Posts from — May 2008

Last Wednesday, a hail storm struck in our area. It was good it happened after I picked my daughter from school. Otherwise, I couldn’t imagine how I manged driving with marble-sized hail falling on the car. This is not to mention the damage it may have brought. Thank you Lord!

We haven’t lived in a place where it snows. I’m not a fan of winter but it might be nice getting an experience of snow in our backyard. Well, we did get ice… but not exactly what I was thinking of.

Ahh! Winter is back here in the land down under. As I took out my kids’ winter clothes from the cabinets, I realized that some of them are now unusable. Some of these were bought new in last year’s winter and now they have been outgrown. So what are my options? Well, my daughters are 5 years apart in age so there will be a few years before my youngest can use the hand-me-downs from her elder sister. It will be a wait, but probably comforting that some clothes can still be used after some time (granting that they are still ok after a couple of years!)

The other obvious option is to buy new clothes. To save up a bit, it is a good idea to hit the shops when a ‘sale’ or ‘discount’ is being offered. An example may be to buy stuff during Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving). However, this requires you to be up very early in the morning to beat the queue at the store front. What may complicate it further is if you need tag along your kids and take them into the bargain searching shopping crowd. Again, there is another obvious option! That is, to get your Black Friday goods by checking out smart online thanksgiving ads. It features several good stores, one of which is on my favorites list: Target. Surely you (or your kids) won’t miss on Toys R’ Us. The Black Friday site gives further bonus by giving an email alert option whenever new ads are posted. So all you need to enjoy the savings is to sit back, relax, and click!

Here’s another set of funny moments with my 3 year old, CN.

Scene: CN was at the backyard playing. Then suddenly, an airplane passed by. Her father was out of town that time.

CN: (shouting) Mama…Mama, come look! I can see Papa. He is waving at me, look! Bye Papa, bye (waving to the plane). I can see you!

*****

Scene: Her first day in school. The school administrator asked her some questions…

School Admin: Hello! What is your name?

CN: CN

School Admin: How are you CN?

CN: Excited!

*****

Scene: CN was eating her alphabet biscuits. She pulled out one letter from the packet and then asked:

CN: What letter is this Mama?

Mama: That is the letter B…B as in butterfly…B as in banana.

CN: (Again, not agreeing with what I said) No. This is B as in NOSE. See, like this (while placing the letter B beside the holes of her nose)!

View other Tickle my Bones posts here.

I have put up this blog primarily to connect with other parents as we share thoughts, ideas, and experiences as parents. So when the idea of paid blogging came about, I had to weigh whether this will affect the focus of this blog. Needless to say, it took some time before I decided to do paid blogging on Reflexes.

Looking around for suitable options wasn’t easy. Again, I wanted to keep my blog focused even while doing paid blogs in parallel. Eventually I am glad that I found PayPerPost. With its wide range of opportunities, I’m sure that I will be able to select appropriate topics which will still keep Reflexes on the right track. That sure is a bonus! I can continue working on what I love to write about and still have opportunity to showcase blog ads.

I am thankful to PPP for giving opportunity to fairly new blogs, particularly those who are yet to earn their ranking. I believe this allows really good sites to show their true potential.

And so with a short wait after submitting my blog, I received the approval. Hoooray! I immediately logged on to check the available opportunities and was really happy as I believe that I have made the right choice.

This week’s photo theme in ‘Litratong Pinoy’ was a bit challenging. Why? It’s because the subject is something that can’t be photographed! I, together with my family, started to drive around trying to photograph the ‘wind’. Towards the end of the day, we thought that it’s probably time to take a break and a snack. While having a snack at McDonald’s, our dear subject eventually came to have its photo taken!

Ang tema ngayong linggo sa ‘Litratong Pinoy’ ay medyo nakakahamon. Bakit? Ito’y dahil ang paksa ay bagay na hindi maaaring litratuhan! Ako, kasama ang aking pamilia, ay nagpaikot-ikot upang subukang litratuhan ang ‘ihip ng hangin’. Sa pagtatapos ng araw, naisip namin na marahil ay oras na upang magpahinga at mag-merienda. Habang kami ay kumakain sa McDonald’s, ang ating mahal na paksa ay dumating upang magpalitrato!

I am a coffee lover. In fact, I do take an average of 2 cups daily. As I’m not really after the caffeine, I’m perfectly ok to go the ‘decaf’ option. Or probably that’s just an excuse to get more cups! My husband likes it too so we normally have coffee after dinner.

