A few weeks before finally deciding to let mateo join the 1A (youngest) class of the Preschool level, I distinctly remember asking andrea how sure she was about the idea. I told her that the moment mateo starts school, it was the first step to letting him go. Now, eight months into the school year, we finally realize how true my fear was.
Back in October, andrea and I experienced one of the worst heartaches we’ve ever felt. We lost our second baby. She was only three months old and still in her mommy’s tummy but she was ours. Now, several months after, here we are again, expecting.
Today, Ramil and I celebrate four years of being husband and wife. Dare I say four years of wedded bliss? Most of the time, yes. Because honestly speaking, our four years as a wedded couple has been more peaceful and relaxed than our five years together before getting married. We almost never fight. We have more time together – intimate and otherwise. We are content, happy, and satisfied.
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After my three months of pregnancy, I am itching to go back to my fitness goal. Before I got pregnant, I’ve been walking and running around our subdivision whenever I feel the need to work up a sweat.
However, the pregnancy put a halt to all my attempts to get fit because my doctor advised me to stop running and limit myself to brisk walking. Since the miscarriage made me feel depressed as well, I have decided to fight back by making myself feel better. I have thus made a goal of running my first five-kilometer race a month from now.
To immerse myself further in this new fitness goal, I’ve even started my very own running blog. I’ve also been reading up a lot on running as a sport and joining local online communities to keep myself updated. Just when I thought that running will be the easiest sport to learn, I feel a bit overwhelmed with the amount of information I’ve been getting.
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It is inevitable that a married couple would go through mourning at some time in their married life. It could be the death of a parent, a sibling, or any other relative. One of the most painful though, is the death of a child.
When a child of a married couple dies, the intensity of the grief could overwhelm each of them. Their primary source of support and comfort, which is each other, would likewise be dealing with his or her own grief. For this reason, many couples buckle down when they encounter a trial like this. For any married couple, the loss of a child will either make their marriage stronger or break it.
This love affair did not happen by accident. It was a conscious decision to go for it, a conscious decision to make a lifelong commitment to another person. Nevertheless, it was never forced. If nothing should come of it then we wouldn’t be any less happy, we knew the right time would come.
So imagine our excitement when we realized that God is agreeing to the love affair. I was pampered and allowed to eat anything I want. We were expecting a commitment that will last for the rest of our lives. Imagine the pain and shock when we realized that it was ended abruptly, with no warning at all.
Getting those two pink lines the second time around is definitely not the same as the first. This time, Ramil and I are mentally prepared for it because it was planned. Also, there’s a two-year-old jumping up and down with us although he doesn’t fully realize what the fuss was with the stick I was holding. Knowing what we know now, Ramil and I are less scared and less unsure.
Nevertheless, the decision to have a second child did not come as easy as we’d thought it would be. Although we both knew we wanted more than one child, we didn’t know when the perfect time is to follow it up with another one.
Mateo just turned two last January but we’re hoping to enroll him in the youngest class of the school where we teach. The class often consists of children from 2.5 to 3.5 years old and Mateo would barely make it to the minimum age. However, since it’s better than staying at home with a yaya we’re trying to condition him for school.
I teach in a small, private school where the average tuition fee of each student is around five months worth of a teacher’s gross salary. It is a school where expensive cars line up the street during family days, report card days, and Christmas programs. It is a school where some students get cars as their HS graduation gifts, where family vacations for the students mean going out of the country, where some students have a PSP, a PS3, a desktop, a laptop, an iPod, and such, ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
A lot of the kids nowadays are so used to getting what they want and most of the time they also decide how and when they want it. Some don’t do chores anymore because they have yayas and helpers. Some don’t study at home anymore because they are always online – chatting, browsing Facebook / Friendster, or playing online games, practically anything and (God forbid!) everything they can do online except school work (which is always their excuse for going online in the first place).
It’s not surprising that some of these kids end up failing in school when they don’t even bother submitting requirements. You’d think one or two failing marks should be enough to tell them to shape up and to get serious with their education. However, some of these kids put the blame on the school, on the teachers, on their classmates, on the subject, on the exam. They put the blame on anything and anyone but themselves. It makes you wonder where they get the attitude but when their own parents would come to school demanding to know why their child did not pass, why their child will not graduate, why their child did not get an award, you realize that the apple does not fall too far from the tree.
MU (mutual understanding). Dating. Special Friends.
These are just some of the many terms that young people nowadays use to define their relationships. It’s no secret that kids are now going into relationships earlier than kids were ten years ago. What’s worse is that it’s not unusual anymore to hear of some girls getting pregnant at 14 or 15. Some kids now start having crushes as early as 6 while kissing for some could start as early as 9. Most of them think it’s okay while most of us in an older (and wiser!) generation can’t help but wonder what these kids are getting themselves into.