great that we were able to complete the mass, it's been a while since we were able to then we went home right away as soon as the mass ended.

Here's what I wore to church. A maxi dress given by my in law and yellow flats by Chelsea which I bought from SM Department Store

And the boys..

We're all in stripes and shade of blue! 

It was a great day until we found out when we arrived home that my baby Athena is sick, she has fever. I felt guilty that I even took her swimming, maybe she wasn't already feeling better and the swim made it worst.

My sick but pretty baby Athena.

So I became her nurse all night. Although with fever she's still so makulit and very active, she still has the appetite to feed and most of all I didn't have a hard time giving her medicine. She's such a brave baby girl that's why her fever subsided right away during the dawn.