Getting Started
My daughter RD is starting to get curious on coffee. We make her a cup of hot chocolate drink whenever we make our coffee. And as the curiosity grows, she would start asking us to give her choc drink a ‘hint of coffee’. While we haven’t really allowed her to have a full cup, on a few occasions, she would work hard to convince us to let her take a sip.

So Mom, when did you start drinking coffee?
So when can kids start having coffee? I can’t remember exactly when I had my first cup as a kid. Maybe there is no such thing as ‘right age’ to have coffee. Wait until one becomes 18? Probably not. Most ‘now’ parents probably had theirs earlier.

Weigh your coffee!
Why do parents keep children away from coffee? It may be attributed to a list indicating ill-effects of coffee. On the contrary, just search around the web and you’re sure to find a long list of health benefits it has to offer. Some of these are probably unknown two decades back. Needless to say, the ‘image’ of coffee is slowly but surely starting to get better. Though we must be reminded that anything in excess will potentially be harmful. Same is true with coffee.

Mom, can I have my coffee?
Okay, some research do point out coffee in moderation have benefits. So should I give my kid a cup for breakfast? I think the parental reflexes will know! Surely we won’t give coffee to a 3 year old, or a 4 year old, and so on. I think the bottomline is that we keep kids away from coffee because we want them to focus on foods with more nutrients in their growing years. There will come a time when we’ll know that we, parents and children, can bond together with frequent talks over a cup of coffee.

I learned to love Chinese food because of siomai. I remember that I would even go to SM North Edsa just to buy siomai from Henlin.  My mother-in-law’s homemade siomai are also great. But since I’m not in the Philippines anymore and there are no Henlin outlets nor a mother-in-law to get the siomai from here in Oz, I had no choice but to start making my own. Here is a very simple but yummy way to make siomai. 

Ingredients:

½ kilo minced pork

1 tbsp spring onions (chopped)

½ tsp salt

1 egg

2 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp cornstarch

Siomai wrappers

Mix all ingredients together. Put a teaspoonfuls of meat mixture in siomai wrapper and wrap. Arrange siomai in steamer plate at least an inch apart, so they won’t stick together when cooked. Boil water first in steamer before placing the steamer plate. Steam for about 30 – 40 minutes. Serve with soy sauce and calamansi or lemon juice.  Add chili paste if you like it spicy (optional).

View my other recipes here

I have to admit that when I started this blog, I have underestimated the power of networking! In a matter of weeks, my blogroll has grown tremendously in length. The list is a mix of friends, family, and even new acquaintances with blogging parent(s) like me.

While most bloggers would generally enjoy having this long list, many would probably agree that there has to be a way to better manage and display this list on the webpage. I’m not really a techy so I went out to look for a good solution. There are indeed several plugins or widgets out there but the solution I was eventually after was keeping the entire list but managed in display space through a scrollbar. Again, I’m not a techy so while this method may not be the most efficient, it works for me.

Ingredients:

• Wordpress
• Daiko’s Text Widget
• Blogroll Links Plugin

1. Using Wordpress, maintain your Links/Blogroll as usual.

2. Install the Blogroll Links Plugin by Rajiv Pant. This will allow you to create a mirror of the Wordpress Blogroll as a page.

3. Create a Page (for example, call it “blogroll”). Inside this page, enter the following code:

<!--blogroll-links category-slug="blogroll" sort-by="link_name"-->
<!--/blogroll-links-->

4. Install Daiko’s Text Widget by Rune Fjellheim as this will allow you to write the php code to query the page and display it in your sidebar. Add the widget to your sidebar and enter the following code in the options:

<div style="border: 0px outset #000000; padding: 5px; overflow: auto; width: 178px; height: 200px; font-style: normal; text-align: left;">
	<!--p $the_query = new WP_Query('pagename=blogging friends');
	while ($the_quer-->have_posts()) : $the_query-&gt;the_post();
	$do_not_duplicate = $post-&gt;ID; ?&gt;
	<!--p the_content();-->
	<!--p endwhile;--></div>

That’s it! With the help of these tools, I am able let my blogroll “roll”. Now, who would have ever thought that writing code is now related to parenting =)

CN’s 2nd day in shool…

The making of the ‘Leaf Man’

CN at work…contributing to their group project.

I was tagged by Rachel

Tagging Christine, Borski & Nai, Wendy and JoyD