Tender Musings

I love Sundays. It's that one day of the week that I really look forward to. I especially love going to Church, and I do my best to get everything ready on Saturday night so that we're all set to go in the morning. Toys and books ✓ Paper and pens ✓ Wipes and extra diaper ✓ Water and snacks ✓ If you'd see the amount of stuff we bring to Church every week, you'd probably think we're going away for the weekend. That's just how our life is right now. We have an active two-year-old and we need to come prepared. There are weeks when we manage to keep Rei on our pew throughout sacrament meeting. She plays with her toys, looks through the pictures in her book, colors, and sometimes sneaks in a bite of her favorite snack. If we're lucky, we get to listen to the speakers as she busily builds a "house" using the extra hymnbooks lying around. Those are our moments of victory. And then there are other weeks when our daughter puts all of our efforts to

Gian and I bought our honeymoon tickets before we got engaged. It's true. It seems like a very presumptuous decision, but I guess you can say that we were that sure that we were getting married. Also, there was an ongoing seat sale and I just couldn't miss out on the opportunity. Okay, it was me. It was my idea to get the tickets early. It was a really good deal though. We got our Palawan round trip tickets for Php 1,630 for the two of us. Yes, it was that cheap, but that's not the point. The decision to buy the tickets was never about the seat sale. It was about my sheer confidence that I will marry Gian. Even if he hasn't popped the question yet. Why was I so confident to marry him? Because I've prayed about it, and I asked the right questions. My first impression of Gian was greatly influenced by our capacity to talk about everything. We discussed politics, anime, books, food, the Gospel, and even our deepest insecurities. We never hesitated to ask e

As a mom, you always prepare for the worst. Children, especially toddlers, have an uncanny ability to put themselves in danger and you need to be ready to respond at any given minute. Fortunately, mothers have been blessed with an instinct that prompts us to move and react before an accident happens. But sometimes, even with our sharp intuition and quick reflexes, they still get into trouble. Rei has kept us on our toes ever since she learned how to stand on her own. Getting into trouble seems to be her expertise. She's not a naughty kid, just a really active one. If there's a chair to climb or a steep edge to jump off of, expect her to do just that. Even though I've prevented a lot of mishaps from happening in the past, no one (not even myself) could have anticipated what had happened today. What happened? Rei had locked herself alone in a room at her Tita's house. Backstory My daughter adores her Tita Tin and she always goes over to their house to play. Sh

Changing my eating habits was probably the hardest aspect of my weight loss journey. I love to eat, and I especially love snacking. It would have been okay if I snacked on healthy foods, but I loved my carbs and sweets. My ultimate weakness was bread. I would have a piece of pandesal here and there, and by the end of the day I had eaten more than my needed daily calorie intake. I was not in control of my eating habits and I needed to change that if I wanted to lose the extra weight. Discover what works for you. I researched and even thought of trying some of the more famous diets online. There's the keto diet, paleo diet, vegan, raw food diet, etc. They have very promising effects, but there's only one problem: they are not sustainable for me. My lifestyle and my food preference just doesn't match any of these diets. I knew that if I ever decide to change my eating habits for the better, it should be something I can do for the rest of my life. Being vegan for a week or e