Following gut feeling

It has been a good week and great Sunday. Highlight included:

• happy Lizzy with her new hair style. I have two girls and both are not the type that care about their appearances much in a daily basis. As a result, their hairs are messy most of the day unless I intervene. I am also the lazy mom so I don’t do it everyday. This week I’ve done most of the days and I noticed everybody’s mood around hair improved. I stopped nagging them to fix their hair. Something that takes me less than 5 min and improves everybody’s mood for the day.

• The girls got their finally vaccine shots as kids. They are no fun but at least it was uneventful and we are done with vaccine for a long time. The girls do like to go to this fancy clinic as they have playroom, juices and cookies for them to pick. I am grateful to have found it this year.

• We hosted learning pod at home two days last week and that’s where the title of this post comes from. After seeing the teacher with 3 kids at the same time, with two kids who are quite “demanding”, I made the executive call to end the learning pod for Lizzy. It didn’t come as easy to make such a decision because I do think Lizzy benefits from doing class with other kids. The problem is that these two are really troublesome kids and they present behaviors that I really don’t like Lizzy to learn from. Also, after talking to the teacher, she does notice that Lizzy is less engaged with class when she’s in the learning pod than when she’s alone at home. So we’ve decided to withdraw Lizzy from this learning pod. She still gets to play with other kids in playdates, so I’m not too concerned about her social skills. The other deciding factor is that I learned there are many kids doing learning pods now, there were quite a lot at the start, for the precise reason that kids get distracted if paired with kids that are not good fit/pair. So I don’t feel ‘guilty’ to end it Lizzy, and she doesn’t seem to mind too much. I promised her that I’ll be her “friend” for art and PE and she’s quite excited about it. Parenting is such a mixed feeling endeavor. Every time I make a decision about the kids, I debate so much whether I am doing it for their benefit or mine, whether I am making a mistake. Over the years, I’ve learned to trust my gut feeling and stop over thinking about it.

• I found a smoothie that I love!!!! I’ve tried so many over the years and always feel I was having it for the health reason than the taste. Nothing wrong with that but to me that’s unsustainable. This Sunday I followed a recipe and loved the combo. It has soy milk, coconut cream, spirulina, frozen cauliflower, flaxseed meal, sun warrior protein powder in vanilla, and almond butter. It’s soooooo creamy and satisfying!!! Love love love!

• this Sunday we went to a playground, first time in 4 months as playground is rare in Manila. We joined another family to go to a private neighborhood and the girls enjoyed a solid hour of playground time, while I walked with the mom of Lizzy’s friend. I logged 20k for the day and felt amazing. It’s so nice to be outdoor during sunset time, perfect way to end the relaxing weekend.

This week plan:

• hopefully I hear back from one of the job I applied for interview (shortlisted).
• prepare for our upcoming trip to Cebu as next week is school break. We are leaving on Sunday.
• do two more heart related tests
• Join a birthday party on Saturday