30 May 2015

The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak

I've been following a few mom bloggers abroad. And if you are a regular reader of mine, you know that I love this amazing mom from New York City behind Mommy Shorts. Her name is Ilana Wiles. Remember her Evil Baby Glare Off last year? My daughter got in top 6! Anyway, her level of creativity makes me want to be her. As in, when I grow up I want to be Ilana, haha! Of course, I'm kidding. I'm just one of her league of fans. So Ilana posted a photo of this book on her Instagram (kudos to me for finding it amidst her 2,412 posts) and wrote about it on her spectacular site. This fanatic got curious, as always when she posts new stuff. I told myself I'd get one for my girl.


2014 ended just like that and I never got the book for my little bedtime reader. 

Fast forward to one serendipitous day that Amazon put it on a 4-dollar sale. Yay! I thought I can get it and use the remaining money on my PayPal. But then, just before I put it in my cart, I realized the shipping fee will kill my joy eventually. I still didn't give up, though. In the middle of what seemed to be a deep contemplation on how to get one, a message popped on my Facebook. It was from my Florida-based friend who got married this month. She was asking me about the gown as I was one of her secondary sponsors. My friend happened to be my daughter's godmom so I sweet-talked her in buying it for me her godchild. Tee-hee.

Problem solved. 

27 May 2015

Selective Sharenting, Please

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I was already a mom when R opened our joint Facebook account. He did it for Farmville. Well, games and our big boys; it's inevitable. Eventually, he opened his own account and I took over the old one. Over the past six years of using it, I regretfully committed cyber sins — I ranted as if I didn't have a friend, spilled out a lot of controversial family issues and shared around a thousand photos of randomness of my little girl. The latter, in all honesty, can cause a dose of eyes rolling from some single humans in my friends' list. In fact, in 2013, The Wall Street Journal coined a term, called sharenting, to emphasize exactly what most parents do in their social media accounts nowadays.

Sharenting is used to describe the overuse of social media by parents who share content based on their children. It is related to the concept of "too much information".

20 May 2015

Different Times, Same Love

We have a different kind of relationship, my mom and I. One day, we can be the best chismisan partners, the next day, we'll ignore each other. In fact, as of writing this, we haven't talked for almost a month already. I assume that she has not talked to her mom, too; our Lola Mommy. As for me and my 6-year-old, so far, we are best buddies. However, despite the silence between us, I know that she loves me, I know that she cares.


Perhaps, she's just waiting for me to get in touch first. It's Mama's nature to be ma-pride and mataray, haha. So when Pia and I saw the new commercial of Nido Fortified, we were both broken by our emotions. After watching it, we literally said "awww" and she said that the grandma there was like her Lola, my mom. True. Mama can be stern and square whenever Pia gets kulit but she never fails to recognize that her only granddaughter is generally a sweet, amazing girl. 

08 May 2015

Midyear Prologue

Some of you might be wondering why this blog, of a once giveaway guru slash bekimama, has been directed to this plain and ordinary digital compilation of stories. Change happens, it exists; and I am more than glad it did here in my simple cyberhome.


You all knew Bebengisms as my kingdom here in the internet. At some point, I was called Queen B by some of my readers, who I used to call as my royalties. I find and felt nothing wrong with these labels. Like I said in my about me, I am a self-professed domestic queen. It's funny, though that some thought that I was feeling high and mighty upon calling myself as such; when in fact, it meant that I am a modern Cinderella in my own house. I rule here but I'm also a slave. It just happened that I love playing with words, labels even. So one day, I decided to brand myself as that. 

Now, after doing so, many of my virtual audience believed in it that they actually etched in their minds a Martha Stewart prosthetic on my face. I refuted that myth by showing how our royal dwelling usually looks like. Far from the pristine, minimalist houses you see on Pinterest, you began to realize that I live an ordinary life like anybody else. I felt that I am no longer the puny-brained blogger behind the wordy entries, I started to think that I became a friend to anyone who reads my blog.

04 May 2015

A Beautiful, Painful Change

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I'll make this short and sweet. 

As much as I want to regularly be here, on Facebook and Instagram, I need to welcome a few changes in my life as a self-professed domestic queen that might will put my social media activities on hold. Temporarily, okay? It was just this night that I thought long and hard about this. The THIS, I shall tell you about real soon. Forget all the negativism that you think about the word painful. Isn't it that giving birth is painful and beautiful at the same time? OK, before you think that it's pregnancy that I'm talking about. No. 

So there, I have a few posts that I hope to go live in a few days but I can't make promises anymore. Let's just wait and see where this change will take me. I hope whatever happens, I still have you all. xx