Category Archives: Preschooler moments

“The beach took my sandal away”

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We discovered our first full day and night in Boracay that during the day, it’s generally low tide and the waters are calm and serene. At night, though, high tide arrives, and the waves can come all the way to the steps of businesses (that is REALLY far if you knew how little the current was during the day!). As with most islands, typhoon alerts are very much a real thing to be cognizant of and concerned about.

Yesterday early evening, Chris was having a massage while Kaia and I played in the water and built sand castles at White Beach. But given we’re so close to the equator, the sun set relatively early, so people started leaving the beach. We eventually left the beach and spent some time walking on the streets to find a restaurant. The place I originally chose had a wait, so we had to find somewhere else. I ended up choosing a restaurant to meet Chris at that would be most convenient if accessed by going to the beach first. What I wasn’t prepared for, especially in the dark, was how far in the tide would be. Luckily Kaia and I both were wearing waterproof sandals, so we were able to walk through the shallow waves easily. But I did feel a little uneasy, wondering if one of her sandals would just disappear with the force of a wave. We met Chris at the restaurant and had a quick dinner.

But after dinner, there was no escaping going back into the water in the dark. There wasn’t a way for us to get back to the hotel via the street; none of the businesses would let us go through their businesses to get to the street (okay, so maybe not everyone here is hospitable). So we had no choice but to walk at the edge of the waves to get back. This time, Chris held Kaia’s hand and walked through the waves. And a few minutes in, Kaia yelled out that she didn’t have a sandal on anymore. We turned on our phone flashlights and tried to see if a wave would bring her sandal back in, but to no avail; the waves had swept away her sandal forever! She ended up having to walk barefoot on one foot for the distance back to the hotel. It wasn’t a long distance, but it was still very annoying. And we were obviously very unhappy to be that family who had their kid lose a single shoe! I was even more mad about this because I just gifted her these sandals right before this trip, and so she’d only been wearing them for a few weeks. I cannot even count the number of times I’ve seen a single flip flop, a single sandal, a single shoe, lying around on the streets of New York, in playgrounds, parks, and at beaches. Each time I see these, I’ve given a sad look at what was lost that I could see, but its rightful owner would unlikely ever see again.

Now, we had to get her new sandal replacements for this trip while here so that she could continue to enjoy what limited time we still had at the beach. We really liked these sandals a lot, and they matched with everything she wore. I felt guilty for not securing the strap more tightly before we left the restaurant (I always tried to strap it on tighter, but she’d yell and say she didn’t like it, and eventually loosen it).

When we got back to the hotel and cleaned up, she gave me this long, glum look and said, “The beach took my sandal away.”

And that’s the story of how White Beach took my baby’s sandal away.

When your 4-year-old gets food poisoning and poops in her bed at 3am

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Chris and I are still taking turns waking up in the middle of the night to take Kaia to the potty to “dream pee.” We decided not to put her in pull-ups for this trip since it would be too long of a time frame out of this routine and might cause her to regress. Our bodies have a muscle memory, so we thought doing that would set her back too much. Our goal, of course, is to have her wake up on her own to pee if she needs to, and to stay dry all night. It was my turn last night to wake up to have her pee. I set my alarm for 1am, but at around 12:30, she woke up and came to our bed. I touched her bottom and realized she was already wet. This seemed a little odd to me; I had been able to wait until 1:30 or even 2am to have her pee, but I didn’t think much of it. So I cleaned her up, lay a towel on top of the small wet spot on her bed, and had her go back to sleep. Kaia fussed and indicated she wanted me to stay. So I ended up staying there and passed out until 3am, when I woke up to go back to my own bed.

Within 10 minutes of going back to my own bed, Kaia started crying. She jumped out of her bed and ran to me. And before I even touched her, I immediately smelled something very foul. I touched her bottom and even in the darkness, I could see that my hand was covered in something dark and mushy.

“Oh, no, baby!” I exclaimed lightly. “Did you poop in the bed?”

She had this pained look on her face. “It was an accident! It was an accident!” she said over and over. Then, she told us her stomach hurt. And then the sequence of events made even more sense.

