Motherhood – Page 3 – Chasing Dreams

My Dad’s Smile, I Get It Now

March 27, 2014December 30, 2019 Rhiza1 Comment

Remembering the life of a great man, pastor, husband, friend, Dad.

It’s been 7 years since Dad passed away but every year I still learn something new about him. This year, I learned how much he loved me.

Oh sure I know he loved me and my brothers so much, no doubt about it. But this year I gained a better understanding of how great that love is. I wish I knew sooner, but I needed to be a parent first to understand.

Look at THAT SMILE! That smile on his face when he held me for the first time. Or when he carried me (and my balloon!) on my birthday. Or when I sat on his lap looking like a cranky bumble bee. He had that smile on like he couldn’t contain his joy.

That smile speaks volumes, and I get it now. It was the smile of a father who loved her daughter so much, who was crazy about her and would do everything for her.

I know now because I have that same smile on my face when I hold Dawn or Rain in my arms. And I see my husband smile that way too.

I love our daughters so much it makes me tear up. I watch them sleep at night and it’s like my heart is going to burst with so much joy. I’ll do anything for them, sacrifice my life for them, protect them, and be the best Mom I can be for them.

And I realize now that sometime 30 years ago, Dad felt exactly the same way about the baby girl who was growing before his eyes.

Thank you, Daddy, for loving me that much. I didn’t understand it then, but I get it now.

Weekends like this

January 26, 2014May 13, 2019 RhizaLeave a comment

It’s that moment when you start to wonder, where has the weekend gone? I know where mine went. It went to a place where time is irrelevant, me-time plans are given up to expend yourself for others, and hours fly by because you just never run out of things to do!

When I was single, weekends were for shopping, watching movies, meeting up with friends, going out of town, sleeping over a girl friend’s house, and staying up late. When I got married, D & I would watch last full shows or dine out on Friday nights, oversleep on Saturday mornings, and do whatever we feel like doing the rest of the day.

Oh how much has changed since then.

This particular weekend, the days seemed to have blended into each other, leaving me with a blurry recollection of things that made up my weekend—grocery shopping, cooking for and hosting a birthday lunch party for my brother, cleaning up the after-party mess, cleaning up the house, cleaning up the bedroom, endless Despicable Me marathons, nap times, playing forts, bed time stories, and sneaking in a “grown up” movie while the babies were asleep (we finally got to watch The Hunger Games: Catching Fire!) in lieu of a date night.

Seriously, I can’t even remember having opened my laptop the whole weekend. Except last night when everyone had gone to sleep, and I had to whip up a quick article for work. Even the last hour of my day was not for myself.

Today, the girls and I missed our Sunday worship. There’s some measles virus going around and my husband and I thought it best to put the twins on a temporary isolation. Just the same, in the quietness of our little home this morning, God’s message to me was to keep a spirit of gentleness, especially in times when I feel worn out and on the verge of losing it. I’ll never stop being amazed at how God knows exactly what I need to hear when I need to hear it.

I don’t know what my point is for this post, really. I just know that this weekend has left me feeling tired and wishing for an extended day of rest, and yet, I wouldn’t say that my weekend was wasted either.

How do you explain this feeling, anyway? I feel like there isn’t a word to describe this. I never felt this before I became a Mom. It’s like, you know you’ve set aside things that make you happy, in exchange for things that are more important and more meaningful, and while a part of you is frustrated over not being able do what you want to do, you know that your choice made you, surprisingly, happier. Anyone know what I’m saying?

How about you? How’s your weekend like?

One year and one month

November 24, 2013May 13, 2019 Rhiza3 Comments

How do you blog about your baby’s first birthday? I totally missed doing that, and it’s weird because I was so sure that I was not going to miss out on blogging about that milestone.

I was going to write an open letter to Dawn and Rain. I’d tell them how much they’ve changed our lives and how thankful we are to God for this beautiful first year. I was going to post lots of photographs from their birthday party, which would be beautifully styled and DIY-ed like the ones you see on Pinterest.

