Nevergirl's

in the first photo folder on my drive is this!

Out to rule the world, one toothy grin at a time

Doesn’t my daughter Charlie look precious? At the rate she’s scrunching up her face, she will need the best eye cream for wrinkles before she turns 20! She may need some orthodontic help in the not too distant future too because she’s growing teeth so big you’d think she had been snacking on plywood!

Now, I love, love, love this photo because this is really what she looks like when she grins. Her eyes disappear, her dimples appear, and she starts to look like some pet you can’t help but adopt.

The cuteness overload aside, aren’t you wondering what happened to her hair? Her parents happened. Ask anyone who’s ever had to give a toddler a haircut and that person will surely tell you it’s a suicide mission of sorts — and it is! Toddlers squirm as much as – if not worse than – worms. They writhe, and wriggle, and try to fall off your grasp in whatever way we can. For this reason, a toddler’s haircut can be a very important milestone, but not for the toddler. It’s a milestone for the parents who will have to see if their love for their flesh and blood can stand the test of the first agonizing haircut. After all, a toddler’s primary job is to rule the universe and terrorize a household. Cooing and looking cute are just hobbies – they do it only when they feel like doing it.

I won’t write about Charlie’s first haircut here because that story deserves a post of its own. I’m only sharing for now this 10th photo in the first photo album in my data drive because

a. I rarely get tagged;
b. I’m not the best person to tag;
c. it must have taken great courage to tag me (hahaha!); that, and patience because it takes me forever to answer.

Enjoy your Friday, everyone!

It’s the nose. It’s always been about the nose. Because my two girls have noses exactly like their father’s, everyone thinks the girls look like their dad… from toenail to hair! It’s not a bad thing for them to take after their papa. If anything, it’s a blessing—they won’t be doomed to go through life thought of as “pint-sized”, they won’t be saddled with body parts that have a mind of their own, they won’t have to worry about running into walls and doors every other day or so-or that their singing will make dogs howl, and they’ll never have to deal with the heartbreak of giving the footwear of their dreams up because, say, the pink Dansko shoes they want doesn’t come in size 4… and never will.

So yes, I’d love for my girls to take after their dad… except that in Charlie’s case, she doesn’t. They have the same scowl, I’ll give you that; and they both have the same stubborn set to the chin. But ignore the nose for a moment, and you will see this little girl is a mini-me through and through.

Well, today, after spending the whole day at the farm fishing, eating guava, and running after cows, we finally managed to get not one but several photos of the little girl smiling! Catching Charlie smiling on film is like catching a mosquito—you know it can be done; you just haven’t done it. But today, we did it—and I tell you, minus the nose, this little girl is a mini-Chin. Yes? Yes!

The Simple Life

“It ain’t a bad plan to keep still,” says Kin Hubbard, and I’d have to agree with him. No, it’s not a bad plan at all. If anything, keeping still opens the mind and nourishes the soul.

This trip has been an exercise in keeping still. True, we had to hustle and bustle, and lug Samsonite luggage, the kids, the nebulizer, a quarter of the house’s contents — or what seems like it, a camera-scared nanny, and my brother to Mindanao; and there were moments when we were simply overwhelmed by the sheer chaos a vacation of this magnitude — and gasp! length — entails BUT…

at the end of day one, just when we felt like our feet, arms, and mental health would come undone…

it was a moment of stillness that re-charged our tired bodies, hearts, and minds. We wound down, over sparking reds and whites and kids’ play, and listened to the personal sounds that made us feel — to quote Andre Kostelanetz — “exhilarated and alive or quiet and calm”.

Family time in the TV den

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