I proceeded to clean her and her poopy shorts. Chris gathered the towel I lay on her bed, and luckily it caught almost everything. He emptied it into the toilet, then called housekeeping to see if they could help with this emergency cleanup and new bedsheets. Luckily, they came up right away and were quite gracious about the whole accident. We had to keep Kaia in a towel just in case — we had no idea if everything had come out, or if there was still more to come. I was bracing myself if she might not be able to control her bowel movements while sleeping for the rest of the night. It’s not like we had easy access to laundry here.

From the smell of her poop, I could tell immediately that it had to be the seafood lunch we had on the boat the previous day. Although lunch was quite tasty, it clearly did not sit well with my sweet baby’s young tummy. Luckily, Chris and I got through the night and the rest of today just fine, so our stomachs were not negatively impacted by the same food Kaia ate. As the day went on, it seemed like Kaia was doing just fine. Her poops were more solid; she seemed to be in a good, chipper mood. She said her stomach no longer hurt. So we’re lucky that this passed through her relatively quickly.

i always wondered when Kaia’s first poop accident or poop-in-bed might happen. And well, now, it finally happened, and I suppose with “good” reason since she got a mild case of food poisoning. I felt so proud of her for getting through the day and being so good about it all.

Snorkeling in Cebu’s crystal clear waters with parrot fish, clownfish, and butterflyfish

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We got picked up from our hotel bright and early to on a boat for our island-hopping and snorkeling tour around Cebu. Via boat, we visited Gilutongan Island, Nalusuan Island Marine Sanctuary, Hilutungan Island, and Pandanon Island. As we were going out to sea, I realized that the last and only time I’d been snorkeling was in the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia, in 2014. How amazing is that — that the two places I will have experienced snorkeling will be the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and Cebu in the Philippines?!

Kaia was able to get a child-size life vest (after Chris had to insist upon it when the operators said they didn’t have one ready for her…), so for the first time, she got to be immersed in deep ocean waters. After a slow start, she was obsessed! She loved being in the water with the both of us. She spent the most time swimming around with Chris since he’s clearly the better swimmer. I got this video of her watching Chris get into the water with his life vest and snorkeling gear on. From the boat, she yelled down at him, “Wait for us! Wait for us, Daddy!” And without a quick enough response from Chris, since she can get impatient, she started again. “Fuzzy, wait for us!” I love how she switched from calling him “Daddy” to calling him “Fuzzy,” since that is what I call him!

A huge difference I noticed right away with snorkeling here versus in the Great Barrier Reef was that my snorkeling gear here was… a bit questionable. We got off the boat at three different points for snorkeling and had two different sets of gear. The first set I had was definitely faulty: water constantly kept flooding into my mouth every time I tried to breathe through the tube, so I was never able to use the breathing tube properly. Because of this, every time I went to swim and look for fish, I just had to hold my breath for as long as possible. The second time we went out to snorkel, I had a different set of gear, and the breathing tube finally worked as it should. I was able to experience the fish and the coral, and it was enjoyable… other than the fact that this area was a bit dead for fish, and we had to move to a third location. At the third location, water kept flooding into my eye mask every now and then, so I had to constantly empty it out and try again. During our Great Barrier Reef snorkeling adventure, everything worked as intended every single time, plus I had the added benefit of flippers to help me move along faster! It’s a bit hard to compare these two snorkeling outings since that was a group tour in Australia while this was private and in the Philippines, but it’s my only other experience with snorkeling. It also made me realize why some people who love snorkeling prefer to buy and transport their own gear; this way, they know it will work well and they will know how to use it.

Once I got my snorkeling gear to work, though, I was obsessed with finding all the rainbow colors in the ocean. The coral here is nowhere as colorful or stunning as the Great Barrier Reef (they don’t call it “great” for nothing!), but occasionally I did see live coral. Sadly, most of it looked dead. But I felt like here, I got closer to very colorful fish than I remember getting in Queensland. The depths of the water in the area of the Great Barrier Reef we were in were far deeper. Here in Cebu where we did our island hopping, the water was relatively shallower. Here, I distinctly know I saw endless clownfish (hi, Nemo!), angelfish, butterflyfish (the yellow, silver, and black patterns on them were so fun to see!), rainbow fish (these looked fake!), parrotfish (so many fluorescent outlines – I loved their purples, electric blues, and greens!), and many others. We saw lots of schools of tiny fish swimming, plus the most number of starfish I’ve seen in my life out in the wild. We saw large ones, small ones, and some very interesting blue starfish. It’s crazy to think that these bright electric colors truly do exist in nature — they are not just made up!

