Way Back When

Way back when we were little children we used to be excited about going home from school or the weekends so we can play with our neighbors outside. We used to interact with people socially using physical means, we were more athletic, more active and we get dirty because we play outside.

Now when I look outside my window, when I go outside the house I wonder, Where are all the kids? What happened to us that we let our children just stay inside to just watch tv or play computers? We used to be more alive and sociable.

I know the blistering heat is not helping us much, we want to protect our kids from the sun, from diseases, from germs and some mothers even wants to protect their kids from sweat. But it makes me wonder what will happen to future generations if these keep up.

Let us not blame the technology for developing, for our kids wanting to just stay indoors and just play PSP or Xbox or the computer, it is not technology’s fault that it keeps developing, it is not the computers fault why kids are becoming more and more unhealthy. We as parents should encourage our kids to go outside and play. They will not learn the fun activities we used to love when we were kids if we don’t teach them. We cannot rely on other people to teach our children how to run or how to interact, we should encourage them. We should start by inviting our neighbors kids to play with us and our children and teach them the wonderful games of Patintero, ten twenty, Chinese Garter, agawan base, Cops and Robbers, luksong tinik, luksong baka, tagu-taguan, Monkey monkey anabel, pesi seven-up, mother mother may I cross the river, touch ball, kick ball, tumbang preso, langit lupa and all the other kid invented games that we used to play. Let us relive our childhood once in a while and teach our kids how to play the games we used to love, otherwise it will just remain in the past and kids in the next generation will just hear stories about them.

Let me remind you of the basics of some of the games we loved:

PATINTERO - it can be played by 4 or more kids, we mark the street with chalk, we trace rectangles on the road that has a distance of over 2 meters per child. 

Image Courtesy of (http://fil.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Patintero)

There will be team mates which can be a minimum of 2 children per team. Once the teams have been decided the “Mother” which is also the leader of each teams will then compete on who will be the first “Taya”. The Taya will be the team who will stand on the lines and try to touch the other teams player when they are trying to cross their lines to go from the other end back to their HOME.

Ten Twenty - A game more commonly played by girls, but ofcourse boys can join in the game too. It consists of two teams each having a minimum of two players. The Mother or the leader of each team will have to determine which team will be the taya and which team will play first. The Taya team will stand parallel and facing each other with a garter wrapped around both their feet where the Playing team will start on the lowest level which means where the garter is around the Taya’s ankle.

Chinese Garter - Another common girls jumping game where two teams compete by jumping over the garter - sort of opposite the limb-o-rock, this starts at the lowest level which is usually level with the Ankle of the Taya upto as high as the teams want the garter to be, once the players fail to jump over the garter then the Taya team will become the playing team and the cycle goes on.

Tagu-taguan - Is a very easy game to understand and people from around the world play this as well, in english it is called Hide and Seek.

Touch Ball - Is the Filipino rendition of Dodge ball, but in this case the two teams will not be throwing balls at each other, instead the Taya team will stand on both ends of the playing field and the playing team will be in the middle. The taya team will be holding one ball and they will try to hit the playing team one by one to eliminate each player. If the Playing team in the middle avoids the ball that is thrown at them three times, one of their Hit / injured players who was thrown out of the game earlier can come in to defend themselves, but once all players have been hit, its now the Taya teams turn to be the playing team.

Kick Ball - This is a lot similar to baseball but instead of hitting the ball with a bat, the player will kick the ball and run to the bases.

There are so many other fun activities that we can teach our children, so many of them can be played with parents as well. So I encourage all of us parents to pick a game this weekend and teach our children how to be lively and sporty by letting them get to know our childhood games.

Conversations

Just a few minutes ago I was talking to my daughter because she was constantly screaming at her yaya for no apparent reason. If this happened months ago, I would already be berserk with anger and would be screaming at Nike too, but something in me changed over the last month that made me realize I have been slipping into becoming a bad mother, so I changed my ways.

So today when Nike was being mean to her yaya, I went to her asked her to go inside our room, she was already expecting the worse and started crying, I closed the door sat down on the bed and asked her to sit down beside me. She bawled like there was no tomorrow, I wiped her tears and said calmly to her, Why are shouting at ate Nalen? Do you want Ate Nalen to leave? To this she replied, No, then why are you shouting at Ate Nalen, she tried explaining it to me by saying, “because butchi is going out the gate” (ofcourse her answer wasn’t in pure english - she’s only 3 and is raised in a bi-lingual environment) So I asked her, so if butchi was going out the gate why did you shout at ate Nalen? Do you want mommy to let her go home, do you want ate Nalen to leave us? Maybe Mommy should just let ate Nalen leave? then she cried again, she said No, I don’t want ate Nalen to leave. Then I explained to her, If you don’t want ate Nalen to leave then you should be good to ate Nalen, because if you don’t then she will leave us. Our conversation went longer because being a 3 year old kid, Nike had the tendency to repeat her questions over and over, so I answered her questions patiently and explained the situation to her over and over.

After our conversation, I left the room to grab a glass of water and I heard Nike leave the room and knock on her yaya’s door and she said “Ate Nalen, Sorry, Huwag ka aalis ha?” (translation: Ate Nalen, Sorry, don’t leave me ok?). I am so proud of my daughter for realizing the mistakes she made and so touched that she took the initiative to say sorry without me asking her to do so.

I also learned that by being calm, my daughter understands more of the consequences of her actions and tends to follow the emotions that I have as well. I guess Nike only learned to shout because I used to shout, and now that I have changed, I guess Nike will also change for the better.

