Reclaim Your Time: The Filipina Mom’s Guide to Dependable Childcare Solutions

November 14, 2023Leave a comment

As a Filipina mom, finding reliable childcare solutions is essential to reclaiming your time and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Juggling the demands of motherhood and personal responsibilities can feel overwhelming, but with the right approach, you can find dependable childcare options that cater to your specific needs.

In this guide, we will explore the importance of reliable childcare, identify your childcare needs, explore different childcare options, evaluate potential childcare providers, and make a smooth transition to a childcare solution that best suits your family.

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Teaching My 7-Year-Old Financial Literacy: Exploring ‘The First Ten Rules of Wealth’ by Richard Templar

October 23, 2023October 24, 2023Leave a comment

As a parent, I’ve always believed that education extends far beyond the walls of a traditional classroom. This belief has been a driving force behind our decision to homeschool our 7-year-old son, giving him the freedom to learn in ways that suit his interests and needs. One area that Mahal and I are particularly passionate about introducing to his curriculum is financial literacy. In today’s ever-changing world, the importance of understanding money, saving, and investing cannot be overstated. I grew up with a poverty mindset… that feeling that we’re always lacking… that belief that I’m not worthy of the good kind of life… and it took years of reading self-help books, and wealth-related books, and listening to Oprah and Tony Robbins before I was able to fairly say I that I’ve somehow overcome my poverty mindset and started my journey towards abundance. I want Tuz to have the right kind of thinking when it comes to money and wealth so that he will be able to live a more abundant, rich, and fulfilling life.

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How to Encourage Your Fussy Kids to Eat When Travelling the World

October 18, 2023October 21, 2023Leave a comment

Now that the big ticket items on our wish list had been ticked off (our dream beach wedding, making sure our businesses are now up and running smoothly — Mahal takes care of our little resort Oslob New Village and restaurant Lami-an while I take care of digital marketing for my clients via my new biz VirtuPro, — and overall management of our life here in our own version of paradise), we are now about to start our travel adventure outside of the country and one of the things I think about is how fussy our son is when it comes to eating. When traveling locally, Tuz already has a list of food he is willing to eat. But how about when we visit other cultures and places where the food is totally different from what he’s used to? Are you in the same situation? If you want to travel with your kids but feel as though it’s always an uphill battle to get them to eat, then you’re not alone. So many people are in the same position as you (as us), but there are things we can do to try and make things easier on ourselves. If you want to find out more then simply take a look below.

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Happy Father’s Day to All Amazing Dads Out There!

June 17, 2023Leave a comment

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY TO ALL DADS!

…especially to my Mahal, Bebeko, Bebe, Tuz’s Dada… we wish you the happiest Father’s Day! You are the greatest support to our little family and Tuz is truly blessed for having the coolest, kindest, funniest, loving, and most doting father! You are our safe place, our haven, the source of our strength. Thank you for being our protector. I am so blissful and joyous that I got married to you, God’s miracle, and together, made a fantastic little family. We love you so, so much Dada… Now and forever…

Have a fantastic Father’s Day Weekend, everyone! This is just a short post since we’re off to another adventure! Ciao!

Til my next post!

#Fathersday2023

Why Do We Need To Adopt Our Own Biological Child and How? An Ongoing Story of a Not-So-Common Adoption Case in the Philippines

February 6, 2023February 7, 2023Leave a comment

Why do we need to adopt our own biological child?

That was actually our question when it was first brought to our attention that fateful day in February 2016 when I first met up with my then annulment lawyer to file for the nullity of my first marriage. He’s a bright, hardworking, albeit 90-year old family lawyer at that time who mentioned it in passing as he was selling us his services because at that time, if I get annulled, and if we want to legitimize Tuz’s succession, we need to undergo the process of our own child’s adoption. So right then and there, adoption has already been on our mind.

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Of Weddings and Breakups [a Raw Conversation with a 6 Year Old]

December 11, 2022February 2, 20243 Comments

On October 30, 2021, about 14 months ago, even before Mahal and I got formally engaged, we faced a lot of trials in our relationship. We actually fought and broke up a few times and Tuz was there to witness it all.

We didn’t mean for our young son to see our fights at that time because we always did our best to be careful. But he is such a perceptive and sensitive kid that even if Mahal and I are not shouting, Tuz can recognize the differences in our verbal tones and non-verbal expressions.

It’s a good thing that the stormy season in our relationship has passed and we are now in a much, much better place. Because of those fights, Mahal and I learned to communicate better, love each other better, and Tuz witnessed all of that too. Perhaps that is why he is such a happy boy who acts and thinks more maturely for his age.

Anyway, this video that I am sharing with you here is my raw conversation with Tuz at that time. Mahal and I just patched things up and I wanted to document how it affected our 6 year old boy. (Actually, he was just 5 but would be turning 6 in 17 days at that time, so I just rounded it off, hihi!)

