Mother and Daughter in Norway

I was fighting back tears while reading this news article.

Messages offer mother, daughter hope amid carnage

Here are some of the text messages exchanged that brought tears to my eyes. Julie is the daughter, Marianne is the mother.

Julie: I love you, even though I may yell at you sometimes.


Julie: And I am not panicking, even though I'm s--- scared.

Marianne: I know that, my girl. We love you very much too. Do you still hear shooting?

********

Julie: I am still alive.


Marianne: Thank God for that.

********

Praying for the souls of the people who died in this terrible tragedy and for the country of Norway.

Ensogo

I was a bit curious when I started reading about these sites that are supposedly "selling" vouchers online. I saw deals that are more than 50% off so I thought there msut be a catch. I found a friend who already had experienced buying these vouchers and she vouched (yes, the pun is intended hehehe) that these were legit. So when I saw this, I had to buy those vouchers.

P499 per person per night accommodation in Bora!

It was easy breezy by the way, I only had to click buy, input all the necessary details and I was able to purchase my first vouchers. I paid them via Paypal but you can also pay by credit card, bank deposits or payment directly to Ensogo office. I'm pretty sure the other groupon deal sites are as easy as this one. So I hope I won't break the bank hehehe. I really just want to take opportunity of these great deals for our vacations.

We're still waiting for the airline carriers to have their promos before we use our vouchers. But once there's a seat sale, we're going to Boracay baby!

Thank God for This!

It's official! I'll be transferring to a new division in our department (psst, it's a promotion too!). This is definitely a blessing for us. Aside from the usual "step towards my career goal (blue plate, baby ahahaha - hello to some officemates who are reading this!)", we can definitely use the extra income now that we have Miya in our lives. This is really all about her. I applied for vacancies after I gave birth, actually I only applied for two. The first one was also within our department but different division and I applied to that one while I was still on maternity leave. It was really very fortunate that there were a number of job openings the moment I was back from maternity leave. So, the saying "When God closes a door, He opens a window" rang true for me in this instance. I wasn't picked on the first vacancy I applied for but I was chosen on the second one which I think is a better one for me - career-wise. But now I also have to think about how I'll improve myself and help myself in the process in tackling this new challenge. I plan, again, to take the CFA exams. I've borrowed some exam materials and I'm hoping I'll get to read them this weekend. I'll get a better feel of the exam scope hopefully by doing this. I plan to take the June 2012 exam and hopefully it will push through. I don't really want to take an MBA course or apply for any other graduate studies. I don't want to be put into a classroom set up again. I'm also excited in taking on this new job. It's a whole new adventure for me again and hopefully I'll cope easily. There's a chance for business trips but I'm not too keen on this to be too soon because I'm still breastfeeding. At the moment, I think this is all promising! And I'm keeping all these positive energy and vibes until after I transfer because I will surely be needing them.

Sick Again

Miya has cough and colds again, I had to take the day off from work today. This is the second time she's had cough and colds, the first time was the week after she got sick. The first time she had them she didn't have to take any meds, breastmilk was enough. Her cough was gone after a day or two and so was the colds. I'm hoping it's the same again this time. We've also been using a nebulizer to clear her nasal passages. But, as we are blessed with a very happy baby, she still smiles despite not feeling well.

This was this morning. A totally different baby from last night. It's so hard to make her go to sleep. Last night, she was crying, coughing, sniffing and scratching her head (due to her atopic dermatitis) when I was trying to make her go to sleep. That's why she has all those morning glory in her eyerlashes. I was almost close to tears myself last night. If only I can protect her from all of that. And we barely slept. She was waking up almost every two hours and I had to change her position every now and then looking for the right one that will make her sleep longer. Either she sleeps on my chest or in her carrier (her head's elevated), she doesn't want to be put down on our bed. Hopefully, tonight will be better.

Make Me Smile

How about you? What's making you smile today? Have a wonderful week ahead!

Transformers 3

Have you watched the movie? Before watching the movie, I knew some people who liked it and some people who didn't. Guess what side I'm in? I didn't like it as in I hated it! It's the second movie I've watched since I gave birth, the first one was Thor. I'm not sure if it was because we watched it in a so-so cinema or because I wasn't seated in a good seat inside the cinema or it was just so blah! For one, the movie was soooooooooooo long! I wish the first few scenes of the movie weren't shown. It took them a long time to establish the fact that Sam didn't have a job (he should have applied to be an SEO Consultant) while the robots were doing some saving of the world. By the time the movie started getting funny, I wasn't laughing anymore because I was already ready to go home. Two, there was not enough robot action in the movie. It was supposed to be about the robots, right? Why is it that for most of the movies I've only watched people and no robots? Three, why did they turn it into a love story? Really? Do they really have to inject the love story between Sam and whats-her-name? Ugh! The Transformers series got worst! From being a good movie in the first one, then the second one was so-so, it was down to this. Thank God that was the last one!

