Baby Plus and other deals from Quirks Marketing Philippines

Thanks to my cousin Cheps, I got to use Baby Plus with my two daughters. For K, I used it from the 24th week onwards, while for S, I used it from the 18th week onwards. To be honest, I do not have any experience taking care of a baby that has not listened to Baby Plus. I only speak for my two daughters - both were calm and not "cry babies." My second daughter S - who was on Baby Plus 6 weeks longer than K - started cooing earlier than her sister (before she hit the second month) and responding to people talking to her. On her 2nd month, S has started sleeping 5-6 straight hours at night. K, on the other hand, has grown up to become a very interactive and imaginative toddler (Check out my Time to Make Believe post here.) I believe the thub-thumping of Baby Plus has something to do with this. 

On November 12 - you can get your Baby Plus from the Quirks Marketing Philippines sale. You can also get your other baby and toddler gear needs! Check out their sale at the Atlanta Centre in Greenhills - where old and new stocks are to be sold at discounted prices. 

I myself want to check out their stuff - who knows, they might have these items, which I have been wanting to own!

Zinnia Rose Stroller Blanket (picture from www.dwellstudio.com)
Perfect for toddler K who has started wanting blankets!

Paperdolls Wall Decals (picture from www.dwellstudio.com)
A great way to spice up a door or a wall.

Kiddie Ride On (picture from www.obaby.co.uk)
K would enjoy standing on this while baby S is in the stroller.

K's Point of View: Who has colds?

I started a blog because I wanted to share my life with my kids some day. I also wanted to share with them bits and pieces of their growing up years. I tried handwriting notes to my eldest daughter - and I almost filled up a small notebook - but I was never consistent! Worst of all - my husband says I have very bad handwriting. Today, I chanced upon a fellow mom's blog - Trisha's playtime break - where Mom Trisha shared the darndest things that her 2 year old son Matteo says. And so - here goes my own version - K's Point of View - from my toddler to you.

October 2011

K has developed a cold - and I was concerned that this may have come from school. So I ask her, "Is there someone in your classroom who has a cold?" She answers, "Yes!" I ask, "Who?" And she answers..."K!" 

How do you argue with that?

Mi Casa Home Cooking

Fried to a crisp!

I love fried pigeon. I especially like it when the skin is fried to a crisp (but not burnt) in a golden honey color. If there's one thing I looked forward to during "confinement" (or "ge-lai" - which is the one month period of pure Chinese torture after giving birth), it would be that I can have all the pigeon I wanted because it's considered to be very helpful in the strength regaining process of women who have just given birth.

For my second birth confinement, our friends Cons and Marie introduced us to Mi Casa's Spiced Fried Pigeon. It comes frozen - the entire bird sealed in see through packaging. It's also just the right size for one meal - perfect for an always hungry, breastfeeding mom! Our cook would chop the bird up into 4 pieces - each piece with either a wing or a leg. This is then fried to a crisp. The skin comes out looking perfect - and trust me, they are also crispy and tasty! There's no need to eat this with any condiments (not even the salt and pepper that's served in Chinese restaurants) - because it's marinated perfectly by Mi Casa. This pigeon is perfect to serve at home - and also as a gift to someone who has just given birth. It's convenient and easy to prepare.

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We kept going back for more - and discovered other Mi Casa cooked frozen specialties. My mom and sister loves the embutido - precooked and frozen for those days when you need a quick meal idea. They make a mean chicken embutido too. I checked out their freezer and there are a number of items I will definitely try in the future. They also sell pasta sauces, baked goodies and dips. Watch this space!

Check out Mi Casa at 57 Connecticut St., North East Greenhills. If you have time, check out their dine in restaurant, Angel's Kitchen, too.

25 Random Things About Me

This post is inspired by Dainty Mom.

I'm a newbie blogger and I'm always wondering what to blog about next. There's very little on my "About" widget that can possibly pique your interest to read my blog. I am hoping one of the 25 random things here will! I'd like to think that this is what I've become - after all these years.