But then their first birthday party happened, and all I could think about doing after weeks of preparations was to lie down in bed the whole day with the twins and their Daddy, and laugh at how silly these two are becoming. Which was pretty much what happened.

And then the following days turned to weeks, and the weeks turned to a month,

and here we are.

The open love letter I imagined myself writing became a short cover photo caption posted on Facebook, which simply said

Dear Dawn & Rain,

You probably didn’t care so much, blowing your first birthday cake. But for me and your Daddy, it was a beautiful moment, a milestone, we’ll remember forever. Thank you for giving us reasons to celebrate life everyday.

Love, Mommy

I meant it with all my heart, no doubt about it, but it was about a thousand words short of how I imagined their first birthday love letter should be, and what I really wanted to say.

And these photographs, haha.

When we had Isaac‘s first birthday party, there was not a single photograph of him smiling. I thought to myself, when I have babies, I would make sure they were smiling on their first birthday photos.

I guess even that is beyond my control.

Life is just too big for words

The truth is, I stare at blank spaces a lot these days. Blank WordPress screen, blank Facebook status field, blank pages of my journal. All waiting for me to pour my heart out.

Time is flying swiftly and most of my reflections these days remain in my head (and my heart), unwritten. Dawn & Rain are growing too fast, and I’m sometimes scared of missing out on that. As much as I want to capture every moment so that someday I can relieve them, God is teaching me every day to live each moment as they come, and then let them go.

Lara Casey blogged about this so eloquently, and for lack of better words, I quote (emphases mine):

As a creative, I am compelled to create because I want to mirror back to the world God’s goodness. I want to create with every fiber of my being. I try so hard. I try to share and create what I think will help. I try to share what I hope will inspire Grace one day to know and love Him. I try, but sometimes I get really tired trying to pour the ocean of life into a little cup. Most of my favorite moments don’t get photographed because I’m completely immersed in them. And sometimes life is just too big for words.

Well there you go. I bold-faced phrases for emphasis, and then underlined some words in those phrases for even more emphasis. I laugh at myself for being such a weirdo sometimes. On a serious note, that’s how much her words resonate with how I feel and what I really want to do around here.

Go ahead, read the whole thing.

Today marks Dawn & Rain’s 13th month. Oh wow, I’ve been a Mommy for 13 months!

And like a broken record I would say it over again, it still often feels like I’m living in a dream.

Happy 13 months, my loves.

Tuesdays with Normi

September 19, 2013May 13, 2019 Rhiza2 Comments

Tuesdays. It’s an unusual day of the week to go out with girlfriends but for some reason, Normi & I keep seeing each other on Tuesdays. Totally unintentional, in fact I just thought about it now. Reminds me of Mitch Albom, who learned life’s greatest lessons on Tuesdays (with Morrie, yes!), except that I’m not seeing an old terminally ill professor.

Instead, I’m seeing an old friend whom I happen to journey this mommy life with.

Normi announced that she’s pregnant with baby number 2 on Facebook the day before we saw each other, and our usual Mommy date became a celebration of sorts. We pampered ourselves with a pedicure at Dashing Diva, and had our afternoon coffee at Cafe Breton. Correction: coffee for me, crepes for the preggy. No caffeine for you, little one.

Normi and I have come a long way. We grew up in Sunday School together, shared an apartment in our heydays, got engaged on the same month of the same year (September 2010, woot!), got married in the same year (2011), and now.. traversing this motherhood together. Having been friends with someone that long, it’s beautiful to witness another person grow inside and out. Conversations become more matured, and dreams become more for others than for ourselves.

It’s rare finding such friendship, and I’m happy to have this one with Normi.

That said, you know what else was birthed from these Tuesday afternoon dates?

We launched a mommy blog and called it “This Mommy Life”

One Tuesday afternoon, after rambling for hours about our new “career” as Moms, we went home and launched a blog for new moms like us.

Continue reading “Tuesdays with Normi” →

Moments I’m not able to capture in photographs

July 30, 2013May 13, 2019 Rhiza1 Comment

We take bazillions of photographs of our twins. The photos you see on our Instagram and Facebook feeds is just a tiny percentage of the amount of photos and videos we accumulate week after week. And yet, it still often frustrates me that I’m not able to capture enough.