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Typhoon Rai (Odette): Nightmare Before Christmas

December 30, 2021January 9, 20222 Comments

Just when you had everything planned out for the remainder of the year — your tasks, projects, finances, celebrations… the biggest typhoon of your life hit you — metaphorically and literally.

We were minding our usual business… I was working and finishing my deadlines for the week and getting ready for client meetings. Mahal was busy with the resort. Everyone was working. Though we were getting news reports about an impending typhoon, upon checking, the eye of Typhoon Rai or locally known as Typhoon Odette won’t be hitting us but instead, it will head straight to Cebu City which is 3-4 hours away from where we are. We had plans of doing our Christmas shopping there that weekend so we figured that we just had to reschedule. Plus, we’ve already experienced so many kinds of weather conditions here that we became complacent. We felt confident that it’s just another one of those storms. There could possibly be a brownout (electricity getting cut off) that will last for an hour or two, or at the most overnight, but that was it. We didn’t do any kind of preparation at all — we didn’t save water; we didn’t charge our phones and electrical devices; we didn’t check if we still have enough gas; we didn’t buy supplies… nothing. It was as if it was just another day in our beach kind of life.

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3 Simple Ways to Reduce Stress During These Hard Times

September 30, 2021September 30, 20212 Comments

How are you? We are on the 18th month of this pandemic and so many things have already happened… deaths left and right… Covid getting closer and closer to home (if it hasn’t hit yours already… it surely did mine. 5 of our family members caught Covid and thankfully survived it despite not getting vaccinated)… businesses shutting down… people suffering…. freedom getting suppressed in many places around the world…. and all this is starting to get on my nerves. Do you feel the same? Am I alone in feeling this way? If you’re on the same boat as I am, don’t fret. There are ways we can do to try to ride these waves. And we must. I just read an article on Bloomberg that this pandemic can last for a really long time. We can’t just give up, can we?

So what can we do to help reduce our stress during these hard times? Let me share with you some ways we try to do at home to help cope with this depressing worldwide situation:

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How We Transferred to Oslob, Cebu During the Pandemic

March 13, 2021March 13, 20215 Comments

Hello Summer! It’s been a busy 2.5 months as we started our new beach life here in Oslob, Cebu and I promise, I will be catching up on my blog posts and vlogs until I get more current with what’s happening with us. I may still insert some throwback travel posts from the past since I’ve collected a ton all these years. But for now, here is a vlog on how our transfer from Cagayan de Oro (where we lived, half the time, the other half was in Claveria) from Sept. 1, 2017 to Jan. 7, 2021) to Oslob, Cebu happened, how we got quarantined for 14 days when we got here, and what we did while in quarantine (Jan. 9-22, 2021).

For those who are considering transferring to their respective provinces in this time of the pandemic, you can check out this related blog post:

BOAT TRAVEL REQUIREMENTS DURING A PANDEMIC IN THE PHILIPPINES (FROM CAGAYAN DE ORO TO CEBU

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7 Months Into the Pandemic – a Life Update

October 23, 2020October 23, 20201 Comment

Hey! How’s everyone doing? How’s the pandemic treating you? I’m writing this down at 3:41 on a Saturday morning (although in my work hours, it’s 2:41 PM central time on a Friday) after 3 quick months of grueling schedule in my home/work life! Man, those 3 months just really flew me by! I’ve been working, and studying, and taking care of our household, helping Mahal with the biz, and of course, being a mother to an almost 5-year-old boy who still has a very irregular body clock just like his mom! LOL! I’ll probably be babbling a bit at first about how tired I’ve been, how I’ve just gone through a week of depression towards the end of this 3-month-work-study-life marathon; how I thought I was acing this pandemic because for the most part, I’ve been grateful for the boatload of work and opportunities coming in; that I really don’t have the right to be sad because I am still VERY blessed. We are still alive, healthy, productive, and living good lives considering the world situation we are in. And after those 3 months of being on blogging hiatus, I feel like I’ve just come up for air… I’m starting to feel alive again; I’m starting to make new plans for the future… Anyway, let me breathe a little here and give you an overview as to what’s been happening to me the past 3 months that I haven’t had the time to blog here. So here are my updates…

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Work-At-Home Mom to a Hyperactive 4 Year Old Son [Challenges of a Day Old Single Mom!]

June 14, 2020June 14, 2020Leave a comment

I took this video the day after I was almost done editing the Real Talk video I did last time. And all I can say is, I salute all single parents out there, especially those who raise their kids with no help whatsoever from helpers and relatives. It is quite rare that I get to be alone with Tuz since Mahal and I are together for the most part of our relationship. But on those days that he is not with us, I can really feel the stress that comes from being a single mom even if we only have one kid!

Tuz is 4 years old now and is so hyperactive (as you will see on the video later) and this is just 1/10 of how he truly is when there’s no camera around taking a peek at our home life.

It started out as a happy video with Tuz being his normal makulit self, then I got irritated, then angry, Tuz cried a bit, then we were friends again with him showing his genius side (naks!)… Then it starts all over again… 24/7! Lol!

Without further ado, here’s what happened…