1. Name someone with the same birthday as you. Nina Garcia (coolness - i had to look this up!). 

2. What’s on your playlist right now? ABC, Music and Me.

3. Where did you meet your husband? In Taiwan, in 1992. That was officially the first meeting.

4. How many children do you have? Two.

5. Have you ever sung in front of a large number of people? Yes, in 2nd grade for a solo singing contest - where I totally failed. But I met a very good friend (Gressy!)

6. Was it love at first sight when you saw your husband? NO. Not even love at second sight ;)

7. What’s your favorite food? I cannot decide! Grilled liempo?

8. What do you order at Starbucks? Tall Caramel Macchiato (hot) or Tall Coffee Frap (cold)

9. If you could buy one thing for the house right now, money aside, what would it be? A lot of shelving for storage. Especially the IKEA ones for the kids' room!

10. As a child, what did you want to grow up to be? A doctor.

11. Say something totally random about yourself. A horse bit me when I was about 9 years old.

12. Do you watch X-Factor? No.

13. Did you have braces? No.

14. Favorite Social Network? Twitter (Follow me: @cuckoo_sing)

15. Where’d your husband propose to you? At Subic, on a yacht, just before sunset. Yes, it was a yacht. Maybe someday I'll tell you the story. 

16. Why is your blog called The Corporate Housewife Mom? Somehow, I ended up with those 3 roles, without aiming for them. 

17. Do you speak any other languages? Chinese (Fookien, some Mandarin) and Filipino.

18. What’s your favorite pastime? I love reading and trying out new food.

19. What magazines do you read? Nowadays, it's Yummy and Good Housekeeping. Online, I like Parenting and Real Simple.

20. Name one of your useless skills. I can recite the alphabet backwards. I remember people's shoes.

21. Do you drive? Yup.

22. What are your top five TV shows at home this fall ’11 season? Unfortunately, none. I don't watch TV. Maybe How I Met Your Mother? Is that still on?!

23. Can you dance? I think so. You might not think so though.

24. What’s your favorite place in the world? Our room. And also the shores of Boracay.

25. If you could have a super power, what would it be? To go back and forward in time.

Now, I’m gonna ask you to do two things in the comments: 1) Answer one of my 25 questions with an answer about you, and 2) ask me another random question, which I’ll answer. I hope to meet you!

Papa, can I ask you something?

If my papa were healthy and alive today, he would be turning 54 years old today. It's not the ripe, old age of 54... because 54 is young. He would be young enough to carry my two girls, play with them and spoil them like grandfather's do. I grew up with a grandfather figure - my father's dad doted on me (I shamelessly admit that) - and I feel sad that my daughters will grow up not knowing a grandfather figure (my husband's father has passed on as well).

Now that I have daughters of my own - I really wish that my dad were still alive so that I can ask questions about my own infant and toddler years. How similar or different were our experiences in rearing up daughters? If he were alive today, these are some of the questions I would have asked him:

1. When did you find out you were going to have me?
2. How did you feel the day I was born?
3. When was the first time you carried me?
4. Did you feed me milk? Change my diapers? Washed my poop?
5. How did you play with me as a baby?
6. What did you do that made me smile? Laugh? Cry?
7. Who did you think I looked like?
8. What were the things we liked to do together?
9. What were the dreams you had for me when I was a baby? When I was 1? 2?
10. Was I as you expected me to be?
11. Can you tell me anecdotes of my infant/toddler years?
12. What were the things I said that made you smile?
13. How different/similar was I to Shobe?
14. Did you like having two girls?

Papa, it would have been wonderful to exchange notes, talk about the girls, and let you experience having little girls once again since Shobe and I are both all grown up. It would have been wonderful to give you back the experience of going back in time... seeing us again when we were small. Now, you can only do this from afar - and I do hope you are watching over my two girls like a guardian grandfather. I hope you enjoy watching them grow up - seeing their beautiful smiles, relishing their bubbly laughter, and chuckling over their little girl antics. Happy birthday, Papa! My two girls and I wish you were here to celebrate it with us.

