Family Bytes

"Happy Anniversary Labs! It's our third and counting on forever. We have a lovely son. We are growing a wonderful family. We now have a lovely home though technically not our home but with God's grace we'll have our own. We now have a small business blessed with a tiny network of friends and acquaintances and keeps on growing with God's guidance. Well what can I say, from where we start I think we've accomplished a lot. I am proud of it and I am very proud of you. For me life has never been lovelier specially with you around. Thanks a lot for being there always for me and Ryle. We love you very much.

Thanks a lot for the wonderful gift that I've been dreaming since my childhood days. I was just surprised that you managed to get one of those. It's a very wonderful gift. Now, I am able to watch the vast sky night and be awed by the stars. Thanks for fullfiling my dream gift. I appreciate it so much. I love you very much.

My gifts for you come in three part. Okey, the third part which is the finale is of course you already know it. It's no longer a surprise. The first one is just a scroll down this letter. The second one will come in later. So happy anniversary labs, have a great day. Don't stress yourself today. It's our day! Love you mwah!"

She's My Life
by Rouel

She's my partner, she's my best friend
A shoulder to cry on, till the end.

She's my love, she's my heart
This vow will keep us and never part.

She's my conscience, she's my soul
For without her I'll not be whole.

She's my hue, she's my color
She paints my world like no other.

She's my music, she's my song
With her around I'm a perfect tune.

She's my poem, she's my rhyme
An immortal sonnet in undying time.

She's my star, she's my light
In dusk and gloom, she gives me sight.

She's my luck, she's my treasure
She's the gem I'll always adore.

She's my Adora, She's my wife,
She's my meaning for she's my life.

Ryle is suddenly very fascinated with trains. So we excitedly bought him a train set. A North Pole Christmas Train set in fact, just in time for the holidays. It has a circular track, plays Christmas tunes, and real train sound effects. It could run forward or reverse. It would have been the best train for him to play. But then came Thomas. He was more excited and playful with Thomas the train. He loved the show so much we have to get copies of it. Thomas' tracks were more elaborate and more complex thus it was more appealing to him than the first one we bought. Ergo, the only thing to do is give him Thomas and sell the Christmas train on eBay. So if anybody is interested with a North Pole Christmas Train set, you can visit the eBay display here.

It is newly bought, still in a box and very timely for the season. And it is very good ornament too under the Christmas tree. I appologize that it's only offered here in the Philippines at a very low price. So if anybody out there is interested, take a peak of the train.

I am frustrated! My 2 year old son, Ryle is starting to count, not learning but counting, and I have been scouring all toy stores, bookshops, malls after malls across Manila and haven't found a single classic wood counting block. All they can offer me were those made of plastics or rubber that squeaks. He loves to count while building objects on top of each other and these plastics or rubber blocks are too light for that. They easily tumble. I've tried online stores which sells $24 at least but the freight would cost me 5 times that. Where have all these wonderful classic toys gone?

That was not the end of it. We'll be treating Ryle tomorrow for fun rides at Fun Ranch. We've heard that there's a kiddie train ride there and he loves trains so much that everytime he sees one in TV his eyes are glued and shouts TRAINNNN!!

After that, we hope to bring him back to Serendra where he would feast on the fountains. Fountains and trains, that will surely make his day.

Ryle's birthday party was exemplary fun though simple. He had a good time playing with his cousins and friends. He got a musical train for a gift which we bought a couple of weeks earlier and boy he loved it. The kids played with it till the batteries died. He also got a friction powered toy truck.

My wife and I cooked all the party foods well except for the cake and ice cream. There's spaghetti with two variants of sauce, cocktail hotdogs with marshmallow, and yummy french toasts which my wife love to prepare. While the kids gobbled them up Ryle wants to sing his birthday song and blow his cake over and over.

Photos coming soon...

Ryle's 2nd birthday is just around the corner. I and my wife are pretty busy planning the event and we agreed that it will be just a simple celebration. So it won't be a very tedious party like the first one. It will be just a family gathering of some sorts. But of course Ryle won't enjoy his party at all without kids. So we'll bring in his cousins and some of his friends from the neighborhood.

Last year, I personally made his invitations for his first birthday. I designed two actually, but we choose the latter.





I also composed a poem specially for the invitation.

One Two, a bundle of fun
Our little boy is turning one.
Three Four, heroes and all
Wear your costumes party galore.
Five Six, girls and boys
Lots of laughter, games and toys.
Seven Eight, get a big bite
Food's aplenty for little tykes.
Nine Ten, let's all have fun
See you then, Ryle's birthday has come.

Our Ryle is a bit grumpy for the past two days. He's been having on and off fever every night sometimes peaking at 39 degrees. Yesterday, we decided that we visit his doctor because we don't know what's causing his fever. The pediatrician, mapped out three possible reasons: one is "tigdas-hangin" the local term for roseola infantum, second is UTI and lastly he'll develop cough and colds. We were hoping to discount UTI as he already had one back when he was still three months old and it was a very gruelling experience for him and for us. The doctor expected another fever last night which should be his last afterwhich the rashes will appear. And should the fever persist the following day, she recommended CBC and platelet count as well as urine tests. Thankfully, he slept soundly last night without any fever. The thing is he has now cough and colds.

I proudly present our baby's first artwork, well sort of, using our apartment's floor and wall as his canvass. As most Filipino households really don't have carpeted floors, they are of course not spared to our baby's growing-up explorations. Of course I don't encourage him messing the whole place up, I avoid forbidding him either as I may daunt his inquisitive artistry.

I made sure that the crayons he use are non-toxic and are easily washed after him playing around with it.

I took some photos of his doodles afterwards and thought just for fun why not add some photo effects using Ulead Photoimpact. And so I did. Here are some of the doodles he made and the results after I played around with the photo effects on them.

This...

To see some better jobs than what I have done here and made by really professional artists who seriously translated kids' artworks, click here.

When my son was still a baby. We used to sing him countless lullabies before him falling to sleep. His mom has her own set of lullabies and I have my own. I remember Twinkle, twinkle little star and You are my Sunshine were instantly his favorites. They're the songs we use to sing him when he was still in the womb. But if sometimes this don't work, his mother sings the Uyayi, a Philippine lullaby or sometimes she would turn to the bible and sing Psalms. Those often works and he gets to sleep soundly.

When it's my turn, I would exhaust all of the lullabies that I am familiar with and repeat them over and over before he goes to sleep. And most of the time, I get tired of singing them that I have to include other nursery rhyme songs, old mother goose and other bunch of kid songs that I know. There was a time when I have to really sing grown-up songs to make it more fun. I simply turned to the music of the Carpenters as their songs are my favorites. So, I hummed and sung, and instantly turned their melodic tunes into my baby's lullaby. From Top of the World to There's a Kind of Hush, and from Rainy Days and Mondays to Sing, those made my sleepless nights fun. And the thing is, now that my baby is a toddler, one of songs he loves singing is Sing. Everytime he hears the part La la la la la la.... he'd sing his part too.

Our first family studio photoshot where a gazillion of shots were made because of a very inquisitive, cunningly agile, and bouncy baby. After several tries, it came out cute and I made it into a collage using Ulead Photoimpact.

Hi all! Welcome to our family blog. This is where a proud dad, a wonderful mom and a brilliant baby convene on the web. We'll write here personal and family stuffs, our ideas, our rants and raves, and other creativities we could think of. So welcome everyone and hope you'll enjoy your visit.