Andre is now 16 months old. He can walk on his own without me being afraid that he might stumble and fall. He can now walk around the house by his own. Based on his last check-up with his Pedia last August, he now weighs 12 kg. His next check-up will be on October for his 2nd influenza vaccination.

He already knows how to play with us. He likes it when we chase him and tell him, “Ayan na!”, then he’ll run until he reaches our bed thinking that he’s already safe there, that we can’t catch him there. It’s a great feeling to see your child learning new things each and every day. Time really runs so fast. Recently, he was able to say “Ka-ka” and “ma-ma”. Everytime he wants to go downstairs or go out of his playpen, he’ll say “ba-ba”. Whenever he wants his milk, he’ll just say “de-de”. He already knows what he wants.

He’s a sweet boy. Every time he sees his dad embracing me, he will quickly come to us and force himself to sit between us, and when he successfully put himself between us, he’ll just sit there and clap his hands. We don’t know if it’s a sign of jealousy. But, in a way, I love it! I love the feeling that he doesn’t want to allow anyone to kiss or hug me, or even get me; the feeling that he wants to protect me. One funny thing about him is that while he’s still awake, he doesn’t want to see us turning our back on him. If that happens, he pulls us and rides into our tummies until we face him. When he see his dad kissing me, he’ll kiss me too. Hmmmm…..sarap!

One thing I hate about Andre is that every time I carry him or lay beside him while he’s drinking his milk, he keeps on touching my breasts, and pulling my nipples. I don’t know why he seems to enjoy doing it. Maybe he just misses my breast because I breastfed him for 1 yr. He seems to be a naughty kid. His grandmas are complaining na kasi sobrang likot and makulit na. He loves to stay outside the house, to see other kids playing in the streets. He laughs at them and smiles at them when he hears other kids laughing and sees them running. Babaw ngkaligayahan!

Haaay, time really runs so fast. I love and enjoy every single moment of it. Nakakaalis talaga ngpagod! Andre, you really bring us so much joy. You are the apple of our eyes. You always make us smile. Your cute smile makes everybody love you more. May God bless you always and keep you safe and healthy. We love you son! Mwah

At last, I will be able to post the second part of my earlier post. Here it goes…

My parents and youngest sister visited us three weeks ago. So I prepared a lunch for them. Since my parents are not allowed to eat foods high in cholesterol, we just had grilled squids and barbequed liempo (pork belly). They love squids and my husband is a carnivore hehe. For the squids, I just put salt and pepper, and about 2 tsps of kalamansi before grilling.

What makes a good barbeque is the marinade. For about 1 kilo of barbequed liempo, I marinated the pork with ¾ cups of soy sauce, juice from 10 pcs kalamansi, 1 cup of Sprite, lots of garlic, and added some salt and pepper. Sprite is a clear soda, lemon-lime flavored, caffeine free soft drink, produced by the Coca-Cola Company. This makes the barbeque sweet, instead of using sugar. It’s best if you marinated it overnight. For the sauce, I used the marinade and added some catsup and cooking oil and used it for brushing the pork while grilling.

For our dinner, I made pork dumplings and pasta with spicy curried chicken sauce. I have tasted this pasta from Oodys when I had dinner with my officemates one Friday night. Inspired by that dish, I gave it a try. I looked in the Internet for the recipe, and did not found the exact recipe for this dish. Instead, I used two recipes and combined them. Well, the result wasn’t bad, I liked it but still needs some improvement. According to my husband, it tastes good naman, but he didn’t enjoy it that much because he likes his spaghetti with red sauce. For the pork dumplings, I used ground lean pork, grated carrots, finely chopped onions, kinchay, salt and pepper, and added some sesame oil. I wrapped it using dumpling wrapper and deep fried it. It was my first time to cook dumplings, and I thought that the wrapper used in making it is the same wrapper used with siomai. But, I was wrong. I saw this dumpling wrapper in the grocery and bought it. I discovered that it’s different from the wanton wrapper because the shape of wanton wrapper is square, while the dumpling wrapper is circle. It tasted like lumpiang shanghai and my husband loved it because he’s a fan of lumpiang shanghai. I used toyo-mansi with red chili and fried garlic for the sauce.

Cheers!

What a tiring day! After baking 6 sets of cakes today, I finally had my finished product. I’ll be using them as samples of the cakes that I will sell. Two of them will be given as gifts for Abeth’s Aunt and my officemate, who both happens to be our sponsors during our wedding and had the same birthday.

I am now finalizing the computations for the final product. Need to consider several things, such as production cost, labor cost, wastage, and packaging cost. Luckily, I got my first order from my officemate who will be having a house blessing this September 22. I hope that this will be a start of good business. I’m also planning to sell it in schools.

Here are the pictures of the cakes…

Last Saturday, I also baked cakes for the birthdays of my mom and my husband’s lola. Take a look at them…

My mom is now 62 years old and I will make another post about her.

Oh, before I forget, I also baked brownies last week. This is another product to sell.

Cheers!