Cure for Mondays: spa

I’m 13,149 days old

Today, I’m 13,149 days old and it’s my 13,514th sunrise.

How do other busy moms celebrate their birthdays? What's the best way to surprise moms on their special day? Share your thoughts!

Attika woke me up at five in the morning, as usual. We went about our usual routine: feed, burp, sing. No, we don’t just suddenly break out into song like they do in Glee, not especially at 5 a.m., but she likes to make these gurgling little noises that ascend to many different high pitches. On days when I’m kinder I bring her outside so she won’t wake her father. But on some days when both Attika and I let lose our whippersnappers, we go to the bed where she instantly jumps towards her Dada (or Papa or Baba) and lunges for his dreadlocks. It must be a delight for her to see a big ball we adults call ‘hair’ because everytime she gets her hands on this black thing and tugs it, the man who owns it screams in pain, opens his eyes, smiles and gives her her morning kiss.

Watching the sunrise is also part of our daily routine. The picture on the left is what it almost looked like – my 13,514th sunrise. It’s not much of a photo, I know. But with a curious seven-month old huddled in one arm, what kind of photo could a mom like me take? Since the day Attika was born, any phone camera within my reach has been my documentary assistant because my professional camera (camera – professional, me – not, husband – yes) impossible to handle with only one hand. Neither can I play paparazzi because I have gazillion chores to do. Besides, the best “Kodak” moments are ones never captured on camera. It’s these lightning-speed, spontaneous reactions a baby makes that no fast-speeding camera could take if a professional photographer was paid to do it.

Mythbusting Cole
One of Cole’s favorite episodes on Discovery’s Mythbusters is “Diet Coke and Mentos”. He’s watched it four times and still gets amazed every time. My birthday was a perfect time for him to finally get his hands on this experiment. “Hurry! Hurry!” I’ve never seen him so excited to do something. He was almost hyperventilating when he got everything ready. Then he did the drill. Shake the bottle just a little (because he just wanted a birthday fountain for me and not an explosion), drop mentos in the bottle … and there it was, a pretty birthday fountain. It was a beautiful 30 seconds. Even Attika looked really pleased with Uwa’s (Frannie's baby talk for kuya, meaning big brother) fountain.

Needing kneading
It’s a Saturday and the day went by really nice and slow. The boys took care of the little girl, who cooperated and did her part by behaving the whole day. By “behaving” I mean she did not whine for me until it was time for her to go to bed at 7 p.m.

After lunch, my not-so-reliable psychic self sensed a surprise was coming my way. True enough, when I went out of the den a lady from the spa was smiling ever so brightly at me. I always make this fantastic schedule of spending a weekend at a spa to get a good body scrub and a massage. But whenever weekend comes, the loafer in me kills the idea of spa, so I go on to do other things instead – like my Zen laundry. I’m not being sarcastic. I honestly find the laundry a Zen-like experience, something that the dreadlocked one will probably never understand about me. He has been pushing me to go for a me-time. But I’ve never felt a need for a me-time. It’s the us-time that I look forward to at the end of the week. So since I would not budge to go to a spa (and to think The Dutchess Haven Salon and Spa is just downstairs), the boys had the spa come to me.

Ah, the 13,149 day old me got some good loving with a lot of scrubbing and kneading. Then I realized that my tired muscles really needed some kneading (Shiatsu it was). Maybe I’d go for another one next weekend.

Let’s see if the Zen laundry won’t kill it.

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, by Frances Beldia

callus

Foot spa at home

Purederm Intensive Repair Foot Mask

I kept my feet away from the hands of pedicurists and harsh massage therapists, and that kept my tootsies in the pink.

Calluses and dry skin were foot problems alien to me until I got pregnant with our second child last year. I ballooned to a 148-lb expectant mom, giving my feet the onerous task of bearing the kind of weight unknown to them before. I hardly recognized my own body everytime I looked in the mirror.

On my second trimester, I bent down one night to do some stretching when I felt this hideous thick skin on my heels. Days before that I was already beginning to feel there was something wrong with my feet, but a growing belly made a good excuse not to look at the parts of my body that made me feel unhappy. All my life I enjoyed the vanilla state of my feet, and I’m guessing it was my keeping them away from the hands of pedicurists and harsh massage therapists that kept them in the pink. The rare occasions that I went for foot spas were times when I was invited to do a review of ones that just opened for business, and those that had something new to offer to their clients. It was part of the perks given to me as a lifestyle editor for a local paper. Some people considered me very lucky, but little did they know that I squirmed at the thought of having my feet touched. I was very comfortable getting a good rub and scrub here and there, but my feet were always a delicate pair. I would request the therapists not to scrub my feet with rough cloth nor use pumice stone on them. The sight of feet getting scrubbed like a piece of wood sanded for a smooth finish gave me nightmares.

The sole slayer

I was born with thin soles but they never gave me problems even after years of sole abuse. I danced a lot and was very active as a young person; an uncelebrated champion in sipa (game of kick) and Chinese garter.

I was very resentful about my feet in its state of emergency, but the huge bags of chips that were part of my staple diet when I was pregnant hid in the cupboards and refused to be held liable for my weight gain that eventually led to the miserable condition of my tootsies.

I finally succumbed to a foot spa on my last trimester. I put my feet up for one hour’s worth of rubbing and scrubbing, looking like a penguin on a spa chair. The verdict: My feet felt smoother but the spa effect lasted only for a day. My gut feel told me the scrubbing had adverse effects on my feet because my soles became more dry and were painful.

Getting the cold feet from Purederm

My daughter is turning six months old in a few days and thankfully, my feet are happier now. Last weekend, I went to Watson’s to check out DIY foot spas and I found Purederm’s Avocado Intensive Repair Foot Mask. There were only four easy “How to Use” steps on the back and none of it said “scrub” so I paid for it (for an easy-on-the-pocket cost of PhP 69) and brought it home. On New Year’s eve, I opened my sock-type foot mask, wore them, then put on the vinyl socks over them, and clumsily enclosed them with the bands. My feet felt so pleasantly cold, like I stuck them in the fridge and left them there to cool down on a hot summer's day. Thirty minutes later (or what I thought was 30 minutes because I was playing with my son and his new Combat Sniper by Speed-Tech) I took them off, honestly preparing to get disappointed.

I was definitely not disheartened by the results. My feet were soft like they used to be years before I got pregnant. The texture of my skin also improved and the dry spots on my heals and toes disappeared like they were never there before.