Christmas this year started well, starting with the afternoon before Christmas having a late lunch, just the kids and myself and their daddy at Sushi King. We enjoyed ourselves so much that I never got the chance to take some shots of the food or of Eric ravenously gobbling up all the sushi. The eve was spent at my cousin’s new house for a housewarming party. Christmas day was spent with relatives on my husband’s side. All in all, spending time with family is always a good thing.

In the evening, while trying to confirm the registration date for Eric’s first day of school, I was greeted with an unfortunate sight of the Stella Maris Primary School website being hacked. The worse thing about it was not the hack itself, but the fact that the hack was done earlier in the month, yet no one in the school’s supposed “web team” did anything about it. It goes to show that not even the Principal or the teachers of the school itself ever bother looking at their own web site, let alone use it.

More and more people are saying how much I’ve lost weight. Just yesterday, two people that I haven’t seen since I gave birth recently noted how much skinnier I look today. I’m not even putting on any effort, but I do admit that I’ve lost substantial weight. It’s strange to me to lose this much weight, as every time after I give birth, I would gain another kilogramme or two. This time however, I’ve lost almost 8 kg and am back to my pre-marriage weight.

I thought about what I did now that’s different from my other two pregnancies, and I figured out what it is. When I gave birth to Eric and Joel, I was still working full-time. By the time Ezra arrived, I was already a stay-at-home mom. I stopped sending Joel to the daycare center as well, so daily I have at least two little active tykes to take care of. Not only busy taking care of them, but probably the chasing around and doing the house chores in my little apartment also has something to do with my weight loss. Plus, most food I’m having now are home-cooked, even cakes and cookies, so that has to contribute to something.

See? Staying at home isn’t so bad when you have at least one little baby running around uncontrollably. It’s like unconsciously exercising when you really don’t want to

Thirty-two things that change when you have a baby | BabyCenter

When I read this article, a few points stood out for me and is very true of the change I felt when I entered motherhood:

1. Where you once believed you were fearless, you now find yourself afraid. Having a child means that you are no longer just responsible for yourself, but for someone else’s life. The actions you take now will have a direct influence on your little one. Knowing that makes me paranoid of life some times. I even have panic attacks when it comes to my children or any child for that matter.
2. You respect your parents and love them in a new way. You’ll never know the sacrifices a parent goes through until you go through parenthood itself. Pregnancy pains and giving birth is the least of your pain and worry.
3. Your heart breaks much more easily. This comes with my paranoia. When a baby cries, my brain goes into overdrive — “what’s going on with that baby?? why is he crying?? is he in pain?? who hurt him??” I cry easily now too, and it’s one of the changes in me that I absolutely hate, because now I tend to bawl my eyes off in the movie theaters… how embarrassing.
4. You look at your baby in the mirror instead of yourself. I mean, what is there to look at, when I have my better, beautiful angel faced kids to look at, even if they don’t act like angels.
5. You no longer rely on a clock — your baby now sets your schedule. Exactly.
   
6. You take the time for one more hug and kiss even if it means you’ll be late. Those extra few seconds or minutes can always make my whole day.
7. You learn that taking a shower is a luxury. I’d rather take a one or two-minute shower than risk hearing my kids wailing and looking for their ma-ma.
8. You find yourself wanting to make this world a better place.

Read the rest of the article and see if any other points ring true to you.

I’m planning on going back into the work force and be a full time working mom again. As much as I love staying at home, I terribly miss the social part of my work life. I’m eyeing for an IT post that I’ve recently interviewed for, and I hope to stick to this job until I retire. Back to my first love, hahah!

I’ll definitely miss being with the kids at home, no matter how hectic it is. That’s all I’ll miss, though. I won’t miss thinking 24/7 about house chores and the lack of private time I have for myself. For some reason, I feel that my life is more manageable when I was working full-time. At least I know that from 8a to 5p it’s uninterrupted work time, then the rest of the time it’s with the kids, then a little house work when they’re off to bed. When I’m at home, it really feels like it’s workids, workids, workids, pause to play with the kids, workids workids workids… you know the drill. I can handle the kids part, but not the house work part, and the lack of rest. If it weren’t for my little Eric helping me around the house, I don’t know how I’d survive at home sometimes.

I really love all the designs I find in ScrapBlog.com. The above is the latest one I created out of one of their many new templates. That image is now displayed magnificently as my desktop background.