Maia Travels: Mother's Day At Bag Of Beans

Tagaytay is becoming a favorite destination for our little family. Thinking that it's much cooler over there, we left the house early last Sunday to hear mass at Ina Ng Laging Saklolo. Then we planned to have breakfast after at the main branch of Bag of Beans further up in Mendez. I just learned recently that they now have a branch at the Tagaytay Rotunda strip of restos (what's that called exactly? I can't remember anymore). But wanting to find a more comfortable and well, quite breakfast place we decided to take a extra few more kilometers to travel to where the original cafe is.

The last time we ate at BoB was when Tibs and I were planning our wedding in 2007. We stumbled into this quaint little cafe (if I remember correctly, the extension where the buffet set up is now was not there yet) because we were looking for a big place to for our families to stay in after the wedding. Although we already acquired our house then, it wasn't big enough for several families to stay in. Good thing, as I was a member of w@w then, I found Amirsache Villa and we were able to rent the entire place.

Oppps, I digress once again. Sorry about that. Going back to my story, we've stopped over the store several times after that coffee date often when my family comes over to visit but we never thought of stopping there to grab a bite. We've always just come back for the bread and never really bothered to check out the restaurant inside.

Deciding to spend our mother's day there was just right. Although the resto was packed when we arrived at around 9:30 am, we were immediately ushered to available seats. But as they were bursting with guests, food took a little longer (probably than usual) even if we only ordered usual pinoy breakfast fare of longanisa, chicken tocino, chicken pork asado. I ordered funny face pancakes for the little miss because the day before she mentioned of wanting to make me pancakes for mother's day breakfast (and i indeed ended up eating most of the pancakes and her eating most of my longa meal). Tibs upsized to bottomless brewed coffeesince we both are huge coffee drinkers. I think we still make better brewed coffee though. With our ever-reliable tiny 3d coffee maker and a few spoonfuls of Monk's Blend ground robusta coffee. I got curious too how the restaurant turned out to be so packed with hungry guests so early in the day and the servers told me they open as early as 6. I made a mental note to invite the hubs for an even earlier breakfast date (and maybe a short run? hmmmm) one of these days.

 The restaurant also serves buffet breakfast (at P395/person) and brunch (at 495/person).

While we wait for our food, Maia, Ate Inday and I took the opportunity to explore the area and took turns posing for photos in almost every photo op-friendly corner. We were silly like that. The little girl even set a limit on the number of shots we should take of her. (Dito mommy, 4 pictures. Dito 5 ha. Kailangan 5. two pictures lang tayo dito, mommy. Kalurkey having a camera-hugging kid)

So even if the day was supposed to be all for me, it turned out to be HER day mostly. The number of photos of her alone would be enough testament to that. Gone is that camera reticent kid that I used to chase just to steal a few decent photos from. Lately, she gleefully volunteers to have her photo taken.

We left Tagaytay just before noon. The highway was not that busy when we got there around 8am-ish but at noontime, it was evident that it was a special Sunday. Most restaurants we passed by were all packed with nary a vacant parking spot within plain sight. I guess on special days like this it's better to plan an early morning trip if you ever decide to come up to Tagaytay.

I'm really happy that Tagaytay is now very commuter-friendly. It makes planning for special weekends a lot more easier for me.

How did you spend your mother's day?

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Bag Of Beans
Coffeeshop, Restaurant and Bakery
115 Aguinaldo Highway, Crossing Mendez West
Tagaytay City
046 413 2724

How to commute to Bag of Beans via Aguinaldo Hi-way 

Take bus or jeepney (at the Olivarez terminal) that is heading towards Nasugbu. Bag of beans is along the highway to your right a few kilometers after Crossing Mendez Intersection.

More on Tagaytay sights here.

This Thing Called Motherhood.

Last night, I plugged in an old external harddrive containing photos from several years ago. I was looking for a decent photo of my mom, to use for my mother's greeting to her. But I ended up browsing from folder to folder of Maia's infant photos. 

I always say how fast time flies when I look at my daughter. But truthfully, with me being so uptight with documenting her every move, I can hardly measure how far she's grown physically just by looking. Sometimes, how fast time flies just end up as a declaration of time that passed and not so much of me having a point of comparison on the physical aspect anymore. I hope you get what I mean.

Not till I saw these photos again. And I'm glad I made friends with my ever reliable point and shoot when this little girl was just a tiny little thing. I remember how tough our first 2 years were. I remembered the countless meltdowns, sometimes to the point of me actually questioning my ability to parent a child. 

But all those doubts were somehow put to rest now. I look at my little dalagita and my heart just swells. With pride. With love. With hope. With assurance. That after every emotional rollercoaster that we've been through, I somehow existed for this particular purpose. To be this kid's mother. To help raise this tiny little thing to become something - somebody with a purpose as well - someday.

