3 Months (and rude topics like child rearing practices and money)!

The boy is now 13 lbs. Doesn't sleep on my chest much anymore, probably because he won't fit. He's a handful. He smiles at us in the mornings, goes "eyo" when he wants our attention, and he's been experimenting with the Oohs and Aahs. Sometimes, he leads me when he wants to be sung to sleep. Such a bag of delightful noise this creature is turning out to be.

Observe:

And he LOVES going outside. Seems like he has cabin fever all the time. He loves going out and engaging strangers in the mall; passengers on the jeep; construction workers on the truck beside the jeep; etc. One day at the mall CR, I was hunched over the baby bag to get something. When I turned, someone was already shaking his hand. I blinked, and the whole room of girls were fawning over him.

Girls: Hi!!
Malaya: Hai
Girls: *screaming*

Oh Malaya, you ham you.

On that note, I could also be referring to his thighs. Gahds do I want to bite them. Amf. Specially when he raises them up and down while sucking on his fists too, getting more and more aware of his body. He's begun reaching for people and places (like the door. Always the door.) and can hold his head up without difficulty.

I have a confession to make: I let him "step" on me.

Before I realized what was happening, he was trying to walk on me, and got this look on his face, as if he was walking on the moon for the first time. He looked like a light bulb turned on in his mind. Oh no bub, you're not walking on your own, and I wish you'd get to that later, when you can actually hold yourself up. When I stopped holding him up and he obviously wanted to do it again, he cried it out, betrayed.

I'm trying to uphold the RIE principle of being there for him but not being in his face when he's exploring. It's not easy to figure out when you're 'not being in his face and when you're just being plain neglectful. It's even worse when you're trying to figure out what's 'being there for him' and just spoon feeding. I don't know if he's just at a stage in his life where he needs to constantly engage people, if he's just more of a social animal than most, or if it's something we did by mistake? I wonder how I'm ever going to train this kid to be self sufficient.  It seems so easy on paper, the application though is difficult. I wish there was an RIE class in Cebu or something. That effing marshmallow test is getting me worked up about spoiling him.

I left him alone just now, watching him. He began a conversation with a concrete wall post, gurgling and chuckling at the intelligent things the post didn't say. I can't believe it. Our baby is facebooking IRL.

Anyway, his babbling has me concerned about the communication patterns he hears. We don't spontaneously combust with Dr. Suessian wordplay in this household. We find that we turn to baby talk and babbling back at him by default. We got a couple of books to read to him:

about how unreliable squirrels can get you even lost-er

I picked this mainly for the art, and because the simple language is great for beginners. It might also come in handy as a way to teach him how to find mommy when he's older and walking and running about in the mall. Laagan ka na bata? Hala sige.

Necronomicon for beginners. I kid you not.

This one is a beautiful poem about interconnection and the pretty things that the night keeps hidden. That there's nothing to fear in the dark. Again, the art is amazeballs, and very young infants are supposed to only see high contrast things, so even if he couldn't read along yet, he might appreciate the pictures.


The art of this book inspired a zentangle mandala frenzy in the house. What's great about it is that it's like taking a snapshot of people's thought processes. Chris' zendalas look like microscope slides. He says mine look very mother nature-ish. Auntie Faith's (who's been over a lot for band rehearsals) look very dainty. I can't wait 'til Laya's old enough to join in the fun. xD

I love storybooks. I remember rating books by the art as a kid. Because if the illustrations were mediocre, I wouldn't have much incentive to even open the book.

I wrote something that I realized could become a storybook. Uncle Tom was doing the art for it too. I wasn't thinking of publishing en masse, but the expenses of raising a child gets you thinking about mompreneurship.

Hahay. I think I said before in this blog that children don't cost too much. Well, they don't, but if you haven't realized you can't keep living from paycheck to paycheck yet (or on an allowance), buying diapers every week will make you (On a side note, cloth diapers are cheaper and earth friendlier in the long run but inhumane for the laundrywoman, if you aren't doing the laundry yourself). The way money comes in one pocket and goes out the other, I seriously wonder whether I should invest in the stock market for his college fund or future world tour (either or) and house (even cob houses cost something). Suddenly, finding financial leverage doesn't sound like such an un-cool goal.