A lot has been said about the case filed against former Philippine President Joseph “Erap” Estrada’s forty year life imprisonment conviction a few weeks back. No, I will not delve into that issue.

Fast forward to now. Erap has been granted, or given, or asked for or was handed or whatever was the case, an executive clemency or pardon by PGMA. But, the question everyone people asks is: Does he deserve the pardon?

My eldest daughter asked me a question a while ago that had me dumbfounded: “Isn’t it that Erap was supposed to be imprisoned for forty years? How come he was forgiven that easily?”

If she wasn’t too tired and sleepy (at 8pm on a Friday night!) I could probably have given her my answer. My answer would have been something like this: Does he really, deserve the pardon?

But then, how would I explain my answer to my daughter’s question?

As parents always talk about forgiveness as a virtue, forgiveness as a reflections of kindness and Godliness.

Ah, parenting sure makes one stop and think things through especially when answering innocently asked but sensitive questions such as this.

Every Saturday, members post photos based on a theme. The theme for this Saturday, October 27, 2007 is PINK.

Pink is a cool color. Though some would not agree with me, I think pink,particularly the shade of baby pink, is soothing and has a calming effect on me. I do not know if this was an effect of an article and a video I was able to watch eons ago about children misbehaving and being out in pink rooms to calm themselves.

Anyway, since pink in nature is abundant, I looked through my flower photos and selected different shades of pink flowers for everyone to enjoy. I can’t identify these flowers so those who can, please, tell me what these are. Here are just a few of my pink flower photos:

One of the many pink flowers as a part of of the floral arrangement of a wedding where my daughter Tania was a flower girl.

Pink flowers taken when we went to Tagaytay, a city on top of a mountain with a view of a lake volcano, after the wedding mentioned above. I have some flower photos taken there. There are also other color varieties of this plant: red, fuschia and white.

A tree with flowers which we saw in one one of our favorite Sunday road trips destination.

Pink calachuchi flowers planted in front of my MIL’s house.

Pink flower I managed to take a photo of when we went to the zoo last month.

A pink flower on my desktop when I did the Desktop Free View Meme.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

photohunt

Yup, PinoyMomsNetwork, a wonderful community of Filipina mothers all over the world, garnered the 39th spot at the Top 100 Lifestyle Blogs of Terry and Tami Ng.

This blogging community of Filipina mothers who blog is a project of Connie who is also known as Sassy Lawyer. What was a collection of blogs evolved to be an e-zine about interesting topics like parenting, home and garden, food and cooking, lifestyle and fashion, travel, technology and photos.
Way to go Filipina mothers!

Babbling usually begins around 4 months of age. Babbling consists of different speech sounds of consonant-vowel vocal play which are randomly produced. This is an important part of speech development because now, the baby discovers s/he can produce sounds.

As parents or for caregivers, it is important to encourage this vocal play, which is more often does not have real words. For a more significant vocal play production in children above 6 months, one can probably pair these babbling sound to persons or objects. For example:

• “ma ma ma” for Mommy
• “da da da” for daddy
• “ba ba ba” for ball

Take time to enjoy these wonderful time when the baby is discovering vocal play. After all, this is a wonderful start in “trying to communicate” not by identifying or naming persons or objects but mostly by having people react to them when they babble.

Is Baby Babbling on Schedule? <- Click the title to follow the link.

Arlene, gave me another award the other day. It is called HALLOWEEN SWEET TREAT. Yen and Ghee also gave me this award. Thank you all, you warm my heart!
This Sweet Treat award was started by Anni of Hootin’ Anni, a fellow Photo Hunt participant. Head over to Anni’s blog by clicking on her name.

I now pass on this Sweet Treat Award to the following bloggers who I hope would pass this on too, before the Halloween arrives:

Mayi (MixedNuts) of Nutty Thoughts

Marcia of Joy is my Goal, who lives in Texas like Anni

Raquel of RaqMitch

Sandy of SLCHome

Sara of Farming Friends

P.S. Don’t forget to link this back to Anni.

A few weeks ago, I wrote this post entitled Short Term Memory. This afternoon, I was reminded about how this is very important in learning.

How?

Students regularly take tests: weekly short quizzes, bi-weekly long quizzes, chapter tests, mastery tests, preliminary tests, midterms,finals, periodical tests. Whatever these are called, trying to study, cramming everything learned and listened to in the brains. Mnemonics, yoga, drinking of caffeine-loaded drinks to keep awake, even writing important facts on craft paper and tape these on the walls just so facts won’t be forgotten. I remember people even saying to put your notes under your people to be able to memorize important details for tests, LOL! But still, do we remember everything?

But what if, we forget?

How often do we tend to forget?

I have a student. Young. Sweet. Tries her best to concentrate studying. I explain concepts taken up in school. Her nanny and I are like partners. For periodical tests, we split the two subjects to study for the test days. We expect the child to do fairly well but still…its as if nothings sinks in.

I am getting frustrated sometimes.

We do everything to help but still…

Sometimes I ask myself, is it me?

Or is it me? We do everything to help her but still…