Red is love, who can deny it?

Ruby Tuesday

Im a one proud mama!

Its Monday today
the sun is high
and the day is bright
so you guys deserve
a happy polka dots Monday greeting

from your polka dots Monday baby-- Baby Snow White Have a blessed Monday everyone!

I think its almost a month now since we had no yaya and maid at home. It was not planned and never really thought it would happen. I was trying to search for a maid, but can't find one. I also considered hiring from an agency but the cost is 2 times higher plus the agency fees are sky high also.

My mom and dad is still here but Im contemplating to the thoughts that things will be a lot difficult once they left. We have a small sari-sari store, a full time online job, laundry and cooking to do. assignments to check, and kids and house to take care of. Im not sure if I can do it by myself by then. I am positive that I can, its just that I have to prioritize things and let go of what is not needed. But its easier said than done, di ba? I cant imagine how our house would look like when the time comes and the thoughts of it already freaked out my mom.

It is an advantage that the Frog Prince and I are working from home. Although we have maid and yaya before, we were still sure that nothing fishy going on in our house. But I have to agree to the fact that although having house helpers have advantages,  there are also disadvantages. It is more expensive having house  helpers and (just now I learned) we need to check from time to time that they were doing as instructed. Our washing machine which we both just this April is already broken... and I didn't learn about it until our maid was gone.  I thought our maid was only concern and was trying to help me save some electricity charges.You can imagine me turning into Hulk the moment I realized how stupid I was.

Baby Snow White didn't like her yaya also. She always cry and whines a lot whenever we leave her to her yaya. I am pretty sure that her yaya was nice but the fact that she's only 19, she doesn't know how to play or deal with a naughty toddler.

Watching TV while waiting for mommy

Now that we are the one taking care of her, I can say Baby Snow White is a happier toddler. She plays a lot, enjoys her bath all the time, and cries and whines less. We save a lot from cooking oil to detergents and even to dish washing soap and napkins. (yes, my maid was using my personal napkins!)
With all the good things that is happening, the frog Prince believes that we will be needing another maid as managing the whole stuff will be a lot stressful esp when my parents are gone. And I agree sigh!

But I do think that next time, I'll be more in control. Entrusting everything to them is not a good idea. At least I dont have the problems like worrying that my kids are left with the alone. Being a WAHM has many advantages, but that deserves another post.

Last Friday, we took advantage of the holiday. Instead of staying home. I decided to treat Pretty Ariel and Sweet Cinderella to a surprise date with me. Yes, we left Baby Snow White and The Frog Prince at home.

I just felt that I need to spend some time with them. Not that they are complaining or that I totally had no time with them, but since Baby Snow White was born, I became too occupied with never ending task of looking after a baby. They were also became too overwhelmed with their baby sister that they just want to play with her whenever they are free. My 3 daughters are inseparable. They cling to each other whenever they are at home. So this time, I decided to treat them alone. Baby Snow White is too young to enjoy being in a fun house arcade anyway.

We had a blast with the deal or no deal game. We spent more than an hour playing on that video game. It was really fun.

Then another game that they enjoyed a lot was the Hockey game. It requires 2 tokens, ( 1 token for each player) Each player's goal is to strike the hockey plate into the base of the opponent. The players need to protect their base by blocking the plate. We spend around 6 tokens for that game, so we had 3 game set. The game sets were unanimously won by Pretty Ariel.
After that, we ate some hotdogs on stick and went home. Such a short but fun date, and we will surely do this again.

Pretty Ariel has an arts and crafts project, and we decided to do it over the weekend. We, because I dont think she and her group mate can build it by themselves. Its too difficult for their age, so the whole family decided to jump in. They were asked by their teacher to create a paper mache animal that is about 2 feet in size.
Papier-mâché (French for "chewed paper", [papje maʃe], English /ˌpæpi.eɪ ˈmæʃeɪ/ or /ˌpeɪpər məˈʃeɪ/), alternatively, paper-mache, is a composite material consisting of paper pieces or pulp, sometimes reinforced with textiles, bound with an adhesive, such as glue, starch, or wallpaper paste. Souce

Papa started early in the morning building the body or foundation of the zebra while I print the pattern for zebra. I traced the zebra in a large carton and attached it to the foundation that papa did. We then just filled up some areas with crumbled newspaper to make it look like a real zebra. We added some muscles and curve using a folded newspaper. Then we covered the whole zebra with stripped newspaper and home made paste.




Since we dont want the newspaper print to become obvious when we paint our zebra, we used "used bondpaper" as top coat of our paper mache. We also used yarn as its tail.  After a while, this is how it looks like:



We just let the day passed and allow the paste to dry fully. On the next day, we painted it with white and used a black marker pen for the stripes. I also coated it with natural varnish to make it glossy.



All in all, it was a fun day for the whole gang. We are thinking of creating one for our own display.