We also got to swim and splash about at Pandanon Island, where you could walk out for what felt like miles and miles before the water would actually get past knee-high. This made it fun and safe for Kaia to splash about; there were pretty much zero waves to worry about. The water was bright turquoise blue where you can always see the ocean floor — it was like the postcards you see of exotic destinations in the South Pacific, except this was actually real and not photoshopped.

We were also served a delicious lunch on our little private boat — an amazing spread of barbecued prawns, mussels, chicken, and rice. I have no idea what kind of marinade they used to cook the seafood and chicken, but I will say that it was a really addictive blend of salty, tangy, sweet, and umami that had me licking my fingers at the end. Kaia devoured the food, as well, and most definitely loved her mussels and chicken. Given we had no regular restroom on board (there was a pot that you could manually “flush” with water that was enclosed.. and comfortable for someone maybe half my size!), we were given a communal bucket filled with water to “wash” our hands. And then Kaia had her first non-Cavendish banana: a little Filipino banana that was far more yellow in the flesh than she is used to. She kept remarking how “so yellow!” it was. I ate one of the bananas, and I immediately tasted the difference: it had an almost custardy after-taste that just lingered. Yum.

We ended the day much tanner than we started (I am so happy I am embracing my rashguard, as it meant that I didn’t have to put any sunscreen on the upper half of my body other than my face, or reapply, which I hate!). And our New Year’s Day dinner was at the famous House of Lechon, where we enjoyed a half kilo of lechon, pork cracklings (as Chris said, “it tastes like a heart attack,” and we unfortunately could not finish these), more kang kong, garlic rice of course, halo halo, plus a tiny shot’s worth of pandan jelly and cream.

This was definitely a memorable New Year’s Day, and an amazing and fun way to start off 2026.

Cebu: the land of rich culture, delicious food (like lechon!), and beautiful beaches

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Before we came to the Philippines, the only things I knew about Cebu were that a) it was known for its delicious lechon (roasted suckling pig!), b) it has gorgeous beaches and is good for swimming, snorkeling/diving, and c) one of the Filipino nannies in our building is originally from here. When Kaia had a nanny, this nanny and I got acquainted, and so we’re friendly and have small talk when we see each other. When Chris booked this trip, I told her about it, and she immediately got excited that we were going to her homeland.

“There’s such good food in Cebu!” she exclaimed. “You will eat very well there!”

Before I started researching Cebu, I just imagined it being like Boracay, that it was some small island where you’d have water activities and the related to do. But this baseless assumption (that I… just made up in my head for no good reason) was quickly squashed once I looked at it on the map: Boracay is about 3.985 square miles; Cebu is 121.6 square miles. Boracay’s total population is about 38,000 people; Cebu province’s total population is over 5.1 million people, with about 1 million of those residents living in Cebu City, a very urbanized city (and where our hotel for this leg of the trip is). The Cebu metropolitan area or Metro Cebu is the second largest metropolitan area in the Philippines (after Metro Manila). So in Cebu, you could have a mixed holiday with both urban fun and sun, beaches, and water. You could also do nature activities like hikes to see some famous waterfalls. You could easily just spend your entire time here exploring the metro area for all its urban glory, or you could forgo the city completely and hang out at the beaches, maybe even go to Mactan Island to visit some of the most famous beaches in Cebu. The strangest thing, though, that we were not expecting is that Ayala Center Cebu Mall would be listed as the number one place to visit while in Cebu City.

