"Daddy you have a fruit loop on your face"

 

It was one morning where I'm bringing Champee to school and she noticed a big pimple on my face.  Well, that was I thought of… or wanting to be it a pimple at that time.  So after her school I brought her first at home and I went directly to the doctor to check what this fruit loop is.  I also felt having a flu like symptom so it must have been something about the rash or hopefully not pneumonia.

 

When the doctor saw it, she immediately say, chickenpox!  And I said, "are you sure?"  She called another doctor and asked about rashes now in my arms and body.  And she said "this looks like chickenpox"

 

If I were single, my initial reaction would be… oh no, I would need Belo for my beautiful face :).

 

But as a dad, I backtracked the events that happened that morning.  Did I kiss Cassandra? Amanda? Cali?  So good thing, Cali already had it when she was young. So I'm down to my two girls.  Looking at Champee's vaccine records, she got one for chickenpox.  But for Cassandra, hmmm she's so young, how can she be protected?  Looking at some medical articles, they said that infants have immunity until three months of age if their mom has the antibodies for chickenpox.  I haven't verified it yet with a doctor.  But as a first action when I went home, I isolated myself from them and sanitized everything I touched that morning just to be safe.

 

That night, with the help of my in laws, they allowed us to stayed in their place so I could really isolate myself in a single room and make sure the kids are safe.  This started my journey of hopefully just a week of battle with chickenpox.

 

I'm now on my third day, and these are the things I realized so far.

 

1. Going through life at a warp speed phase won't get you anywhere - so our schedule was changed when Cassandra came out; do all the school preps in the morning; office at mid shift; if unlucky which is quite usual, OT until the mornings; get 3 to 4 hours of interrupted sleep then repeat… There's a reason why God invented sleep and it is for our bodies to recharge and recover.  And since I didn’t get enough decent sleep the chances of me getting chickenpox got higher since my immune system is weak.
2. God surprises you with your requests - days ago, I was really feeling tired even on a weekend.  And in one of my prayer times I asked God if He can give me a break so I could think well and plan a better schedule.  So here it is… you want a break, I give you a break.  So here I am, sleeping, eating… and if my body aches seem to go away I try to go online and write.
3. "Hello best friend!" - this is Champee's way of saying that she misses me.  When I'm usually at the office, she calls me up just to say "how are you doing best friend?" And now that even though we can see each other we can't play or do things together because she might get sick.  This is one of the worse reasons for having chickenpox… not being able to play with your kids.
4. It's thanksgiving weekend but I don't have a turkey, just chicken :) - alright it's a lame joke :) seriously, I have lots of things to be thankful for.  Thank you for my wife and my two angels for being my personal nurse.  Thank you for my in laws for allowing us to make their house a hospital. Thank you for my family as they were really affected and thinking how they can help us during this time. 

 

I'm not entirely sure if there are still spaces in my face where the rashes don't appear but I do hope that it'll subside tomorrow.  One last thing I wanted to share with this experience is that I know this is just temporary.  Or maybe there will be some scars that will be permanent (like emotional wounds that we got from our past)… but one thing's for sure: that God has given me the grace to become better in my work life balance and my family life.

Amanda: Daddy can you help me wear my backpack?
Daddy: Sure, where are you going?
Amanda: I'm going on training!
Daddy: (eyes wide open feeling surprised how she knew about training)

So after wearing the backpack...
Amanda: Daddy, bye bye.
Daddy: Ok, where are you going now...
Amanda: I'm going to ride the train.

Hmmm, so that's what you call riding the train... Training!

Just wanted to show our excitement through our family's maternity shots.  I guess one of the perks of being a photographer is to allow other people see what I see through my camera's lens..

My wife's already in her 37th week of pregnancy.  In a race, this is what we call the homestretch.  The last leg.  The defining moment.  

Ever noticed this in life?  That all great things cannot be done overnight?  And have you ever noticed that the most difficult part in a long process is always the last leg?  

Here are five things our family checked if we're really ready for Cassandra.  

1. Is Ate Champee ready? I have a friend who once told me that no matter how they prepared their first child, they still got surprised on her reaction when they got home with the new baby as their eldest got protective of her old toys that are now used by the new baby.  One of the advice that we got from my sister in law was to always make sure that our ate is involved in preparing the family for our new member.  Also, we kept on reminding our Ate Champee to always share her toys and include her in our daily prayer where our little ate is leading.  As parents, we're conscious on making her feel loved such that she can also pass it on to our new little angel and to wipe out the feeling of jealousy.  Also aside from her heart, we prepared Ate's new look with a new haircut from the salon.
2. Is our budget ready? This might be the number one reason why couples today don't have any plans on making a big family.  It's always about money.  When we're single we think on how can we get married with the money we have.  When we're married, all we think is how we can support our children.  This is reality.  For our family, what's worse is that my company had a change in the middle of the year and our yearly bonus got pushed back a few months.  But as a Christian, we believed that all things are possible when God moves... even through our finances or should I say, most specially in our finances.  Despite the scenario, our little business picked up and got more clients than what we expected.  Will we have enough to cover the CS operation and expenses afterwards?  Maybe just enough to get by... but with all the wisdom that God has shown our family, we know we're ready as long as we do what He wanted us to do.  In John 21:6 Jesus said, "Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some." When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.  I've seen this miracle when I proposed to Cali with uncertainty that my little savings could allow us to get married.  But then I was confident since I was able to "throw my net", meaning I took the leap of faith with God's assurance that everything will be accounted for.  I learned photography, read business books, attended internet marketing, made some quality output for my main job, serve God even more... then the "fish" came.  Did I earn more financially during Out time?  A few maybe... but I met friends who eventually became suppliers for our wedding and was even able to book our honeymoon flight for less than 2k for a trip to Macau and HK.  So, with that, our family's just waiting for the surprises that God has in store for us.
3. Is our HEART ready?  When we had our first baby, we said that during our honeymoon stage, we were overwhelmed by the love we have for us as a couple and that it was time for us to share this love.  The same is true with our Cassandra that we can't wait to love another member of the family.  Come to think of it, as we increase our numbers in the family, the number of person giving love grows as well... for the first baby we have two, for the second one, we have three and so on and so forth.
4. Is our HEALTH ready?  Definitely my wife is ultra healthy... she commented before that she's even healthier when she's pregnant as she becomes conscious on what she eats. For me, it's a different story.  I gained a lot of weight despite the same exercise I've been having.  I just believe that the extra pounds of fat will be helpful on burning calories during the wee hours of the evening when Cassandra comes :)  Well, that's just an excuse, I really regained my love for carbs which added to my love handles.
5. Is our SPIRIT ready?  As a family, we're still active in serving God and been going through different talks or even giving one to keep us connected to God.  As Christians, any new life event and the anxiety it may bring, should always make us closer to Him.  Our family's prayer time is now lead by Ate Champee while we drive her going to school.  As simple as her words of thanksgiving, they were also reflect the exact sentiments of our family... full of gratitude to God's amazing greatness.

