Conversations with Bela

Yesterday, Bela was telling me that she wants to go on a vacation. I told her that we will go to Tagaytay but she said:

Bela: “No mom. Vacation is when you have to ride an airplane. I want to go to Hong Kong Disneyland and stay in a hotel.’
Me: “Ok baby. We will go there someday.” LOL

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Today when Bela woke up:

Bela: “Good morning mom.”
Me: “Good morning Bela.”
Bela: “Why there are only two of us here. Where is dad?”
Me: “Dad has to go to the office to work so he can earn money so we can go to Hong Kong Disneyland.”
Bela: “Dad is earning too much money. He only needs to earn a few money.”
Me: “But we need money so we can pay for our hotel and buy our tickets for the airplane.”
Bela: “But the plane will crash if we bring too much money.”
Me: I just sop arguing with her because I know I will not win. LOL.

Conversations with Bela

Yesterday, I was looking at our Venice pictures and I did not notice that Bela was looking too:

Bela: “Oh mommy, that’s a Gondola.”

And then she saw a picture of me.

Bela: “Oh mommy that’s you”

After saying that, she turn to look at me to say, “Mommy you left me”

Argg. My heart melt after hearing that. I don’t know what to say.
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Bela: “Mommy, yuck you have a big tummy.”

Of course I am hoping that the reason why I have a big tummy is because I am pregnant. It is still less than one month and I don’t want to do a test yet. But if I am not pregnant, I think I really need fat burner. Kids never lie and when she says I have a big tummy, it means that I really have a big tummy. LOL.

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Bela: “I love you so much mommy.”
Me: “How much do you love me?”
Bela: “1,000. Did you know that 1000 means many, many 100?”

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Me: “Look Bela, ants.”
Bela: “Not ants, mommy. Only ant because there is only one so there should be no “s”

Conversations with Bela

Me: “What do you like to be when you grow up?”
Bela: “I want to be a policeman.”
Me: “Oh really. You don’t want to be a doctor?”
Bela: “No. I want to be a policeman.”
Me: “Why?”
Bela: “Because I want to put all the kulit people in a cage. Like lolo Ben, tito, lolo june and tatay lito”

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Bela: “Mommy can I talk to you?”
Me: “Yes, sure we can talk.”
Bela: “Did you know that rooster can’t give us eggs because he is a male chicken.”
Me: “Oh, I did not know that. Thanks for telling me.”

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I accidentally step on her foot and so I said:

Me: “Oh, I am sorry Bela. Will you forgive me?”
Bela: “That’s ok mommy. It’s only an accident.”

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Bela: “Teacher says that is means one and are is for many”
Me: “Toys? Is or are?”
Bela: “Are”
Me: “Animals”
Bela: “Are”
Me: “Children”
Bela: “Are”

Howell bought a planet mobile for Bela.

Howell: “Do you like your planets?”
Bela: “Yes. They are my favorite thing in the whole world.”
Howell: “When we go to the mall, we will buy plenty of glow in the dark sun and stars and I will put it beside your planets.”
Bela: “You can not have many moons. One moon and many stars. OK?”

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Bela, while playing with the Puppy in My Pocket Dog house that her Tito Jp gave to her last Christmas.

Bela: “Tigyaw (that is how she calls her Tito Jp) gave me this dog house. I love Tigyaw. He is the most marvelous person in the whole world.”

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One morning, before we go to work:

Me: “Bela, I have to go to the office of. I have to work so I will earn money.”
Bela: “Don’t leave me mommy. I love you. I love you. I want you here. Please, please.”

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Bela: “Mommy, I want to go shopping with you.”
Me: “Shopping??” (Wondering where did she learn that.)
Bela: “Yes, I am a girl and girls go shopping together.”
(Patay. Howell might faint when he hears this. He now has two shopaholic girls in the house.)

My Future Cecile Licad

I shot this video when she was just two years old.

At early age, we can already see her love for music just like her dad. Every time we go to our friend’s house, she will never fail to check out the piano of my friend and she will play piano non stop until it is time for us to go home.

Now that she is three years old, one of her favorite TV show on Playhouse Disney is the Little Einsteins. Quincy, one of the characters from the show, just loves to play musical instruments and I think letting Bela watched it has helped developed Bela into becoming a musically inclined kid. Would you believe she can identify all kinds of instruments from a saxophone, an oboe, a tuba, a guitar, a violin, snare drum, bass drum, etc. You name it and she can quickly identify each of the instruments. I don’t know the difference between a snare drum and a bass drum, let alone identify all the other instruments.

But I am really glad that she is developing a love for music. You see, that is one of my frustrations. LOL. So as early as now, I am checking out piano lessons already like the online piano lessons of Yoke Wong which I read is really an effective way to learn how to play the piano. Can you blame me? I don’t have any talents so I want my kids to be as talented as their father so I have to find ways to develop that talent in Bela. And that's our role right, to hone the gifts of our children.

