Bisdak Babbles

Just had another extraordinary conversation with Shaynna (well, every phone conversation with my little angel is special for me )…

Me: Baby, where do you want to celebrate your birthday? (She’ll be 4 next month, and I meant to ask her whether she likes to have it at home or at the school.)

Shaynna: I want to spend it there, in Japan!

She’s been reminding me about this in the past few weeks. I wish to be with her on her birthday but I’m still trying to get over our family’s financial crisis, so I tried to console her with what I thought was a good excuse…

Me: You can’t celebrate it here because they don’t sell lechon here…

Shaynna: Then, we shall ask dad to send the lechon there!

Me: [speechless] ….

I came across this site of Bugaboo stroller. This made me remember those days when I had to buy baby stuffs for Shaynna. I bought her a stroller, too. But it wasn’t put into much use before Shaynna turned two. She didn’t like sitting in the stroller. She preferred to be carried. A cousin gave birth to a baby boy and she borrowed the stroller. Each time Shaynna sees my cousin using that stroller, she wants to sit in it, too! At three, as expected, she got over it. Now, that stroller is being used by my niece. Here’s a photo of Shaynna during her “stroller” days. Too bad I don’t have a photo of her in that stroller.

Didn’t have time to browse through my photos, so I present you this one:  a photo of Shaynna and her great-grandmother. She’s my grandmother, my mother’s mother, and I fondly call her “Lola* Iyang“. She helped raising me up, and now, she’s also helping raising my daughter, Shaynna.  At 71 years old and wrinkled, I think she’s still beautiful and she’s the sweetest and the best grandmother in the world!

Shaynna loves to pose for pictures as much as she loves to play with the camera.  She took this photo with a finger covering the flash.  The only good thing about it is that it made my arms look a little bit thinner.

Took me some time to post about this, but Shaynna started preschool last June 10. It was sad, since my father could no longer be with us to see her off on the first day, but it was an eventful first week.

Day One:
Before leaving the house, Shaynna appeared confident to face a new environment. But she didn’t let go of me that I had to stay with her inside the classroom through the whole session! I managed to sneak out 30 minutes before the class ended but she cried so hysterically that the teacher had no choice but to let her leave the classroom earlier.

Day Two:
Shaynna was afraid I’d leave her again, so she chose my mother to accompany her to the classroom. She agreed to let my mother stay outside, but she started crying when the door was closed. The teacher just left the window open so that she could see my mother and stop her from crying.

Day Three:
Shaynna’s father and I accompanied her to the classroom but she didn’t let go easily. So we had to bribe her with something - let her take my MP3 player inside! Another parent bribed her son with her cellphone!

Day Four:
Thankfully, we didn’t have to convince her. Shaynna willingly took her teacher’s hand and went inside the classroom!

Here’s a photo of Shaynna at school. Her classmates were running all over the place but she and a classmate just watched. When asked, she said she was afraid of stumbling down.

Some people say she’s still too young (3 years old) to go to school, but I think I’ve made the right decision.  Each time I talk to her on the phone, I can tell she now enjoys going to school.

I finally went home to the Philippines a few weeks ago and got to spend some time with my now 3-year old daughter. I did my best to spend quality times with her - making a play house from paper, making paper dolls, acting as her make-up and fashion model, playing hide and seek, etc. Now that I’m back here in Japan, I realize there’s one thing I’ve wanted to do with her but didn’t have the opportunity and time to do so. And that’s playing with swing sets. There’s no playground in the neighborhood and I don’t trust myself to make her a swing set. I only managed to make a swing for her doll! I hope she’s not scared of swing sets as she was with the merry-go-round.

Getting her a swing set, a slide set and a playhouse would be very nice. But I’m sure her cousin, Choichoi, would definitely go wild with those toys around.