Checking out these five areas, I think we're ready and if we missed something, I'm sure these will be areas where God will surprise our family.

Amanda's favorite past time which started few weeks ago was the "What's that sign?" game.  I think this is the stage where she learned how to use the "What".  So here's the mechanics of the game... everytime she sees a traffic sign, she's going to ask Mommy and Daddy, what's that sign?  Cute isn't it? (like Amanda's Daddy :) ) 


So what are the things me and my wife observed:

1. Waste. Do you know what traffic sign is posted the most in Metro Manila?  It's the No Parking sign.  Imagine that for every 5 to 10 meters starting from our house going to her school, we saw more than 15 posts of this sign.  And all were made of steel with reflective stickers or paints.  Maybe a ballpark estimate of about 2k Php per sign which amounts to 30k worth of taxpayer's money for no parking signs.  Hmmmm... I wonder why we need that much given that we only have a two-lane two-way street (one lane per way).  Isn't it obvious that we shouldn't park our cars in such an avenue?  Is it a budget allocation issue for the government OR our fault on our foresight that we need a parking slot if ever we buy a car?
2. Patience. So given we saw about more than 15 signs in such a short trip... Amanda will ask the same question over and over.  Well, it's cute but after sometime when we're having adult conversations and we were interrupted because of a sign that was the same about a minute ago, sometimes it would take its toll.  This reminded us that kids will be kids.  And that we should allow them to be that way since they would only be that cute and small once.  What does this mean?  We should be patient and loving in dealing with it, after all it's not just a game but a way for kids to learn and exercise their memory.
   
3. Repetition. During the first week, Amanda was asking because she didn't know the signs.  After a week, she's asking to tell us that she knows them.  Like if we missed looking a sign, and she asked what's that sign?  we told her we're sorry I didn't see it... but she'll immediately reply it's No Parking Daddy!  Repetition, helps retain information to a person's brain.  I realized that this is both a blessing and a curse.  As a blessing, this can help our kids do good in their academics or even their careers in the future... the curse part is when they repeatedly see our bad habits though.  Hopefully, I can practice being a good role model than being a clumsy rookie dad.

It's a girl!

We just found out last weekend that we're having another girl in the family.

Then, I began to think about these three things:

1. Oh my!  In the Philippines, they said that if you have all girl kids, it was an indication that you were very naughty when you were a bachelor...

So then I began to reflect even more?  How come?!  I'm a very good boy when I was single... :)

2. Second, how can I stay manly in a world full of girls.  So I started searching for articles in the internet on how a man can deal with this situation.  I bumped into this article http://www.prevention.com/health/healthy-living/how-dad-stays-manly-while-raising-daughters and find it to be very interesting.  To summarize it, no matter how tough you are as a man, you really won't mind doing girly things to show how much you love your girls.

3. Third, what's good about this will be the sweetness and thoughtfulness of my girls.  I may not have a sparring partner in boxing or a hoops buddy in basketball (technically they can but on a different level though) but generally and biologically, girls are more expressive of their love which could cheer me up often in this busy and crazy schedule that we have both in business and corporate life.

A sigh of relief...

After the very agonizing and grueling battle with the "poop", she finally was able to let it out...

It was difficult for me and my preggy wife to sleep while seeing her wake up every now and then last night. There were instances where she would fall half asleep trying to push hard while standing up and just barely putting her head on a pillow on top of the bed.

But, the good thing is, it's all over now... hopefully this serve as a breakthrough for her to finally eat more fibrous foods and take more than enough liquids aside from her favorite milk.

From this ordeal, I got to research some based remedies which we tried, which should work:

1. Diet change -  well this one failed for us.  We still can't convince her before this to try oatmeal, apple juice, prune juice.  What we did successful was to have her drink water much more than what she consumes... the trick? we used the measuring bars on her bottle as her goal... that she should drink two bars of water and made it a game everytime she needs to drink.  The result, more water consumption but still not enough to fight her constipation.
2. Laxatives - probably we made a mistake stopping her laxatives too early after we brought her to the hospital weeks ago.  So that's why, this occurred again.  
3. Suppositories - could be the one that really helped her, but after 5 hours of great ordeal?

The best remedy I guess is the first, so we'll make sure to work on her diet starting this time..