Throughout her four plus years of existence, my big girl has always been fascinated with guitars. She would be interested in trumpets, violins and trombones whenever she would watch Little Einsteins. But she would always go back to a guitar.

She loves doing her own shows and concerts. She would sing and strum her guitar complete with the head bob. (Uh… she might have learned that from me.) And she would end with a flourish and a bow.

Sometimes I wonder if she would like to be a musician, which might be a little bit strange because I am not musically inclined. I remember wanting to learn how to play the guitar and the drums in highschool only because they looked cool.

Then again, with her changing interests every day, I think she’s just happy she can actually be anyone she wants to be now, when she’s young, and confident and full of possibilities.

Last week, I over heard her wishing on an imaginary tree, “I want to be the prettiest superhero in the world.”

Whatever she turns out to be, I’m sure she’s gonna rock at it.

Jamaine: “Mommy, look at what I made!”

Me: “Cool. Is that an angry bird?”

Jamaine: “No Mom, it’s an astronaut in outer space. See?”

I was browsing the a website for 60th birthday presents when Jamaine saw the picture of the flower box.

“Mommy, I want my own garden with big flowers and watering can and…”

“Okay, when we build our own house, I’ll make sure we have a garden.”

After an afternoon playing with the neighbor, she came home with another wish:

“Mommy, I want a big kitchen set with a ref and a microwave and a tea set…”

Oh yes, she is at that stage when she wants to buy everything.

And since she has great memory, her wish list is growing longer and longer.

I always tell her we need to save money first to buy other things we need so I can impress upon her that we can’t always buy toys.

Good thing she stops asking whenever I tell her, “We’ll see” or “Let’s save money.”  Hubby and I just surprise them every now and then with the toys they like.

I wonder though when this “buy me” stage will last. Come to think of it, at least when I have to spend some time working, I would have a reason for her that she would easily understand: “Mommy, needs to work so we can have money for our food, our house and buying stuff from your wish list.”

Do your kids ever go through this stage?

We rarely take Jamaine and Kalia to the toy store. I’ve always thought it was better to just buy them toys they like than release them into a wilderness of toys that can drive them into a frenzy.

Of course, we always buy toys in twos, so buying the toys without the kids in tow helps us to control the costs too.

The toys Jamaine asks for depend on what she’s fascinated in at the moment. When she was into the Little Einsteins, she requested for a trumpet, a guitar and microphone.

When she was in her Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go phase, she asked for magnifying glasses, binoculars and a field journal.

Most of the time, we try to find items that look like the real thing. When I was looking for magnifying glasses, I wanted something like the old-fashioned ones with the wooden handle and big round glass. But all I saw at the toy store was a small plastic one with a small glass. Jamaine wasn’t impressed.

It’s a good thing, I at least found binoculars that looked like real bushnell binoculars. They were the favorite toys for a month before Jamaine and Kalia moved on to other things.

The field journal, of course, was way too expensive and impractical to buy for a toddler so we had to tell her we’d have pass on that for now.

A week ago, Jamaine watched an episode of Blues Clues where Blue was celebrating her birthday and she got a blue turtle as a gift. Guess what Jamaine asked for?

Well she knew that blue turtles were only “for TV,” so she asked for a green turtle.

We went to the pet shops in Metrowalk but none of them were selling any turtles. We finally landed at Bioresearch in Megamall where we found tiny green turtles swimming in an aquarium.

“Is this what you really want?” We had to ask Jamaine several times. For the most part, the turtles were motionless on the rocks and they would just swim from time to time.

“How about getting a Mimo?” We were referring to the hamsters at the other side of the store. One episode of Dora the Explorer was about finding the class’ missing pet, a hamster they called Mimo.

When she saw, the playful hamsters and how the cages had wheels in them, she decided to have the hamsters instead.

So now, we have a tiny home within our home for the two hamsters, Mimi and Momo.

When Jamaine started school two weeks ago, we decided to hold off on the toy buying, but I am all for taking her to the bookstore and buying books. Their collection is starting to grow and I imagine how we’ll go on book buying sprees once my girls learn to read. Despite the internet and cable TV, nothing beats storytelling and real books.

Oh of course, when they grow older, we’ll go on real shopping sprees too for clothes, shoes, bags…

What do you like to buy for your kids?

For now, I think. She likes putting on her aunt’s lab coat and playing with her stethoscope.

Whenever someone in the family is sick or feels the slightest discomfort, she always assumes the role of doctor. She’d dig in her box to find odd toys she can use as “doctor tools”.

I don’t want to begin thinking how much a medical course costs or how challenging it’s gonna be for her to take it. She might change her mind, or she might not.

One thing I know for sure, and I always tell Kernan this, I want our family to be so well off that we can afford to send our girls to the best schools and to let them choose whatever career they want in life.

I see too many young ones today taking jobs that they don’t like because they need the money. That’s practical and that’s  a reality for many.