Momentary Relapse

I have promised myself that I will become a better mother. And I have been doing a great job at it the past 2 weeks. I felt so proud of myself. But tonight I had a momentary relapse. I got so mad at my daughter tonight when she started crying while sleeping for no reason, at first I kept asking and asking her why, but she wouldn’t say a word, she didn’t ask for milk nor did she say she wanted to pee, she just cried and cried and I snapped, I got so mad I screamed at her, then I felt she wanted to pee and brought her to the restroom, when I was pulling her pyjamas down she peed on herself and I got more upset and screamed at her again. I feel so ashamed of myself because the last two weeks I was able to hold it together. There were no anger and more understanding, but tonight I just had to ruin it. I feel so bad but I know there will be moments that I wouldn’t be able to control myself, I am not perfect, but when I looked at her again after she fell asleep I felt so bad. I took her in my arms cradled her like a little baby and told her I am sorry, in my surprise she said “its ok mommy” then I told her I loved her and she said “I love you.” A tear fell from my eyes realizing how forgiving and loving my daughter is, I knew she didn’t deserve the outburst that I had, and I will make up for it. I just need to make sure things like that doesn’t happen again. I love my daughter and I know I mean the world to her, and I will not disappoint her. I have been making progress and I will not stop, I will not let this slip up stop me from pursuing my goal of becoming a better mom. Tomorrow is a new day to make it up to my daughter.

Image from: Behindmyblueeyes

A New Adventure

Yesterday My Sister (Tiggy), her son (Kian), My Daughter (Nike) and I went to Eastwood to celebrate the weekend. This is something both my sister and I thought would be something necessary to do for our children, so that they have something to look forward to every week. Last weekend we all went to Robinsons Galleria to Celebrate Kians 3rd Birthday. We ate at Burgoo and enjoyed a whole afternoon in Tom’s World where the children had so much fun riding the Ferris Wheel and Nike had a go at the crazy bus. It was all new for all of us, we usually just go to fun ranch - active fun and let the kids play with slides and balls. But we decided we wanted something different to try every week. And we did.

Yesterday all 4 of us went to Eastwood to celebrate yet another weekend. My sister and I decided we will enroll them to Gymboree Play and Music. We both had 5 free 1 hour play stubs along with our enrollment and yesterday my sister and I used 1 each to let our children enjoy the play gym. It was a smaller place compared to Active fun, smaller slides and no pool balls, I thought Nike might get bored with the place, but lo and behold she loved it even more than she loved active fun, which is saying a lot, because she loved active fun to bits!

They had mattresses everywhere where babies from as young as 6 months can play, though they have an age limit, only children aged 5 years and below can play. I like the set-up this way no bigger kids who plays more rowdily and dangerously can harm the babies who are just learning to walk and the little kids who can barely stand up straight.

They had balls that children can play with, and these soft contraptions where I can play hide and seek with my daughter. There are a few small slides that little children will not get scared of riding, they also have 1 rocking horse, a wooden monkey bar and a wooden 2 way swing that up to 4 children can ride. They have inflatable Donut shaped things that children can hide in, or parents and guardians can lie on.

The ambiance is really great, its colorful and well lighted, well ventilated, and its light to the eyes. It really was a very charming place, and my daughter and my nephew loved it there. I even had a short conversation with my daughter on the ride home from Eastwood:

Me: Nike did you have fun?

Nike: Yes!

Me: Did you love Gymboree?

Nike: Yes!

Me: What do you love more, Gymboree or FunRanch? (I purposely ended the question with Fun Ranch because I did not want Nike’s answer to be influenced by what I said last - kids tend to just repeat the last thing they hear.)

Nike: ummm… GYMBOREE!!!!

And from that short conversation, I realized that I did make the right decision of having her enrolled in Gymboree for a month long class in July. So we will see more of Eastwoods - Gymboree really really soon.

Swimming Saturday & Microfilters

I woke up this morning at the sound of My daughter (Nike) and My Nephew (Kian) fighting over some toy. it was 9 am. So the first thing I did the moment I woke up was scold my daughter, a typical activity for me when we are staying here in Pasig.

So when I woke up I remembered two things: 1 My dream about my husband, it was a real bad dream because the dream was all about him telling me that he’s got sexual affairs in Singapore and it was just devastating. Thank goodness that was just a dream. the second thing is I suddenly remembered my internet connection in Las Pinas, I remember it will always get disconnected everytime my in laws use the extension phone, now I figured out why.

Did you now that if you are using a DSL ISP Like PLDT or GLOBE, you have to have a Microfilter for all the extension lines in your home, so that your Internet will not get cut everytime the phone rings and everytime someone uses the phone. I learned about this just now because I had the ISP changed here in Pasig, and the service man gave us this microfilters that will help prevent the disturbance from happening in our DSL Line and it works like a charm.Now my problem is I didn’t get an extra one to take home in Las Pinas - so I would look for one in Ace hardware or buy one from PLDT at a cost of PhP300 each.

so now that story’s out of the way, Nike, Kian, My sister and I inflated the “Biggie” pool and took a dip this morning. The kids had so much fun but since the water was so cold they only swam for an hour and a half. Just Posting some of the kids pictures to share (Swimming Saturday Photos). 

Besides my dream and the Swimming session this morning, my day has been nothing but ordinary, and its been more than 24 hours since my husband and I last chatted, so I already miss him.