There’s not a day that I don’t wish I had some sort of camera attached to my eyes so that I could capture every milestone, every step, every smile.

So that I would always remember—

Those afternoons when Dawn would fall asleep with her head on my chest while Rain settled down on the crook of my arm (or vice versa)—moments made of tangled limbs, tiny yawns, and breaths that smell like vanilla cream.

Times when Dawn would wake up crying in the middle of the night and the only thing that could soothe her was if I picked her up and sang songs to her. She would lean her tiny ear on my chest to listen to my muffled voice (or my heartbeat), sigh contentedly, and drift back to sleep.

Mornings when Rain would wake me up, tugging at my hair, ready to give me the sweetest smile as soon as I opened my eyes. And we would spend the next couple of minutes playing hide and seek under the covers and she would laugh so hard that soon, her sister and Daddy would start waking up too.

Nights when I lie awake in the dark and I look over my little family of four, squeezed together in one bed, and I feel so loved and happy like this is all just a dream.

Darrah Parker said it best,

Will I forget what she looks like? Smells like? Feels like? That’s a lot of pressure to put on myself. How am I supposed to be fully present as a mom, dealing with the daily wonders and exhaustions, AND making mental notes on everything I want to remember? I’m not. Something’s gotta give.

Days are flying by too fast I have to make conscious effort to pause, hold both my babies in my arms while I still can, and just.. breathe it all in. I will still try to capture moments whenever I can, as much as I can, but I’m learning more and more to do it without a camera in my hands.

Hello, I Turned 30!

May 30, 2013January 19, 2020 Rhiza25 Comments

It’s been a week since I turned 30 years old, you want to know how it feels? I’m a mix of everything—happy, excited, grateful, in awe like I still can’t believe I’m now past my 20s, a little anxious about the future, driven to work harder and be better, blessed beyond words can say.

Turning 30, you find yourself pondering upon questions like, Am I living the life I’ve always wanted? Where have all the years gone? Have I invested in the right things? Am I happy? What’s next? True, you ask yourself these questions any given birthday anyway, but turning 30 kind of magnifies everything to a point where you end up feeling depressed (about what you didn’t have), or feeling like you’re on top of the clouds (for everything you have). Guess how I feel? :)

My birthday celebration has never been more quiet and more low profile than this. And it has never been more childlike and more adult at the same time too. Lately I’ve been having some form of identity crisis: Pressured to act like, think like, and actually be an adult, whilst spending a lot of time singing Barney songs, being surrounded with dolls and toys, and acting silly to entertain our 7-month old twins.

That’s the story of my 30th birthday celebration. The theme was slumber party, where I spent the majority of the day in my PJs, keeping my heart from bursting into tiny pieces while playing and rolling in bed with my cute little dolls:

Tell me you didn’t just rotate your computer screen sideways. :P

Mommy are you taking our pictures again?

#bestillmyheart

There’s more of these photographs where it came from, but.. you get the picture, right? That’s my 30th birthday party in a nutshell, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Later in the evening my family came to have dinner with us, and we hung out in our tiny living room, around our darling twins like it’s their birthday. (I don’t mind at all.)

The truth is, I don’t think I accomplished a lot in my first 30 years. I don’t have a lot of things—not a big house, or a car, or a fat savings account. I may have seen a few cities outside this country, but I haven’t really gone places. I could spend hours processing my life, thinking about the things I wasn’t able to do before I turned 30, places I still haven’t seen, dreams that have yet to come true.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what didn’t happen. What matters is how God turned all my plans around and gave me these instead:

And how can I not feel so blessed and happy and rich when I have them? A husband I’m still so smitten about, two little girls who drive us crazy and fill this home with so much joy, a roof above our heads, food on our table, a warm bed to sleep at night.

You realize, even more when you turn 30, that the measure of happiness and fulfillment is not based on the material and financial things you acquired in your life, sometimes not even in the number of friends you have, but in the handful of people you journey this life with.

Now that, is a milestone worth celebrating.

God be praised and glorified in this life, always.