Time to Make Believe

The blogging prompt from Social Moms made me think about writing this post. What is my favorite part of the day with my child/family? I work for a multinational company, and my working hours are usually around 9am to 7pm. On weekdays, the only downtime I really have to spend with my family is after dinner, just before my 2 year old goes to bed. On holidays or weekends - we also get to spend a little more time in the morning, and again just before nap time. However, it is really before bedtime where we are consistently able to spend quality time together, and it is best spent make believing! This is my favorite time of the day - the time when we make believe as a family.

Thanks to my husband who is the creative soul in this marriage - he is able to bring out the imaginative side out of our daughter. At an early age, I noticed she loved playing make believe with dolls, cooking sets and doctor sets. Their play includes setting up pillows to make houses for K, walking around the room with baskets "shopping", or cooking up a storm with K's cooking set. I don't need to really be part of it to enjoy it - just watching them together makes me smile.

Staging a makeshift puppet show

I, on the other hand, prefer reading books and stories to my daughter. To bring out the "make believe" in it - I dreamt up this idea to set up small puppet shows for K using her stuffed toys. The puppet shows were a big hit! She's taken to pretending she's Little Red Riding Hood... and when her father pretends to be the big bad wolf, she answers "No, no, no... not by the hair of my chinny chin chinny...!"

Make believe time is part play, part learning for us. Now that my daughter is a lot more verbal - I can see how she has been learning from our make believe time. It's a great mix of fun and learning!

Stain, be gone!

There are few things in life I am OC about (ask my husband - I am light years away from being OC). However, there is one thing that seems to top my short OC-ness list - and that would be any kind of stain on my clothes. Nowadays, it has expanded to DH's and the two DD's clothes and sheets. The moment I see a small stain or anything that remotely resembles one - I am all over it with tissues (white only, of course) and water (cold, never hot/warm) - as a basic emergency instant relief.

This kind of OCness must have stemmed from the fact that growing up, my mom has made sure that our clothes were always spic and span. My mom is THE expert at removing stains. Our white uniforms remain white years and years after they were bought. I could never understand the comparison's on TV when they show Detergent X washed laundry are not white... because our white clothes remain white forever.

I use the mandarin orange variant.
www.humanheartnature.com

My no-fail stain remover formula of late has been: water + mild liquid soap + hydrogen peroxide. For a strong stain that's dried up already - I usually mix 2-3 part water to 1 part liquid soap, and 1 part hydrogen peroxide. For the mild soap, I've tried using Perwoll and Human Heart Nature's mandarin orange handwash. Both worked perfectly fine. If the stain is fresh - more water would work too.

The worst stain I've used this on is a red wine stain on DH's pina barong. His friend spilled red wine on one arm of his barong - and we thought the barong was goner. I made the mixture of water, soap and peroxide and dabbed this on the stain. I kept applying and re-applying the mixture (while blotting behind the fabric with white tissue paper) every 10 minutes for about half an hour. At each 10 minute interval, I could visibly see the stain getting lighter - until it eventually complete disappeared. Even I was surprised at how well it worked. I feel bad I did not take a before and after picture!

Here are my other stain removal tips:

For the barong, I used the pink variant.
www.henkel.com

1. Try to blot out the stain (both sides) with water and tissue paper or white cloth as soon as possible.

2. Make sure to always use cold water, because hot water will "seal" in stain.

3. Remove the stain BEFORE sending this into the wash. Once the piece of clothing has been washed, dried and ironed - it's received a lot of stain sealing heat.

4. Ink stains are best removed by spraying hairspray on it first before washing. Spray hairspray liberally, and keep repeating until the ink has visibly evaporated/bled - before washing.
5. For stains with oil in it - it helps to liberally sprinkle with talcum powder first, to absorb the oil.

6. Use the mildest soaps available - and be gentle!

What are your stain removal tips?