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here are some effective ways i know:

1. let your kid play. play is child’s work. it is through play that he learns various skills and lessons crucial for his proper development. but aside from that, it is also through play that he learns where he is good at. make sure you give him the right educational toys to aid him in skill and talent discovery.

2. allow your kid to be himself. don’t expect your kid to grow up exactly the way you are. mikkel looks exactly like his dad but we never want to make the impression that he can only be good at things that mike or i are good at. i suck in math but if mikkel grows up to become a math whiz, why not?! while his dad is an artist, if mikkel grows up to become a scientist, we won’t stop him.

3. never pressure your kid. your kid is just a kid. if you make him do hundreds of extra-curricular activities a day just so he would become talented, you are only going to make him feel that all of these is a chore, instead of a great learning experience as what they are supposed to be. instead of enrolling him in piano lessons, basketball lessons, dance lessons, voice lessons, math lessons, and drawing lessons all at the same time, ask your kid what he really likes to do. also, make sure there is sufficient time left for family bonding time and for fun and games.

i can’t say i have successfully unraveled all of mikkel’s hidden talents but so far, i have learned that he is good in puzzles, and building blocks. he loves manipulating things and he has adept visual and memory skills. i also noticed that he has a penchant for photography just like his dad. i know mikkel will surprise me with more skills and talents as he grows up but all i want to do is to encourage (but never pressure) him to be the best in whatever he wants to become.

your fears begin to transform into reality once your child becomes a toddler. you see some changes in his attitude. from the tiny innocent baby, who does nothing but coos and cuddles with you, he slowly transforms into a toddler who begins to know about the world. soon, you notice that your child begins to cry more often or does not obey you anymore. to raise a child properly, here are some key disciplining pointers that every parent should know:

1. do not give in to your child’s every whim. many parents think that giving their child everything they want is a good way to express their love. but this is the biggest misconception when it comes to parenting. not giving your child everything is healthy as this will make him more grounded with the reality of life that he can never have everything that he wants and that he will not always have it his way. children raised this way grow up to be mature and level headed adults who can handle problems and disappointments with more ease than adults who were spoiled brats in their younger years.

2. be consistent with your rules. most children of today are very smart and they remember things quite easily. If you say no to him eating snacks before mealtime but allow him to have a couple of treats the next night, he will get a disoriented notion that rules can be broken. this will not stop him from breaking other rules that you set.

3. do not say “no” too much. this word is supposed to be used only for important matters like when your child is about to touch an electric outlet. using “no” too much will lose its sense of urgency.

4. be generous with praises and compliments. positive reinforcement of proper behavior and good manners is always more effective than punishment in forming your child’s moral values.

5. do not let the surroundings be tempting for him. If you have a child in the house, keep all things dangerous away from his reach. do not place your expensive China in a place near the play area and expect that you can just discipline him into not breaking it.

6. talk to your child often. communicating with your little one and instilling proper values such as saying thank you, please and excuse me is one of your prime duties as a parent.

7. distract to stop crying sprees. if your child cries to get what he wants, do not give in to the temptation of handing him the object of her crying session. instead, remove from her from the area and distract her to make her forget about it. giving him what he wants after he cries will reinforce this behavior and teach him to use this to wrap you around his finger.

8. spanking is never the answer. this violent manner of punishment may only cultivate aggressive behavior in your kid and give him the wrong idea that you can hurt anyone who makes mistakes. time-outs and negative punishment (removal of things that your kid likes to discourage a certain behavior) are more effective forms of discipline.

9. spend a lot of quality time with your child. this is probably the most important ingredient in raising your kid properly. do not allow yourself to be caught up with too much work and be sure that you set aside sufficient time for your little one.

being a parent is truly an extraordinary and wondrous feeling that you are lucky to be able to experience. it will never be an easy and smooth ride but you will know that all the challenges and problems you face along the way will be all worth it.

become a mom yourself yes, when you become a parent, that is the only time that you will

babies cry all the time but so do moms! i cried when my baby came out into this world due to pain, happiness, disbelief and so many more–i was a melting pot of emotions!