But I want our kids to feel that they can pursue their passions and succeed at it. Because at some point, they’re gonna find themselves spending a lot of time working. And if that’s the case, I’d rather they spend it doing what they love.

I remember Donald Trump’s line in “Think Big” — “Work hard doing what you love.” You can never succeed without passion.

Whenever my big girl asks me to carry her, I almost always oblige because I want to make the most of these moments when she still needs me and wants to be around me.

My only challenge is she’s grown to be so heavy. Not really like fat heavy, but big heavy. She’s quite tall for her age.

This is especially challenging when we’re at the mall and the parking lot is like three floors away. When she’s in the mood to be carried by her daddy, I get lucky with a rest break. But most of the time, she wants to be carried by me.

I wonder if there’s a baby carrier for toddlers as big as her like this ergo baby carrier. At least I’d have some sort of support.

My only consolation is at least it’s like I’m lifting weights and my arms get a bit stronger.

I always remind myself that she’s growing up fast, and it won’t be long when she’d want to have more time by herself or with her friends. Ergo, no more carrying but perhaps less time with Mommy. I wish she’d still want to get hugs by then.

One morning while watching “Go Diego Go!” on TV, Jamaine blurted out, “Mommy! It’s a field journal!I want a field journal!”

A few minutes earlier, we were having the “stay home – have to go to the office tug of war” again. Seeing an opportunity to convince her to let me go to the office “easily,” I said, “That’s cool! Well, I’ll have to go to the office so I can save some money to buy your field journal.”

“Okay… I want a trumpet, a flute, a guitar and… a field journal!”

“All those four things?”

“Yes!”

At least, she didn’t ask for the Iphone 4.

After brushing her teeth and playing water washing her hands on the sink, Kalia tugs at me and says “Mommy basa na ‘to” while pointing to her clothes.

We go to the playroom and I bring out a new pair of pambahay sando and baby panty. She still wears diapers so we usually just let her wear a panty so she won’t feel too hot. Besides, she’s still a baby and babies are allowed to wear just underwear, right?

After dressing her up, she just stood by the drawer as if waiting for something. “Anak, let’s go.” “Mommy, bold… shorts pa,” she said while pulling her ate’s little girls shorts from the drawer.

Oo nga naman. Big girls wear shorts. Sigh, wasn’t she just crawling yesterday?

Almost every weeknight is movie night in our home. This is how we pass the time while we wait for Daddy’s Skype call.

Recently, my girls have taken a liking for Barbie the Island Princess. It’s a movie – musical about Ro (Barbie) who gets stranded in an island when she was a kid. Having lost her memory, she spent the next 10 years living in the island with her family: the panda Sagi, the peacock Azul, and the baby elephant Tica.

My girls love the vibrant colors and the talking animals in the movie, they’ve memorized all the names, even some of the dialogues. But what they love the most are the songs. It’s fun to watch them every time they burst into a chorus, their improvised microphones in hand, gesturing just like Barbie.

Of course, the lyrics are often interspersed with their own words but my girls got the melody.

Another mainstay on our DVD is Go Diego Go. Jamaine and Kalia love acting like explorers, pretending to climb mountains and using binoculars to find animals to save.

It’s cool because they get to learn about animals like chinchillas, jaguars, flamingos and macaroni penguins. I didn’t know there were animals like that when I was 3 years old.

I guess I just need to brush up on a little zoology though because sometimes Jamaine would ask what a particular animal is and I want to come up with something more than generic terms like birds. For example, this animal is a bird but it’s family calls it eagle and his name is Bald Eagle. Eagles alone have 60 species (okay, I got that info from Wikipedia).

Anyway, it’s three weeks to Ohana Day. Yay! It’s actually 25 days but each day is passing faster. Yes, I wish I could pull the days even faster. But for now, I remain thankful that we are getting closer and closer to our special family day.

Thank God, it’s Saturday too.

Have a great weekend everyone!

We were walking to the parking lot after our day at the mall when Jamaine stopped in front of a pet store. She peered through the glass window where a colorful aquarium was on display.

I looked inside the store and they had lots of aquariums, fish feeders and a variety of small fishes for pets. Is it time to give her a pet? I thought.

Jamaine actually likes looking at fishes in those bare aquariums at the grocery’s fish section. I’m sure she would love to have a colorful one of her own.

I thought I would give her a nice intro about fishes first using “Finding Nemo” as an example.

She was intent on watching it during the first scenes. I was telling her about this thing called the anemone where fishes live and that the eggs have baby fishes inside them.

We were doing fine until the barracuda came along. She hurriedly hid under her pillows. “Mommy ayaw ko niyan. Bad ‘yung fish.”

She wouldn’t go out of hiding until I switched the TV off. “Mommy, bad ‘yung fish” she kept on saying.

Uh oh, so much for a fish lesson. Maybe I’ll do this another time with a different movie.