Bela and her Worksheets

When we enrolled her to the Galileo program at Toddlers Unlimited, we had a hard time in trying to make her do her homework. She attends Galileo Program three times a week and at the end of every session, she brings home an assignment that we have to do with her.

I asked my mom how we can make her do it as I know how stubborn (like me) Bela is. You cannot force her to do a thing if she doesn’t want to even if you try to bribe her or try every diplomatic way possible to convince her.

My mom is a former preschool teacher and when I asked her if she can make Bela do her assignments, this is her answer:

Mom: “Ako pa. Eh kung pipi nga napag salita ko.”

But then after three hours, my mom gave up and told us that if Bela doesn’t want to, then just let it be. LOL.

But things are different now. Maybe she got used to the routine and she got really inspired as her teacher is always giving her cute stars at school every time she finish her worksheet and she is just so proud to show us her star every time she goes home. So now, if we tell her that it is time to do her assignments (of course with a little pambobola), she will comply and sit on her chair to do her homework. And there are even times when she will ask for more activities as she can finish her worksheets in less than 5 minutes. Good thing I bought lots of activity books for her.

Just sharing some of the pictures that we took one night while we are doing worksheets with Bela.

Almost Fully Potty Trained

Bela is almost fully potty trained now. She always tells us when she needs to go to the bathroom to do #1. We only encountered a couple of accidents when we started to potty train her.

Then last month, we started to not let her wear her diapers during the night. We noticed that every time she needs to do #1 at night, she will ask me if she has a nappy and if she can make wee-wee there. So one day I told her that I won’t be putting on her nappy at night and she has to tell us if she wants to do # 1. And on the first night, it worked. She did # 1 before she went to sleep and we didn’t have any accidents since then.

Our only problem now is she still has to wear diapers every time she needs to do # 2. She doesn’t want to do it on her potty trainer and she prefers to do it standing up. Every time we asked her to sit down on her potty, she will tell us that it is too hard. But before she do # 2, she will ask us to put on her nappy as she needs to make pooh-pooh.

Oh well, I don’t want to pressure her. I know in time she will be fully potty trained. At least now I am already saving a lot because I only have to buy disposable diapers for her to do # 2.

Bela’s First Song Composition

If you will ask me, I don’t think I have any talent that I can pass to my daughter. But not hubby. He is artistic and very talented and he really has a good voice which I think he passed on to our daughter.

Bela has a passion for music and for singing. You will often hear her singing her favorite Disney songs or she will invent her own lyrics and hum everything.

We are on our way to attend the Christmas party that my brother hosted for the kids at Hospicio de San Jose when we heard Bela sang this:

Bela: “On the road, on the road. Can we buy a catsup, can we buy a catsup? ABCs. 123.”

I don’t know where she got the lyrics and I don’t know if it really makes any sense but for me, it is really cute and I am one proud mommy. I am really glad that she is musically inclined too like her dad and not like me who doesn’t have any talent at all. LOL.

Conversions with Bela

I was 15 minutes early than the scheduled premier of the TARA Asia Racers Revealed so at 8:45 I’m already tuned in to AXN.

Bela: Mom, Handy Manny, Handy Manny.

Me – pretending that I am not hearing her.

Bela: Mom, Handy Manny please. Please mom.

Of course she won. Who can say no if you’re daughter is already saying please.

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Me inside the bathroom taking a bath.

Bela knocks on the door.

Bela: What are you doing mom?
Me: Taking a bath.
Bela: Ok
(Then she left and went back to the living room to watch Playhouse Disney)

After a few minutes, she went knocking on the door again:

Bela: Mom, are you ok mom? Don’t worry it will be ok.
Maybe she got worried that I’m inside the bathroom for minutes now.

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Mom: Bela we will take nanay puti to the doctor so the doctor can check her eyes.
Bela: Nanay puti, don’t cry, don’t cry. It will be ok. (while she is patting her nanay puti’s back)

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Bela watching a kid at Toy Kingdom playing a video game.

She has been patiently waiting for her turn to play the game. After more than 15 minutes, the kid is still playing with the video game.

Bela: Mom, it’s my turn. It’s my turn.

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We’re at SM and we pass by the lady’s section.

Bela upon seeing all the clothes on displayed: Mom, change clothes.
Me: Those clothes are big for you. They are for mom, tita and lola only.
Bela: Where are the clothes for Bela?
Mom: They’re at the second level beside the toy section. Why do you want to change clothes? You don’t like what you are wearing?
Bela: Yes

But as soon as she sees the toys, she totally forgot what we are talking about.