i cried when mikkel said his first word (dog!), when he ate his first solid meal, when he took his first step, and when he sang his first song (it was during mass and people were solemnly singing “our father,” mikkel joined in by singing the only song he knew, “happy butdey”).

i cried buckets of tears the first time he said, “i yab yu ma” and i know i am going to flood the church when my son gets married (hopefully with someone whom i i approve of! i can imagine what a big monster-in-law i can become).

i’m a one big crymommy. i am more a crymommy than mikkel was ever a crybaby. i don’t know how that happens. it’s like whenever mikkel does something, even the simplest, most ordinary feat that he accomplishes, i feel a surge of emotion much more powerful than what rationality or logic can explain.

now i understand why i always caught my mom crying during moments that were supposed to be happy. she cried during my first ever dance performance in school, she shed a tear or two when i gave her a happy mother’s day card, and she uncontrollably sobbed whenever i or any of my two brothers tell her we love her. up to now, she still does!

a mom’s love–it’s a happiness that’s beyond the laughable kind. you’d only get it when you become a mom yourself when you become a parent, that is the only time that you will ever begin to comprehend the enormity and depth of your parents’ love for you.

when i was a little kid, i heard my uncle bernie say that in order to travel, you need to have three things: money, time and health. he said that when you’re young, you have time and health but not the money; when you’re an adult and working, you have money and health but not the time; and when you’re old, you have time and money but not health.

i was not born from a wealthy family and memories of childhood vacations were limited to nearby beaches or seldom out-of-town trips. as a kid, i think the farthest i’ve gone to was baguio, and aside from posing with native igorots, i hardly remember anything about it. not that i’m complaining, my family was a happy bunch and that was all that mattered.

but of course, there were times when i would occasionally remember what my uncle said. even though our family did not go to too many vacations, this did not at all discourage me from wanting to go traveling. in fact, it only made me want to go places even more. i told myself that when i grow up, i would travel to see the world. my goal back then was to visit at least one country or city from each of the seven continents of the world. (back then, i did not know antarctica was a frozen land! all i knew was that it was in the opposite direction of where santa lived.)

before i could do that, i knew i had to explore first what was in front of me. when i got halfway through college, i began to do some short distance traveling with friends–tagaytay, antipolo, laguna, bulacan, batangas, mindoro and so on.

loads of school work and one strict lola restricted my venture for exploration. i got away with it once in a while as i would insert the words “attending a convention” or “doing investigative work” whenever i asked for permission.

i felt bad about lying but i knew that lola would never understand. i was a restless soul and i got itchy soles! (come to think of it, i probably got this from her as lola is a certified lakwatsera too!) at least, i always told her where i was going, i just could not explain the exact purpose of my trip.

when i started working, i went to see more places like quezon, boracay, and iloilo. it was only until i was married that i was able to finally step out of the country and get that precious stamp on my passport. my first out-of-the-country experience was 25 years in the making! (this time, i did not have to concoct some weird alibi to lola. she was more than happy when she heard about our plan.)

our trip to hong kong was an adventure of all sorts and it was filled with so many bloopers. but i don’t regret any of them because i learned so much from that experience. last month, we traveled to cebu and bohol. bohol has that kind of beauty that would make you want to go back.

when mike i and go traveling, we don’t simply want to “travel.” i don’t want to go on guided tours and have limited itinerary. i want to go on backpack adventures, gain different experiences, learn life lessons, meet new people, and immerse myself into different cultures. i want to document our journey of exploration through my writings and my husband’s photographs. i don’t even like shopping for souvenirs as the memories i bring home are more than enough souvenir for me.

the best part of traveling for me is not the vacation itself but the moment when it is time to pack our bags and bring home those special stories and memories i’ve gained from the trip. i intend to do more traveling with my family in the future but it would depend on how our lives turn out. my dream destinations include maldives, india, africa, cayman islands, japan, switzerland, egypt, cambodia, dubai, italy, china, las vegas (i don’t like gambling but this is where my mom lives so i badly want to go here!) and jamaica.

i learned so many things about traveling from my uncle. it’s a good thing also that mike and i have discovered the art of budget traveling where we are able to go on trips while spending only a fraction of the cost that most people would normally spend (see article, savvy tips from the budget traveler). after all, traveling is not about how much you spend but how much you learn, it is not about money but people you travel with, people you meet, and the experiences that you gain.

the mischievous smile says it all. there is no way you cannot tell that this kid is extremely makulit and hyper-active. even before mikkel came out into this world, he would kick from my inside so hard that i would let out a distressed grunt in the office loud enough for eveyrone to turn their heads at me and ask why.