Thank you for always pushing me to strive to be the best, Maia. I am a better person now because of you. You and daddy helped shape me to be BETTER. This thing called motherhood is the best thing that ever happened to me. 

Posting my favorite photos here from some almost 5 years ago:

Arts-N-Crafts: A Card For Mommy on Mother's Day

Today was some sort of a downer for me. I spent half of my day fighting my way through Hiragana and Katakana charts in my 4-hour Nihongo class. I felt I was at my dumbest today. I was stuck at learning the alphabets while everyone around me were already discussing and exchanging sentences. And mind you, my classmates were just in their early 20s. Amazing kids. Their memory just blows me away. I'm all praises.

But I'm glad we had a teacher who doesn't give up (thank you, Maam!), 30 minutes before we wrapped up the class I was finally able to construct my interrogative statements successfully and finish an assigned interactive activity with a classmate. That felt really good, I tell ya. Still, it drained me hard and left me with no energy to think of mother's day celebrations. All I wanted then was just to get home and sleep. SLEEP. sleep. All these things happening around me are making me miss a lot in the family front. That makes me even more guiltier than ever. Not that anyone's complaining.

If there's one thing that I realized amidst all these raucous around me, it is the fact that I think I found where my calmness lies. And that is in this motherhood thing. I may stumble in many aspects of my life, but it was from being a mother that I find my strength. I may be amiss on my family duties but they always rally behind me. No matter what. And while I was devoid of energy already when I finally got home this afternoon, I enter our bedroom and find this little surprise hanging by the cabinet door.

Tibs rarely makes the effort to engage on arts and crafts with Maia but today he surprised me with something that I never expected him to do - a handmade card for mother's day. You see that binding on the card, they painstakingly sewed that to convert the cover of Maia's used drawing booklet unto my mother's day card.

Admiring her work of art. She kept pointing at the heart doodles. Ang galing ko Mommy, di ba?
Tibs claims he didn't guide her hands while writing the Happy Moms Day part. Ang galing, galing nga ano?

And one more thing that made my heart flutter was that hearing the little girl say this straight and clearly: HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, MOMMY!

Oh my heart was just bursting at the seams when I heard that. Of course, that came with her trademark "I LOVE YOU, WE ROCK! SWEET KISS!" But given this and the effort on the card, I just feel I'm the luckiest momma in the entire galaxy!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY AGAIN TO ALL YOU FANTASTIC, HARDWORKING MOTHER'S OUT THERE! 

How was your Mother's day celebration?

p.s. Tibs was nursing a little tampo the past few days because Maia has been refusing to kiss him. He feels bad that he now had to coerce the little girl who once generously showered him with kisses into giving him a tiny peck on the cheek while I would just say a simple good morning greeting and get not just one but a pair of kisses on the cheek. So he thinks by writing this, he's finally gotten back at me.

Sorry to disappoint you Sir. But I bet when she wakes up tomorrow, you still don't get a kiss while I -- still get tons.
**Evil Laugh**

Celebrating Mother's Day at Home

I initially planned on doing another letter to Maia post for mother's day because after all, she was the reason why I get to call that day MY day along with many other awesome, hardworking moms out there. But then the weather yesterday just did not allow me to get my little quiet time as I'd hope to so lemme just share with you how we celebrated mother's day yesterday.

We slept in till around 8 am which was already late considering we normally start our weekend mornings at 6-630. Then, I prepared a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs for our family of 3. Maia was not used to eating processed meat so she never got around to finishing her piece of the bacon but devoured the eggs and asked for a second helping even.

After breakfast we waited till the daddy of the house finished watching the nba playoffs then we started our main activity for the day which was storytelling and tadahhhhh - arts and crafts! I finally got the go from the big boss to buy some art supplies the day before so when I got the supplies out Maia was just so excited for us to start with the activity. I guess though arts and crafts is not really me because Maia got easily bored with us cutting and tying the japanese papers to make them into flowers and butterflies. So what I did was I got this art set (it was a gift to her a couple of Christmases ago) out and taped a couple of scratch papers unto the floor and her table and voila! - the little girl was immediately smitten by the brush and the pens! She stayed quiet for the rest of the day moving from one paper to another. By the time we tidied up we had a bunch of finished paintings from the little boss. I had to restrain myself from keeping all the junk because they really all looked so artsy I wanted to keep all of them!

The Big Boss and I also planned for a date night (we haven't been out for ages already! and we were saving time for this day) but in the end never left the house because we were just too lazy and never got around to changing out of our pajamas.

Half of our plans did not push through but I was happy of how we end up celebrating my day. It was a simple one but that was exactly how I wanted to do it - home cooked meal, sweets for meryenda, some siesta and bonding time with Maia in between. The little boss was just as happy to have us all to herself the entire day!

How and where did you celebrate mother's day?