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Last weekend, we bought her a toy dog that comes with its own kennel and grooming kit. She put all her animal toys in the kennel.

Me: Why are you putting all your animals inside Spike’s house? (Spike is the name of her toy dog?) The animals might bite Spike.

Bela took Spike and hugged him.

Bela: It’s ok Spike, it’s ok.

Bela’s Milestones at 2 years and 6 months

It’s been a while since I last post Bela’s milestone so here it goes:

• She knows all the animals even the not so common one for a two year old like the flamingo, seal, koala, otters, cheetah, hyena, kangaroo, moose, etc. She even knows how to differentiate a goose from a duck.

She knows all the different modes of transportation like the bicycle, train, bus, tractor, car, jeepney, etc. And she can identify it if ever we see one on the road.

She knows when to use the following phrases:

• Who is that?
• What are your doing?
• Scary, mom.
• Help me please.
• This way.
• Where are you going?
• Fix it.
• Come back.
• Don’t cry.
• Dad, where are you?
• See yah guys.
• Bye guys.
• Let’s go.
• Good job Sassy dog.
• This is…. (She always starts her sentence when she identifies things with the phrase “This is…” or “A”)

She has overgrown Barney and her favorite TV shows now are Little Einsteins, Mickey Mouse Club House, My friends Tigger and Pooh, Backyardigans, Handy Manny and other shows from Play House Disney Channel.

She definitely loves to dance and sing. When we’re at our car and Howell is listening to his CDs, Bela would sing together with the songs “Three Little Birds”, “I Shot the Sheriff”, “Yellow Submarine”, “Good Day, Sunshine” and other songs of Bob Marley, and Beatles. And she really knows the lyrics.

She just finished her summer class at Toddlers Unlimited and she really did well. She enjoyed the class and didn’t even cry even for one single instance during the entire duration of the summer class. I was with her inside the classroom during her first day of class but she was on her own from her second day onwards. She was able to adjust right away and got really comfortable with her teachers and her classmates. She is now enrolled for the coming school year at Toddlers Unlimited.

She is so independent hat she always eats and plays on her own.

Bela’s Favorite Lines

If she wants to change the channel of the TV: “Change channel, change channel!”

If she wants to go out: “Go outside” or “Stand up, wear slippers”

If she needs help: “Help, help, please”

If she wants water: “Water, Water”

If she wants juice: “Juice, Juice”

If she’s hungry: “Eat, eat” or “Milk, milk”

If she wants to go home already when we’re out: “We’re home”

If her lolo, lola or tita is still at our house and she’s sleepy already and wants to go up our room: “Bye, see yah!!”


And Bela really loves to sing. If she sees a picture of a star, she will sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star with action. If she sees a bus, she will sing The Wheels on the Bus. She almost has a song for everything that she sees.

Counting and Bela’s Vocabulary

Bela really loves to count. Every time she’s holding on to something, she would start counting and will even give us a summary of how many is the total for whatever she is holding.

Bela holding 2 balls:

Bela: “Wannn, Two. Two Balls”

Lola holding 5 umbrellas:

Bela: “Wannn, two, tiii, four, five. Five Umbella”

And her vocabulary is continually increasing. Sometimes Howell and I are shocked since we didn’t even teach her that word and we can just hear her blurt it out. (This made us realize that she is a sponge and so we have to be careful with everything that we say in front of her.) Last night, we are watching Baby Einstein Noah before going to bed and she can identify all the animals there like lizard, sea lion, giraffe, polar bear, koala bear, kangaroo, etc.

Who is Bela? By Wowo Ben

Hi and pleasant day to everyone. Wowo (Lolo) Ben or Lolo groovy is here. Just want to share some of amazing characters our beloved granddaughter exhibits to us that we all find very enjoyable to watch and very exciting to listen. For us, some of the things she does are unexpected for a 2 ½ years old baby. She got a very keen memory. Even at her early age before she turned 2 years old, I already noticed her being familiar to every road she has passed. For instance, going to little gym, she knew the way, all the way from tondo where we live to ortigas where little gym is housed. Most of the time, when I was not around, her dad drives her to school. The routes and the roads her dad prepares are different from my choices. With her dad it’s about one hour or more from their residence to ortigas but with me, it only takes ½ hour or even less. Bela seldom sleeps while on her way. She’s very particular to her surroundings, “ang likot talaga ng mata”. So when I’m her driver, she thought that our route was not leading to little gym. She will start crying and even keep trying to get her hands on the wheel. Trying to hold the wheel gave me the idea that she wanted to change route, so her mom and dad or even wowa (lola) would explain to her, “It’s alright baby, don’t worry. The road may be different but we are still heading at the little gym”. Just like that, and all the crying are gone.

