Mommy guilt

What's not so good about being a mother is realizing you're not the mother you wish you could be.

I saw the teacher's note in my son's diary about how he he failed to submit 3 homeworks. Meanwhile, my other son failed yet again to submit his HELE project on time. I realized just then how unmindful I have become about my sons' schoolwork. I haven't been giving them enough supervision and attention. In short, I got so lazy.

When I get home, I feel so spent I just want to cuddle with the baby and listen to funny stories from the boys. I want the warm and fuzzy side of parenting but I couldn't be bothered with the messy stuff such as homework.

There's no excuse for this. I'm a working mom but my work is not so much the demanding type. I could come to work much earlier than my usual and come home earlier so I would still have the energy for the messy stuff. But there's really something about weekday mornings that make me want to stay glued to bed. So. Be late for work = get home late = not enough time and energy to spend with the boys.

How you start your day can really become a dealbreaker (if you can call it that for mom-kid relationship)

But I digress.

What I'm saying is I'm shortchanging the boys. I'm not trying hard enough. I'm being irresponsible, making poor choices, like on how to spend my time. and money (that's another layer of guilt. will tackle that separately).

I get fascinated by the super efficient moms who seem to have enough time and energy for everything - work, home, kids, business. They seem to tackle everything excellenty while I settle for so-so.

I guess I need a serious reformatting. An upgrade would be even better. But hoping for these things and confessing my guilt are not going to make me a better mom.

So why don't I start with the waking up early. Yes?

Us

My biggest dream come true.

a slice of life

Thanks Venice for the photos!

Zaki said

 5 Days In  Singapore written by someone who was in Singapore

          Singapore is a great country. It  is very small, but it is one of the richest and successful countries in the world. I have never acknowledged that fact my whole life until I went there. So I dedicate this essay, reaction, formal theme, or whatever you may describe it, to show you my journey in Singapore.

       On the day that we were to fly to Singapore, I woke up very early. Part of it was I was excited, but mostly because someone left the lights on. I woke up my brothers because I thought we should be awake since most of our flights are early. But then I discovered we had to wait for three more hours until the flight. So one of my brothers groaned, while the happy one (optimistic, my parents say) said it’s okay since  he’s not sleepy anymore. So I put up with my brothers for three hours and eventually my parents woke up. And so did my grandmothers. So we prepared, waited at the airport, then finally flew with Jet star™

       When we arrived at Singapore, we were greeted by our teachers who were waiting for us and our other classmates. When all of our classmates were together, we took a bus to our hotel.

       During the drive to our hotel, I was amazed. The streets which I thought had little or no trees, since I heard that Singapore has no natural resources, were full of them. There were no signs of traffic (I don’t really know how other countries’ traffic are, since it’s most of the time heavy traffic.). And, their taxis were colorful and were different types. There was even a celerio taxi! I was also mystified that the beach is so near to the city.     And we took pictures.

        I didn’t write much about what happened when we checked in the hotel because we didn’t do much in the hotel. Anyway, it was the second day of our stay in singapore and the day of the CMA competition. It was held in Republic Polytechnic. And when I saw the school, I didn’t  think it was a school. It looked like some fancy business headquarters. But this was it my mom said. “They invest a lot in education.”

    Before the competition, we were led to a big hall where we were supposed to relax by sitting down and watching Mr.Bean reruns using a projector. Then it was time for the real competition. The competition was very hard, not really that the questions were hard, it was because of the time limit. But all that hard work paid off: I got two silver wards, a nook touch, 1000 pesos from my grandma, and the best of them all, two donuts: one glazed, and one chocolate.

    The third day was one of the best days. It was when we went to Universal Studios ™.  We had a really fun time. One of the first rides we went to was Transformers: The Ride. We had to wait for our turn but they kept us entertained with waiting rooms that looked like NEST HQ. When we rode it, WOW! It was great. It actually felt like we were being chased, getting wet or getting eaten by Devastator. We also went to other rides, like Shrek 4D Adventure and canopy ride. But one of the best rides was  The Galactica Rollercoaster. There were two types of it: The Human and The Cylon. We tried the Human and didn’t vomit, and after several excuses that my bladder will explode, we rode the Cylon.

      After we visited Universal Studios, we ate. We found a KFC restaurant and ate there because we had a very strong craving for rice after three days living on bread, noodles and paella. Sadly , they had no rice. But on the bright side, they had chicken which is a whole lot better than bread, noodles and paella.

       Still on the third day, after Universal Studios and eating in KFC with no rice, It was time for the night safari. It was very dark, the whole place was lit with torches, and it smelled like… animal. We waited in a line to watch the creatures of the night. We sat on small chairs in a position similar to a stadium, then when everybody was settled down, the show started. The first part of the show was an introduction by the animate tamer not to feed the animals. Then after that he said “Do not use flash photography” in four languages. Then there was a showcase  of the different creatures of the night. After that things got out of hand (or so I thought) and a snake got out of his cage. It quickly slithered to people and their bags as they screamed in horror. But it soon got controlled and was turned to part of the show. Then after that we took the night tram, where we rode in a safari tram while the guide gave us info about the many animals we saw.

     After that, we used an MRT to travel back to the hotel, except that we took the wrong train and we were stuck in a station. But in our time of need, someone came to save us. An Indian guy who was working in the Customer Service helped us by finding taxis for us and letting my mom dad grandma and brothers rest in his  resting place. We will never forget him (I hope.).

After sleeping at 2 am and waking up at 7 am, on our fourth day in singapore we went to Marina Bay Sands(which is a tower, not a beach). We went up the fifty seventh floor to, of all things, take pictures. We exited the building and went to the mall to shop. Then we ate lunch, which was finally with rice. After eating, we shopped some more. After that it was our last day in Singapore so we packed our stuff, went to the airport, and flew back to the Philippines. 

    It feels kind of weird now to look at streets with little trees and lots of traffic

   But at least I can eat rice again and had a great experience in Singapore.