“hehe, sumipa lang yung baby ko,” i’d reply sheepishly.

with eyebrows raised, they would go on, “ganun kalakas?”

i’d just shrug my shoulders.

that time i already knew what was in store for me. good thing, i had sufficient training from taking care of two little brothers who made it a daily activity to turn our place into a madhouse with their kakulitan. they climbed, ran around, banged the walls, jumped like crazy, tormented me whenever they had the chance, screamed at the top of their lungs and did everything to exhaust their excessive energy.

i remember the story when my uncle was talking on the phone with his friend while my brothers rambled in the background. the friend actually thought there was a party going on in the house and he wasn’t invited. yeah, the two mokongs had the energy of a crowd.

i think it’s only apt that i thank my two brothers for getting on my nerves during the early years of my life for they have made motherhood somewhat easier for me.

these photos were taken when mike and mikkel were a couple of months old. the resemblance is uncanny. sometimes, i wonder if mikkel is just mike’s child. i just cannot find any trace of wendi in him. hehe.

mikkel is at his stage in his life where he wants to break and shatter everything. if our remote control could talk, he’d probably have sued for physical abuse a long time ago. my laptop does not have it any easier. if you can see it from my perspective, you can see 6 dents in the LCD monitor which were a result of a smashing encounter with mikkel’s big yellow jeepney. mike’s tripod is now in three pieces. mikkel’s yaya includes it in her daily chore to pick up the torn pieces of paper that mikkel can get his hands on. and his bike now looks like it was bought from a garage sale five years ago (his lola just bought it two months ago).

i make it sound as if my two year old is a brat. well, that’s one way of looking at it. although i know some kids who are worse. one drew on all the walls of their house, another destroyed his sister’s most precious archie collection (that was me when i was 6 years old and my brother when he was 4.)

but of course, i love mikkel oh so dearly, which is why i’d like to think that this is all because of his extreme energy. i know not all kids are “gifted” with hyperactivity and over-enthusiasm. but what can i do? mikkel has earned his title, “the destroyer” in his own right.

here is what mike and i do to survive mikkel’s ability to destroy everything in sight. if you have a kid who’s got a similar “talent,” you might find these tricks useful.

1. hand him simple things to toy with. mikkel is not really a destroyer by nature. when i observe him, i see that he just loves to manipulate things. he loves things/toys that he can build, stack, and push and pull or do something with. he just ends up destroying some of them when he gets frustrated because he can’t make that thing work.

for instance, the remote control. he likes toying with this because there are many buttons to push and he can take out and insert back the batteries. it is when he can’t figure out how to lower the volume or how to turn off the menu slide on the screen that he gets upset. so what i do is i just hand him things that are easy for kids his age to figure out and work on.

2. spend enough quality time with him. sometimes i get so engrossed with work or with what i write, that i sometimes fail to notice that mikkel wants my attention. i learned this the hard way when he decided to use his toy jeepney to divert my attention from the laptop to him.

3. give him an outlet for energy release. mikkel’s physical energy is unbelievable. he wakes up 8am and can stay full charge until midnight. he can lift a medium sized pail full of water (which is heavy even for me) and can go around a track and field oval 2 full rounds with no rest. if you keep him still in one place, he’d go crazy. so mike sees to it that he brings him out every afternoon and they walk from our house to wherever their feet brings them. if it’s raining or mike’s busy with work, i dance and jump around with him or i let him climb on me. it’s fun and mike and i get to exercise.

4. distract him. spanking hardly ever works because even if you punish him for destroying something, his short term memory would make him forget the next day that daddy’s computer or the cupboard are off limits and he’d climb back again to those places and reach out to something breakable. the solution to this is that we just keep an eye on him while he wanders around (supervised freedom) and when he is about to do something incredulous, we just jump in and offer him something else to distract him.