Atopic Dermatitis

Miya has atopic dermatitis. At first we brushed it off as rashes because her dad likes kissing her (what with his stubles and all). And that's what people usually say when they see her, they immediately assume it's because we like kissing her on her cheeks. This was I think late April or early May. We always had her wear mittens because she keeps on scratching her face. Then it wasn't just her cheeks, she had it on her left shoulder down to her upper arm. Around the third week of May when we went to Shangri-la, two of our friends noticed it and told me to have it checked. I was instantly alarmed. You see, I try not to be paranoid when it comes to my daughter. Try is the operative word. But really, I try not to jump to worst case scenarios when I see something in/on my daughter. As her pedia said, if she's eating and sleeping well then I don't have to worry about anything. Our pedia told us to use a hypo-allergenic soap for her bath time (we were already using Cetaphil at that time but before it we used Lactacyd Baby Bath) and turn to Perla for washing her clothes (we used to use Cycles). He was weary to prescribe medicines because most of the medicines for rashes have steroids. But it came to a point where Miya wasn't sleeping straight during the nights as she used to, she would wake up almost crying and scratching her face. So we brought her to our dermatologist and the derma concluded that it's atopic dermatitis. To treat the rashes, we need to apply hydrocortisone to the affected area. As per the derma, hydrocortisone is the mildest steroids, so I was a bit hesitant to do this at first. But he convinced me that we only need to apply it for 3-5 days. And then afterwards, we'll change to AI cream. He also prescribed Cetaphil Restoraderm body wash and moisturizer for Miya. The Cetaphil he prescribed is specifically for atopic dermatitis. He also gave antihistamine for the itching.

The hydrocortisone worked like a charm. Unfortunately, Miya's rashes flared up again after a few days after I ate sashimi. I was advised by the derma to go on a hypo-allergenic diet. I can't eat chicken, egg, seafoods, bagoong, dried fish, chocolates, nuts, mangoes, citrus fruits, pineapple, tomatoes, wheat products, strawberry and mongo. The first few days after I was given this list I stumbled and ate some allergenic foods and this will automatically result in Miya's rashes flaring up again. So we had to apply hydrocortisone again. The rashes will be gone for a few days but new ones will come out in a week or two. It was starting to get frustrating. Just this morning, I researched on atopic dermatitis and found this. I was sad for my baby. She didn't have a chance against atopic dermatitis. Apparently it's hereditary and with her dad having asthma and I had eczema as a child until adulthood, she was a likely candidate for this skin disorder. I hope and pray she outgrows this.

When I Think of Home

I think I'm nesting. I'm browsing through Ikea's website now and I'm dreaming of how our future home would look like. We have our home now but I never really got to decorating it. It was always function, function, function for us what with the small space that we have. But looking at Ikea's website made me rethink what we've done with our place. Should have injected some personality in it, made it more pretty. But when I think about beautifying the place, I think of how this home is only a temporary home for us - that we'll be transferring to a bigger place. When - I don't know. Hopefully soon so that Miya will have a big enough space to roam around in, to practice crawling and walking around. Maybe I should change my current mindset and not think of our current home as a temporary one so that I'll have the energy to redecorate it. The other thing is, can I do it? I'm not sure if I'm capable of decoating our own place. Sure, I can appreciate photos of other homes - which are pretty, which aren't my style. But doing it in my own home, can I pull it off? So many things to think about, so many things to do and with a baby always there needing my attention I'm not sure I'll be doing it with our current home. As it is, I'm happy living in it. It's what we call our home. But design-wise, makes me jealous of other people's homes hehehe.

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One More Try

Wee! I finally know how to post a large photo! Many thanks to Deepa for trying to help me. Although adjusting the width of the template did not the solve my problem. I had to update my settings for the new post editor. If you guys are like me and want to upload large photos and can not, click on your Settings tab and under Select Post Editor choose the Updated Editor. Click on the link for the features.

New Template

Do you like the new template of this blog? I was so jealous of the big photos from Patty Laurel's blog, I immediately changed my template. So here's hoping I can post big photos as well. Let's try shall we?

Daddy's Girl

Last night after nursing Miya reached out to her dad (who's at the other side of the bed) for a hug, then she immediately fell asleep. It was the first time she did that. She usually sleeps on my side of the bed, she falls asleep while nursing and sleeps on her back. But last night after nursing, kinalabit pa nya si Joema because Joema had his back turned on us. My daughter's satrting to be a daddy's girl. And I love it!