After we got situated at our hotel in Cebu City yesterday, we walked a couple blocks to Ayala Center Cebu to see what the hype was about. It was an interesting experience for us not only because we live in New York City and rarely go to malls, but also because of the types of stores they had. I had no idea Garmin brick and mortar stores existed? I saw a Sperry shoe store (when I always thought they were sold only online or at major department stores?). Individual brands had their own little shops throughout the mall. We also noticed that there were apartments/condos built on top of the malls, so I suppose that’s just very easy shopping access for the residents in this relatively wealthy area? A fun thing we saw for Kaia (that she immediately made a beeline for) was a huge outdoor play area that was covered. It had several large slides, plenty of areas for tactile climbing, plus spinny rides that the kids were getting very feisty over. They also had parents/caregivers in mind when they designed this space, as there was plenty of seating and benches for us to comfortably watch over our kids.

The mall has several floors of individual restaurants, so we randomly picked a spot called Gerry’s Grill yesterday. There, we had a sizzling plate of kang kong (morning glory/water spinach – another thing I learned is that this vegetable is also very popular here!) with shrimpy sambal, pork sisig, inihaw bangus (grilled milkfish), and garlic rice, with a pitcher of sagot gulaman. Sagot gulaman was also new to us: it’s a sweet Filipino beverage made from brown sugar syrup, with tapioca pearls and almond jelly. Everything we had was so delicious and absurdly cheap for the quality of food. Kaia also enjoyed all the food, and she’s been really loving her morning glory while here (another bonus is that we don’t have to worry about her not getting enough vegetables, as in some destinations, it can be challenging to find decent vegetable dishes to regularly order).

Today, we visited Carbon Market, which is considered the main market for all of Cebu and where most of the food and goods comes through. I quickly realized why it wasn’t really listed on most tourist guides – it’s very much a local, locals market. There’s little about it that would scream out to tourists that they should come visit: it’s not pretty or flashy, nor does it have beautiful displays of produce or products. Everything there just has practical value in that it needs to be bought and sold – no frills here whatsoever. I loved seeing the endless piles of teeny tiny calamansis, all priced the same at 80 PHP/kilo ($1.35 USD/2.2 lb). The pineapples are also so small here, just like we saw in Manila Chinatown: the largest of the tiny pineapples were just a tad bigger than my fist!

I usually don’t mind this and enjoy the locals’ markets, but I will be honest and say that of all the markets we’ve visited thus far around the world, Carbon Market was likely the least pleasant. There were many sections of this market we walked through where the smells were a combination of rotting fish to heated rubbish. Kaia, who over the last six months, has become increasingly aware and knowledgable of unpleasant odors, immediately started yelling out, “It smells! It smells!”, indicating that she wanted to leave as soon as possible to be free of said foul odors. Her face looked so distressed. And frankly, I couldn’t really blame her. She yelled this out several times, and at one moment, it was right when Chris identified where the fish market was. This was also when we noticed how wet the floors were in there, and thought the fish market smells would likely not be too fun for any of us. So we decided not to go in and instead to wander around the streets of the market instead.

The one big win of going to the market, other than seeing some nice views of the city through the top floors, was running into some jackfruit vendors along the streets. We’re lucky in that we are visiting during jackfruit season (though it seems we were five months off from peak durian season, unfortunately), so I asked a vendor how much she charged for hers. She said 150 PHP/kilo (that’s about $2.54 USD for 2.2 pounds of fruit!). I chose a pre-cut chunk of jackfruit that was about 250 PHP, and she agreed to slice all the jackfruit pockets out for me (there was no way I was going to do this work on my own!). We ate some right away, and even Kaia got into it and kept asking for more. I love watching her really get into our favorite foods. Unfortunately, she did not have the same reaction to trying the mangosteen I bought in Manila Chinatown. But given that we already had so little flesh in those, it was fine that just Chris and I ate it.

We’re all sleeping early tonight despite it being New Year’s Eve so that we can wake up bright and early for an island hopping and snorkeling adventure tomorrow. Chris said it reminded him of our New Year’s Eve in Indonesia in 2019, when we were in Yogyakarta and had to wake up before sunrise to see Borobudur Temple. I have a feeling this will be even more exciting because this will involve not only a boat, but being in deep water (which will be Pookster’s first time!).