5. offer an interesting, unusual activity. mikkel is the type who easily gets bored. that’s why i rack my brain every day to come up with something new and exciting for him to do. there was a time when i bought him a watercolor set and spongebob coloring book. he loved it! it kept him quite for almost a day until he chipped off all the colors and flushed them down the drain.

last week, when i was preparing lunch, i made him peel off garlic cloves. he also enjoyed that. he loved that so much, he did that almost every day during that week. i had enough supply of garlic to open up a garlic bread store.

just see to it that activities you give your child are educational. i know peeling garlic cloves does not teach him ABC or 123 but it helps him learn about household chores!

i hear people say that kids this age are really terrible twos. i am not one to disagree. but i just try to make the best out of it by figuring how to survive this phase and pray fervently to heavens that hopefully, this is indeed just a phase.

i am loud, talkative and i have many friends but i don’t think i was ever as popular as the time when i got pregnant. the round thing bulging in front of me, which made it hard for me to see my toes, made me an instant celebrity.

it was late in 2006 when my belly started growing bigger and rounder. first, it was just my friends at hallmark who paid extra care and attention to me and my delicate status. i loved all the attention plus the leniency. if i get late, all i get are sympathetic looks even from the bosses (well, they are really nice people to begin with, and my commute that consisted of 2 jeepney rides, 1 mrt ride and 2 footbridges was truly hellish even for someone who’s not preggy!)

after a while, even people from other departments in the office who barely looked at me when i was still single and skinny started greeting me with wide smiles and talked to me as if we have been friends since childhood.

it’s not that i did not like that or anything. in fact, i enjoyed it pretty well. i loved how the other mommies in the office kept track of my pregnancy milestones, how they all gave me pieces of wisdom (which proved to be really helpful!) and how they even compiled a set of pregnancy clothes for me.

and i really had a great time reading the survey “what is wendi’s child going to be, boy or girl?”  some were not contented just giving a guess, they even analyzed the shape and size of my tummy to justify their hypothesis. (the result of the survey? “boy” won hands down)

i felt so important, i felt that my child was really lucky. it felt wonderful knowing that the people around me were so involved with what i was going through.

the bigger my stomach grew, the more popular i got. even strangers began approaching me, talking to me, asking when i was due, if i already knew if it’s a boy or a girl, if i was drinking Anmum. some even went as far as touching my tummy. imagine walking mindlessly in a shopping mall when suddenly you feel something weird on your belly. you look down and you see a hand! is that weird or what?

the popularity does not end with strangers caressing my bulging stomach. at the mrt, i also enjoyed a special privilege. sure, i got squeezed in that hot box so many times during my pregnancy but almost every time, someone would offer me their seat a second before tears start dropping down my cheeks. but there was that one time when my round tummy got squeezed against the door so hard and still none of them offered me a seat. i was so tired, i could not help but cry. some ortigas girls (who were also standing) saw my tear-stained face and i heard them say, “kawawa naman ung buntis.”

i must admit, somtimes i took advantage of my being pregnant. all i had to do was grunt a little and hold my belly as if i am in pain and sure enough, all it would take is a few seconds before a kind soul stands up and gives me his/her seat. hehe. (of course, the acting part was not at all hard given that i was REALLY tired carrying a huge load in my tummy all the way to ortigas.)

the grunt acting was not only effective in the mrt. it also worked well when i had to stand in long lines or when i want to enter a door that is not supposed to be an entrance. people (even security guards who according to hannah have “maximization of power” syndrome) were surprisingly kinder and more considerate to big bellied women.

another time i felt so loved was when my college blockmates threw me a baby shower. great food, lots of laughs, beautiful gifts, and endless love and kisses. i don’t think i ever got to thank therese and jeng and all my blockmates for that very wonderful time.

(my other baby shower hosted by my high school friends got cancelled because i had to give birth that day, more on that on labor day: the great birthing experience.)

yes, being pregnant has lots of perks. but the biggest perk of it all is knowing that you are carrying the person you love most inside your womb. at the end of my 9-month journey, i was happy (to see me child), relieved (that i am no longer “fragile”) and sad because my popularity has come to an end, as the real star has come out.