Before you're not little anymore

There's this saying that I find applicable to our Not So Wee One Anymore, our grandchild Kai, and her relatively new dog, the moxie puppy Nutmeg: "Let me love you a little more before you're not little anymore." Every time I visit family in Baguio, I find my husband Rolly has grown more gray hair--the inevitable "trophy" of old age--and I don't think it's from too much stress. He loves what he's doing whether newspapering, leisure reading or gardening. Kai has "shark teeth"--two permanent teeth emerging behind her lower front teeth while Nutmeg, in his playfulness, is running up and down the house and has all of us in a tizzy. Just wonderful to come home to. Photo by Kimi Fernandez

Watching them grow

These days, our Not So Wee One Anymore, a.k.a. Kai, often refuses to smile for or look at the camera. "That is not polite," she says with an accompanying "Hmmmph!" And then she stomps her foot like a Baguio version of the Queen of Hearts, and I can almost hear her imaginary soldiers marching towards me to take off my head.

On my visits to Baguio, I like taking pictures of how my husband Rolly's garden, dedicated to our grandchild, is developing. Yes, developing like the person to whom it is being tended for. Scanning my files, I saw how they (Kai, Rolly and the once secret garden) have grown, too, in years. It's the spot of paradise we are proud of in our home where the grandpa can be found as soon as the sun is up, picking up dried leaves or snipping branches here and there with his pruning scissors or bare hands (careful there!). Grandchild offers to water the plants or just walk around, acting as my spotter and telling me what closeup pictures to take.

I'm posting these since we are approaching Earth Day which is observed worldwide on April 22. Gardens may be a luxury during this time of El Niño when farmers and their families are making their parched voices and grumbling stomachs heard, often to indifferent government officials. Now, don't get me started. I don't want to meander just yet to another subject as hot as the sweltering summer sun is.

Meanwhile, how green was our garden then. I used the past tense there with hopes that The Heavenly Gardener (Our Father in heaven) would send some refreshing rain soon.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

The face of five

I have a writing coach, and she doesn't know it. Her name is Lorianne DiSabato. Although I am just an avid follower of her blog found in hoardedordinaries.wordpress.com, I can sense when her mood takes a dip like when she wrote in her latest piece what happens when she stays away from her journal too long. She feels "rusty when I return, having forgotten the route a feeble, circuitous thought takes from brain to hand then onto the page."

My life's circumstances force me to write in almost desperado fashion for a living, especially now with illness pervading in the room where I dwell in the lowlands. My other means of sustaining the freelance writing is trying to infect older children and teens with a love of and lust for the word. These have taken me away from this space where I like to chronicle, among other subjects, the growth of my grandchild.

Makeup time came early today as I reviewed the contents of my digicam and found these selfies taken by my now five-year-old Kai on her birth week. She may sue me for invasion of her privacy when she comes of age, but by then, I'll be past caring. Hey kid, this grandma still is in love with you. Friend Rita Ledesma likes to quote the author Anne Lindbergh who once said that grandchildren are the love affair of old age.

And mine is intense! Happy birth month, Tweetie Pie!

Daytime selfie

Our "fivester" at night with just the light of a lamp

This picture of Japanese fried rice taken at the Baguio Country Club's Hamada is my reminder to Kai the Not So Wee One Anymore to eat heartily.