I’ve been using Ubuntu for more than 3 months now, and I’m loving it! My kids love it too, especially Joel. Whenever he’s in front of my netbook, the first app he clicks on would be the webcam application called Cheese. This software can be used to take some still images or video shots with pretty nifty effects. I’d like to talk more about it, but I’ll let the pictures do the talking for me.

(I scheduled this post to a later date, so this update might actually be a few weeks off the original timeline)

It has been three weeks since I used the baby sign language book I just purchased. I only watched the DVD once. I haven’t opened the quick guide that comes with it. Ezra and especially Joel absolutely loved the little baby signs book for the pictures. However, one time Joel was holding the book and somehow managed to get his face sliced off a bit from the sides of the book, sort of what you get with a paper cut. I decided to put the books away for a while, but I’ll be putting them out again some time later.

As for the signs themselves, it’s still a learning stage for all three of us. Currently I’m focusing on only a few signs that I think are critical to lessen Ezra’s meltdowns. Those are drink, eat, milk, bath and finish/all done. I haven’t seen one indication from either Joel or Ezra so far. I’m not so worried about Joel now. His articulation is getting better. Ezra still gets frustrated when I can’t read what he wants. I showed and repeated the baby signs to him, to which he doesn’t respond. Then when he wails, of course my stress levels go up, and I stress out quite easily.

He does try to speak a few words, like mommy, habis (finish), daddy, and a few more, but not the other important words like milk, drink and eat. I guess I’ll have to wait a couple more months to see if I can communicate better with Ezra using the baby sign language.

A week after toilet training Joel, I received this Baby Signs Kit from Ethel, signaling (no pun intended) another major milestone in my little kids’ life, specifically Joel, Ezra and our newest edition in July. I’ll get Eric to join in and learn as well, so he too can communicate with his brothers better.

I am confident that signing will not only improve my understanding of Joel and Ezra’s needs, but it will also be a stepping stone for both of them to improve on their verbal skills and speech. I have tried baby signing (using my own made up techniques) the words milk, drink, and eat to Joel when he turned one year old, and if I recalled correctly, he was able to learn in after about 4 months and communicated in signs whenever he needed those. Along the way, though, I stopped. I don’t remember why exactly. Without the signing, both Joel and I get frustrated easily and he would wail and cry while I tried to keep my head from exploding from all those noise. My situation with Ezra is turning to be similar to Joel’s, so I really need to do something about it and this is what I believe can help every one of us.

I hope I’m not bringing in too much change into our family life too often. It’s really only been a week since Joel started being toilet trained, and that’s a major life changing event by itself. What with office work, house work, taking care of the kids, expecting our new baby, and trying to keep up with being healthy, life is already very hectic. I just hope God can give me the strength to go through it all. I’m just glad I currently have a wonderful support system that is my hubby, Eric, my mom and my sisters.

Phew. One day at a time.

Nowadays, Eric doesn’t only play computer games installed in my computer, but he also surfs his favorite TV channel’s web sites for the latest games, downloading other games from GameHouse and Reflexive Games and installing them (even taking the liberty to crack the demo games with a cracking software  his dad downloaded). And, (no) thanks to his dad, he’s even begun to browse YouTube for Batman and anime cartoons. He’s beginning to freak me out!

My worry doesn’t stop there. Me being a “fan” of torrent files, I sometimes end up looking at sites with content or ads that are, let’s say, rated R or above. I’m very wary when he’s around me when I do so, as he tends to peek from behind my shoulder and read whatever site I’m looking at the moment.

My increasing concern with the kinds of information he accesses from my computer made me on the look out for free software that filters out unwanted content off the Web and display only kid-friendly sites. I finally settled with K9 Web Protection from Blue Coat. Simply put, the Web filtering software will decide what sites can be viewed or not viewed based on their database that are both automated and manually rated by its own software users.

I’m sure the software will work; the only other thing I hope for from this software is that it won’t bog down my computer.

As much as I love my kids, I have decided on sticking to just three kids, full stop. So when I mentioned this to friends and relatives (whenever they ask when the next “one” is coming), their immediate reply was, “You don’t have any girls in your family, don’t stop yet!”

A boy? A girl? What’s the difference? Besides their obvious physical differences, I don’t see what the big deal is. So what if I don’t have a daughter? Are my baby boys any less cute? Are girls easier to take care of than boys? Are boys that less lovable? And, at the end of the day, who will be taking care of the kids? My friends and relatives?

They think it’s so easy bringing up kids? All children, whatever the gender is, still need a lot of attention, love, care, and sacrifice. I always remember what my mom said to me about having kids — it’s always fun and easy to have children around, as long as they’re not yours to care for.

I have little cousins and nieces and nephews where the girls are much more aggressive and impossible than my sons, so shouldn’t we instead emphasize on how to bring up our kids, instead of worrying what set of genitals they have? Shouldn’t we be grateful enough that we’re bringing up healthy kids who hopefully one day will become a success and be a part of a caring society?

So what if I don’t have a baby girl. I have three beautiful sons who never fail to brighten up my day. Besides, the doc said that if you want blame someone for not giving you a son or a daughter, then it should the husband