One day eating in Manila

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Manila, the capital of the Philippines and the country’s largest metro area, is one of those places that you rarely hear about international tourists visiting unless they are either originally from there, are visiting family, or simply transiting through to get to more (internationally) popular places like Boracay or Palawan. With a population of over 14 million people, Metro Manila is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. It is also known for its chaotic traffic, which I was quite wary of before we arrived. Manila to the Philippines is kind of like Jakarta to Indonesia from an international traveler’s standpoint: it’s a capital city that people either transit through or manage to avoid entirely because most international travelers prefer more buzzy destinations, like Palawan, Cebu, or Boracay in the Philippines, or for Indonesia, the most obvious destination of Bali.

Manila is a strange city in that its large skyscrapers are not all concentrated in one section of the city. It actually has several very disparate parts of the city that are very spread out, each with their own concrete jungles! I noticed this when we were landing at the airport and thought about how unusual this was. We split our one day in Manila yesterday between the historic neighborhood and its Chinatown, also known as Binondo, which is supposed to be the oldest Chinatown in the world. It was established in 1594 as a permanent settlement for Chinese-Catholic immigrants. One thing I didn’t realize before coming to Manila and reading about it is that there’s actually a distinctive fusion cuisine for Chinese-Filipino food. One of the examples we got to try today was the Binondo-style fresh lumpia. This is not lumpia as in the Filipino fried egg rolls you may be familiar with, but rather a freshly packed spring roll stuffed with various vegetables, minced pork, crushed peanuts, brown sugar, seaweed, and crispy fried vermicelli noodles. To be honest, this was a bit sweet for us, but it did emphasize how Filipinos do like their foods on the sweeter side.

Siomai (or shu mai/shao mai/siu mai) is wildly popular here: you see endless street vendors selling these, and pretty much all the restaurants have different versions of them. They are huge, plump, fat, and brimming with pork. These are far larger than the ones you’d get at the average Chinese spot, whether it was for takeout or at a dim sum/tea house. We got some at a noodle shop we visited, and they were multiple mouthfuls big! The ones I am used to eating in Cantonese restaurants and dim sum houses typically have a mix of pork and shrimp, but these had pork only.

One interesting thing I liked seeing were the Lunar New Year decorations already up and being sold on the streets. The wreath that stood out to me the most was a true fusion of Chinese and Filipino cultures: a round wreath of calamansis all around, framing a teeny tiny fist-sized pineapple, then wrapped with a red bow, with red and gold tassels dangling down. That’s probably the best Lunar New Year decoration I’ve ever seen — ever. I would love to hang that in my house (and have unlimited access to calamansis!).

I also love that little calamansis are served with pretty much all your dishes to add a little sour/tart flair to your food. This came with pretty much everything, whether it was dry noodles, soup noodles, or sizzling meat plates. While I didn’t always add this to my dishes, I did either suck them up myself or have Kaia eat them. Kaia enjoyed chewing them down to pulp! These tiny suckers have so many seeds for how small they are! Kaia did NOT enjoy all the seeds, though.

In just our first day in the Philippines, we already got our ube fix: in the morning, we shared a mango topped ube cheesecake shake; Kaia requested an ube swirl bun from a little bakery in the historical neighborhood. There, I saw a six-pack of ube cheese pandesal for just 120 PHP – that’s about $2 USD. I was tempted to get it, but I thought that my head was getting a bit too ahead of my belly, so I resisted. In the afternoon at Divisoria Mall, we shared a mango smoothie, plus our first halo halo topped with a huge scoop of ube ice cream. I wasn’t sure what Kaia liked more – the ube ice cream or all the colorful jellies mixed into the shaved ice.

We ended the day in Bonifacio Global City (BGC), a neighborhood that seemed a world away from Chinatown and the historical neighborhood, and ate a delicious meal of kare kare beef stew, lechon kawali, and garlic rice, with fresh calamansi and dalandan (a Filipino citrus) juices. If there was one thing to be certain about the Philippines, it is that I was pretty darn sure we would eat well here. And after just a day, I can say I was definitely right in that assumption.