The Journey. It’s Mine. [Raine’s Mom, Problogger, Techie-wannabe, Wheelchair-Traveler]

Single parenting is getting smoother. These days it feels more like having a little pesky roommate who occupies most of the house space and gets under your skin most of the time. It’s either Raine has mellowed (or matured) or I got used to his whinney, irritable little ways and he in return has gotten used to mine. Maybe both.

The two of us have learned to respect each other’s moodiness, we can at least read the signals (couples of seconds) before something explodes real big. Raine now understands the “eye thing” that says he’s now threading the thin line before mommy gets bersek. And I too have learned to respect his wants and moods. I finally accepted that from Raine’s perspective, stuff that i deem negligible may be all the world to him and shouldn’t be neglected. As much as possible, I try to put myself in his shoes first before I call judgement on delicate situations.

It’s so funny actually that I see a lot of myself in Raine: impatient, volatile and knows what he wants (and gets it too!). Everyday, he’s becoming so much like me and more: more assertive, more expressive of emotions (both in actions and words) and more sure of himself that I could ever be. I think I’m quite happy on how he’s turning to be. It scares me to the bones though. I think I’ve finally met my match!

For the first time I can truly (and wholeheartedly) say that I’m starting to enjoy (single) motherhood a lot. Things are indeed getting better each day. Easier each day, like what I’ve been told…

“Your son is getting spoiled and playmate-hungry…it’s time you give him a brother or a sister”.

A couple of months ago, I started to notice that the comments in some of my oldest posts were gone. Today, comments on the seven oldest months are all gone! It’s not that it doesn’t matter to me, but most of those comments mean something( in fact a lot, with most of them). But why the heck should I complain anyway, i’m just riding on a haloscan free account. But then like Christine, I panicked and wondered when blogger would start swiping out my blog posts.

So before most of them disappear on the cyberspace one day, I already made a copy of each post I made (especially the nice and good ones) and burned them on CDs. I just hope that CDs last long enough. I want to give those to Raine when he’s old enough to read and understand. My blog posts and the collection of Raine’s photos (since birth), are all in CDs now (I’m not sure how long on-line photo albums are going to last too!).

Maybe I’ll wrap those CDs as a gift on Raine’s 21st birthday. He he. Then maybe he’d just laugh at most of his mom’s (mis) adventures…

…or maybe will just shake his head off with my “craziness” in most of those times.

So many exciting, irritating and blood-boiling stuff to blog about but words simply escaped me. So I’d rather let the photos speak about the only subject that makes all other stuff plainly insignificant. The one that though (sometimes) enrages but oftentimes put a huge smile on my weary face: Raine.

caught in the “poop”act 1

caught in the “poop” act 2

caught in the “poop” act 3

caught in the “poop” act 4

Now, aren’t you smiling yet?!

Raine is hugely fascinated by the friendly-neighborhood-Spidey (Spiderman) in as much as he is terrified of the real creepy crawly. Still he tries crawling on the walls and is ever convinced that his wrists can ooze out a web.

Long before Raine became even aware of the itsy bitsy spider song, he heard it first in my native tongue :

an saditon na lawa nagsakat sa sanga
inabot san uran inanod siya
pagsirang kan aldaw tubig na mara
an saditon na lawa…nagsakat sa sanga.

Now this is Raine’s version of the song:

Spiderman…spiderman…
Spiderman…spiderman…

While crawling his little fingers in a spidey manner along my arms…up onto my head…and down and up again and me singing along…

…went up the water spout

down came the rain…

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light of God

Not the dozen (and more) like I first said, but I lighted 3 candles last night at our St. Anthony de Padua’s church:

one for my new friend angie

one for my old friend gemma

one for me.

For various reasons, we three all need guidance and light.

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bedtime battles

My Raine needs long combustion in order to sleep like a log. If I give in to my own tiredness and not take him up with the persistent vie for a good wrestle, tumble, swinging and boxing; I’d rest in bed grumpy, angry (at Raine) and feeling more heavy and tired.

So I thought I got the better end of the deal. Alas, the neighbors have long snored themselves to sleep while we shriek the night away in tickles and giggles in-between Raine’s non-stop blabber of ” isa pa…isa pa…” (one more…one more…) while I back-breakingly tumble and swing-out almost twenty kilos of pure energy.

At least until 10 pm (or when he starts jumping on my stomach!) and then Raine hits dreamland while dear old me pants and puffs; the postponed sleepyness by then more elusive than ever. But as long as it puts a big smile on Raine’s asleep face…I’ll continue to let the TV and the late night shows lull myself to sleep.

Nine years of working in the laboratory and four (plus a couple more) years (heh!) of prior education turned my right hand into a repeater pipette. My short nails never had the opportunity to don a nail polish. My ex-boss used to say that the laboratory is very much like a kitchen; BUT anybody can work in the kitchen but not in the lab. But I say that the other way around is more true.

While I’ve been taught that half-a-drop is analytically significant, with steady hands that are capable of making 0.0001 g on the balance; in my own kitchen, I’m a wanton: Where I’m not bound by measuring cups and recipes. Where a sumptuous meal is not the product of the appropriate measuring vessel used, neither is it an outcome of if whether the method (este recipe) was followed to the letter. I would take one look at any meal recipe just to get an idea, a variation, and then I make my own version of it.

Cooking for me is something instinctual (is there even such a word?) and not a learning process that one learns through time. At least that’s what growing up in a small village in Bicolandia made me believe. Where if one hasn’t learned the old art of cooking by age ten; then you can’t cook ever. By then, one is expected to know her way ‘round the kitchen, which means being able to at least chop wood, start a fire, cook rice and concoct some palatable and good-smelling viand that would go with it. The secret is in the spices, baby. A good mix-match of what’s available in your kitchen or in your backyard…and a whole dash of salt, pepper, chili and love. Cloves and leaves in odd numbers unexplainably always do the trick. Lemon grass, yellow ginger, bay leaf, herbe buena and oregano are not only home remedies for common ailments.

My cooking prowess has taken a back-seat in the past couple of years. My Raine’s palate is limited to the bland and pure-salted fried (or boiled) ones. I’m itching to toil in my kitchen and create something that smells better than perfume, something that will make one forget his name. He he.

Meanwhile, I’ll stick to the exact science and sweat it out in my other kitchen: the lab.