Another Sunday has come and bela together with her complete entourage, wowo, wowa, dad, mom, and yaya accompanied her to little gym. After class, our itinerary was to take lunch at greenhills and do dome shopping. To be there, we traveled through Meralco Avenue and U-turn in front of Meralco building. While we stopped waiting for a safe u-turn, bela started yelling, “no, no, no, Fun Ranch, Fun Ranch” (at that time, she can already speaks some words) “no, no, no, wowo”. We still made a U-turn while the rest were explaining to her that before going to fun ranch we must eat our lunch first at greenhills so she will calm down. Imagine, fun ranch is about a mile away from Meralco, but even from that distance, she knew already that that road is leading to fun ranch.

Here’s more, our time were totally consumed at greenhills so our chance to go to fun ranch as promised, did not push thru. So when we were back at the car, we took the road back home. No amount of explaining had ever convinced her that our route was leading us to fun ranch. She knew it was our way back home. Good for us, she was tired already that after a while, she fell asleep.

Truly I am convinced how intelligent and smart my cute and beautiful apo is Sometimes I thought of changing her title from “Prinsesa ng Bicolandia” to “Reyna ng Kalsada”.

Well then folks, till next time. Asta La Vista, Ciao, and God Bless.

Counting backwards with Sid

Remember the movie, Toy Story? There is a part there where Sid (the psycho kid) was counting backwards before he launches the rocket to fire Buzz Lightyear.

We we’re watching this movie this afternoon and Howell and I we’re both shocked when Bela counted backwards (from 10 to 1) with Sid. I just stared at Howell in amazement and he was as amazed as I am. OMG, Bela can now count backwards.

Mom, where are you?

Howell was putting Bela to sleep and I was busy surfing the net. I suddenly heard Bela saying:

“Mom, where are you!!”

It really puts a smile on my face. I was touched that she wants me to stay beside her before she goes to sleep and I was amazed too that she’s starting to construct sentences now. My baby can really talk. LOL.

Oh, just sharing the little joys that Bela brings to our life.

Bela and the Globe

Bela loves playing with balls. And so when she found my cousin’s globe, she played with it thinking that it is a ball. Then my aunt showed her where Philippines is located in the globe. From then on, every time we give the globe to her and asked her where Philippines is, she will look for it and I was really amazed to find out that she can actually locate it even if Philippines is just a small image in the globe.

Now she can also locate where Australia and China is. My dad just took out my big globe that I used when I was still in high school from their stock room. He said that this will be Bela’s new educational toy. Kids are really so amazing.

Good morning sunshine!!

I was greeted with Bela’s beautiful smile when she woke up this morning. She must have been hungry already as she immediately said “milk, milk” after seeing me. She was not able to finish her bottle before she fell asleep last night, maybe that’s why she's already hungry when she woke up.

After finishing her bottle of milk, she went to her alphabet chart and this is what we did (please don’t mind my voice. It really sounds “bangag” as I just woke up and I slept late last night).

She really loves to sing

Singing is really one of Bela’s favorite past time. Just this afternoon, we played with her V-Smile TV Learning system. There is a game there called Alphabet Park where you can select a song from their song lists (I think there are 5-6 songs included) using the microphone attached to the V-smile TV learning system.

One of Bela’s favorite is the Alphabet song and I was able to record on video, using my phone’s camera, while she was singing the alphabet song. I was really proud to say that she already knows most of the letters of the alphabet.

Bela’s Milestone at 2 years old

Last night, before I put Bela to sleep, she grabbed my hands and pointed it to the Alphabet chart posted on our bedroom wall. So I immediately point to each of the letters in the chart and Bela excitedly identified each of the letters. Before, she only knows the letter A, S, H, O, I, K. But last night I was amazed, as she already knows almost all the letters in the alphabet. She can even identify the picture beside the letters like the whale, xylophone, umbrella, snake, etc. And she will imitate the sounds if the picture is an animal, like she will imitate the sound of a whale and a snake.

And now she knows the color yellow. Before she can identify all the primary colors except yellow. She finds it difficult to pronounce kse. But now, as soon as she sees something yellow, she will point to it and say “ellow”. She also has a fascination for the shape circle. She already knows all the shapes but circle is her favorite. Every time she sees anything shaped like a circle, like her lolo’s watch or the rim of a drinking glass, she will immediately say, “circle” (with an accent) and draws a circle in the air.

Hay, Bela will never cease to amaze us talaga.

Christmas Stockings

This is Bela’s (together with her Tita Aliah & Tito Jego) Christmas socks where Santa will put goodies for them. Everyday, Santa (the lolos and lolas) will put goodies inside the socks. And everyday, they will look at the socks to check if Santa left something for them.


And every time Bela gets something from the socks, she will say: “Chu-chu Tanta” (Thank you, Santa).