Instagram and iPhone Love Affiar

My love affair with Instagram started when my husband brought home his first ever iPhone, a gadget that neither of us thought would change a lot of our online habits and activities. I. had just dozed off but he was still latched and continued to suck for more milk. I never liked texting or playing games on my phone that time and I remember the only other thing I could get hold of at that moment was my husband's iPhone. He was telling me about this phone application he downloaded earlier that allowed him to edit photos taken on his phone. I looked back at the photo he took of me and I. and loved the old-feel effect. It was as if the photo was taken in the 80's. I decided to check out the community of IGers (their term for Instagram users) and discovered that some of the bloggers I read also have Instagram. I followed a few of them. The next thing I knew, I was already checking Instagram on a daily basis, much more than I do on Facebook. I contemplated it for several months, a year even, before I finally decided on buying an iPhone myself. It hasnt even been two months since I had this phone and it's gone through a lot of beating up by my clumsiness or my overly-eager-to-watch-youtube-videos toddler who'd throw it away on some nasty occasions but it has given me so much already. I even editied my son's birthday party invitation thru one of the available apps online. Well, here are some precious photos I posted on Instagram lately:

Here's the invite followed by the cake design I made using just my iPhone:

Over Coffee

Sorry for the lousy and negative post last time. I just got from reading Alphabet Dad's most recent blog post written earlier today. Well, I know it wasn't composed on the spot, as he has this really great writing style of jotting down in his little notebook bits and bits of words which he will weave eventually to come up with an even more brilliant journal entry. I mean, who writes so damn good as this nowadays:

"I picked up Lars Von Trier’s The Boss of it All from a pirated-DVD shopping spree around 4 years ago. That was a time when the pirates seemed to have better taste, because “indie,” art house, or foreign films were also boot-legged. I remember that it was on the “sale” or “bargain” rack, which suggests that it might be damaged. But I remember getting Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai on the very same rack and it worked fine. 

The disc played okay, but my mistake was I thought it didn’t have subtitles or audio dubbing. For years, it was just tucked away in the shelf. 

In these four years or so, parenting and other good things proved time to be luxurious. Even if we stopped watching Cable TV, we really just didn’t have that much time to spare. D. and I had to give up frequenting the foreign film festivals. I bought a copy of Run Lola Run for posterity because I saw it with her on a German Film Festival. On one of our dates, she kept gushing about her German silent film experience. We were still regularly hanging out with friends when we went to our last Spanish film festival. And we still get excited over the thought of Eiga Sai or French Spring Manila. 

Nowadays, we watch an enormous amount of cartoons and Disney movies. Our little one is also a film buff in his own right. He has been very fond of having Toy Story Trilogy marathons. I must have seen the Toy Story trilogy ten times more than the Godfather Trilogy or twenty time more compared to Kieslowski’s Tres Colores. 

We still see a fair amount of DVDs, but we miss foreign films and festivals probably not just because we had excellent dates or great company when we saw them. There is also a subliminal relief in going through a communal experience in a theatre, but a worldwide curiosity in cultures and a shared experience. We blur the barriers of language with delight and understanding at least while the reel projects a collective take on human drama. It binds stories, colors, action, imagination and sentiment to liberate us from a totalizing aloneness.

One July Sunday night, when the little one was asleep, we jump on the chance to have our own date in our room. We were aching to see anything that wasn’t made in Hollywood, and we were actually willing to watch something we’ve already seen from the DVD shelf. 

That’s when I tried Lars Von Trier’s The Boss of it All. It had subtitles, after all. May the Nazareno bless the pirates and peddlers in Quiapo.

It also turned out that The Boss of it All was a comedy. We laughed away even we know that for the life of us we know we’ll probably never speak Dansk. As the Danish quietly language bounced off the room’s walls, there’s a film festival feel that nudged the darkness into life."

I shrink with envy just reading his words.  I'm no writer. He is. (The entry above is entitled "Like a Boss" and was taken from his unpublicized blog).

Deconstructing the Yaya

She wakes up whenever she likes, takes a nap on our couch on an almost everyday basis, throws away her unfinished food and water, has average cooking skills (she can cook rice and fry almost anything) but can burn your food and use too much canola oil , she's a lousy toilet user, her cellphone never stops beeping, she'll die without turning on her radio even while sleeping, she consumes 2/3 of our rice, water, and sugar supply, she complains of having a headache 4 times a month, she can be out of the house on break for three hours or more, everyday. She's disrespectful and childish and not a good influence around my son. That's my Yaya.

We've been trying to live with her and accept her long-list of flaws for one and a half years now. Heck, I even shelled-out fifteen thousand on her to have her teeth fixed (She's fully paid now and has improved her oral hygiene). I thought at first she's got so much potential. She can keep the house in order, she's makwento, and has a fairly positive aura. She's young and was able to finish HS. She did quite well looking after my son when I was still working at the office. She fed him well and sent him to sleep on schedule. My husband and I have left the two of them on their own on a few occasions and she seem to have handled these situations quite fine.

Now that I'm staying at home, I could not help but notice her countless flaws. I'm on the verge of letting her go especially now that she's causing me so much stress. But I want to have a trusted "kasambahay"so badly and I don't have much candidates to choose from. I'm starting to contemplate now whether I really need one or a househelp is just something nice to have at the moment.

Breastfeeding Hurts

I had to tweet the title above last night because I was in real pain after having been bit while nursing. Confession time: Breastfeeding hurts! I hope you don't get me wrong. Even before I found out I was pregnant, I already knew I was going to breastfeed my baby. Aside from being breastfed myself (beyond 2 years), I believed in all the benefits of human milk. I prepared and expected a lot of pains in the process.  I went through engorgement so many times, a really nasty nipple crack, and best of all, numerous bites from a toddler with almost a full set of teeth.  It's been two years and I'm still breastfeeding. My plan is to let him lead the weaning.

With this new set-up of working from home, I find myself stuck in a very hectic schedule. Although I have househelp, I still insist on doing most of the chores---cooking, bathing I., feeding I., putting I. to sleep, etc.  As soon as I put I. to nap, I rush to my netbook to get my work done, for about 1.5 hours, or 2 if I'm lucky. When he wakes up, he asks to nurse, and if I'm lucky again, he goes right back to nap. By the time he's fully awake, I'd need to attend to whatever it is he wants or call the yaya (when she's anywhere to be seen) to take him outside and play until I finish work at around 4:30 pm. By that time, my husband would wake up and I'd have to cook dinner. When we're up for it, the three of us would go to CCP to stroll around while the husband runs.

It's not exhausting on some days but you know how it is when you find yourself stuck in some stressful situations like for example, potty training a two-year old for days and all you get is just one success in the potty and the rest are all misses? By the time I turn off the lights and get some rest from a long day of catching poops and pees, I get a bite...that excruciatingly painful bite from a sleeping two-year old and I feel helpless and all I can do is cry. Sniff :(