Looks like it’s all Manila Ocean Park post for tonight!

We spent all of our Saturday in Manila Ocean Park as a sort of celebration for Matt and Sean’s birthdays. Sean’s birthday was yesterday and Matt will be this coming Monday, March 1, so we decided why not celebrate in one day and let’s go somewhere.

So we did.

With nanay, me, lois, matt and sean all went to see the biggest aquarium park in the Philippines. We saw all sorts of fishes and other marine life in there. Huge fishes! There are also some custom cardboard boxes and designs that made the place looked much more pretty and interesting (with cardboard shares and all)

I think the kids enjoyed the trip… and the mermaid show.

There’s this post on Blogging Parents about the 10 Best Ways to Amuse Toddlers and I took the liberty of enumerating them below with a little bit more explanation. If you have any other comments please do put it below. Thanks very much.

The list below are the things that we do with my boys. It’s in no particular order. I just wrote them down whichever pops out from my mind.

1. Pen, Crayons and Papers – Actually this is just “Paper, Ballpen!”. Matt always wants his pen and paper with him every time. For a 12 hour a day (awake state) I think he writes, draws and scrabble something at least 3 hours a day!
2. Play-dough – He loves Play-dough! This is his chance to release his creative self. He usually do shapes and letters (just like in pen and paper) but sometimes he also do animals and strange objects.
3. Yutube! – Kids today are high tech! When I say Youtube, I mean he’s using my laptop to browse the internet. When he was younger he would spend hours and hours in Youtube playing videos about alphabet, songs and numbers. Now he also do StumbleUpon, Kidzui and others.
4. Educational DVD, Cartoons etc. – Lately, aside from paper and ballpen Matt (and Sean)’s activity will always include watching Sponge Bob, Dora, Barney and Pixar/Walt Disney movies (Cars, Ice Age trilogy, Toy Story trilogy, Bugs Life etc).
5. Baths and Bath toys – They love bath time specially with tons of toys to play with.
6. Sandbox – It’s fine to have their hands dirty sometimes.. just make sure you clean up after.
7. Field trips – A trip to somewhere nice where the kids can walk, run and play around.
8. Play Tent / Play House – This is can be done indoors. We actually do this on our bed.
9. Road Trip – Put them all together in the car and drive around the block.
10. Playground – Some swing and see saw.

I am sure there are many other things that we can do to amuse and entertain our toddlers. The above list is just a few. What are your activities with your children that you do pretty often?

I bought a couple of DVD during my last day of work for the year 2009 (or maybe I’ll be reporting on Dec 29,30.. but I’m not sure).

Anyway, I bought a P100 Spongebob DVD, Php100 Jack and the Bean Stalk the real story and a Boxed DVD of Toy Story 1 and Toy Story 2 (Php550).

Today, in the morning, we watched Toy Story 1… after which we all went to Waltermart to get the grocery. In the afternoon, Ate and Ck and Kim went over and all of us saw Toy STory 2… they liked it and borrowed the first one.

Took this picture yesterday before we went out for grocery. Matt and Sean love Ice Age 3 movie, The Dawn of the Dinosaur! They have seen it like a thousand times!

Bought Matt’s first toy gun today. I’m not sure if this is the right decision, getting him exposed or letting him play games that is violent in nature. We watched G.I. Joe last week and I think he enjoyed it. Plus, playing PS3 game Resistance also helped.

We were playing cops and robbers (well, GI Joe and Aliens actually) that’s why I know he enjoys the game. WHen we went out to buy groceries today, bought him this cheap toy gun.

You would think that me, being in IT and all, will probably buy him a toy computer, or a ddr memory or something, but no. (And by the way, he has his own Neo laptop).

Check out pictures of it in their photoblog.

Three weeks. I ‘ve been away from my boys for 3 weeks now. I left the Philippines September 2 and now it’s the 25th of September here in Vancouver, Canada. I’m a homestay visitors here in a filipino family here in Burnaby.

My wife and I chat and video call every single day to lessen the homesickness. She also regularly sends me pcitures of my them specially my Matthew and Sean. And here’s their latest pictures:

They are so cute aren’t they? I miss them so much I can hire moving services and move myself back home if that’s possible but I have to finish the contract here at work.

Oh well.. let’s do it one day at a time.