ain't kids anymore

I grew up in a large family. I have 6 siblings and honestly, I was an unexpected baby, a menopause baby as they call it. Compared to my other siblings, they only have 1-2 years of age gap, but as for me and my older brother, we have less than 7 years of age gap so no one really expected that I'll just show up and came in the family picture. Lol.

For that very reason, I had quite a huge age gap with my siblings. I just started schooling when I had my first nephew, followed by a niece, another niece, another nephew, there comes another niece, a niece again, a nephew, and so on. The age gap between me and my eldest sibling is 19 years while the age gap between me and my eldest nephew is only 5 years. This just means that my age is much closer to my nephews and nieces than to my siblings.

So yeah, that's kind of the background why I became a certified "titang ina" . I practically grew up with the kids and I have been taking care of them since then. And I just realized recently that they have been growing up already, just like me.

Graduation and Moving Up

Since my older siblings doesn't have a huge age gap, that made their kids to almost have the same age too. It might even seem that my siblings planned this since my nephews and nieces ended up being batchmates.

Just recently, my niece and nephew finished day care and they are now both Kinder 2. Then I also have a niece and a nephew who both graduated from Elementary and of course, they are now both in their 7th grade. And lastly, I also have 2 nephews and 2 nieces who finished Grade all at the same time and the four of them are now on their 11th Grade.

Planned or unplanned, it's just so nice how they were able to maintain their closeness even though they are enrolled to different schools and only see each other occasionally.

Anyway, let me just share how proud of a tita I am to them. The mere fact that they finished another year of education in their lives is already a huge achievement but we even got a bonus since most of them finished the year with honors.

And another bonus since both my niece and nephew who are grade 7 right now took an entrance examination to enter the special program at their schools and both of them passed. The other one even hit the rank 5 among over a hundred examiners.

The two grade 11 students took an entrance examination too to enter the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Strand and both of them passed too with the other one ranked 2nd against less than 200 examiners.

1 Year Up

Now that I realized it, 4 of them are already in Senior High School, in 2 years time they will be in college. 3 of them are already in Junior High School, 3 of them are still in Elementary, 2 are in Kinder 2, 1 is on day care and the youngest is a 1 year old baby.

They are indeed growing up so fast. With a blink of an eye, half of them are not kids anymore, they are already teenagers and they are starting to make decisions on their own. They can now travel on their own and they feel like they are adult already.

But what I am most delighted about is the fact that even though all of us are growing older, the tight bond remains and we're even becoming closer to each other as times passed by.

Back to face to face classes

At last, for this school year, face to face classes was finally back. At least, for DepEd students and most of the CHED students.

I am currently living with my sister and her family. She have 3 kids and my other niece is here too so I have here 2 nephews and 2 nieces. 2 of them are in Senior High School, 1 in Junior High School and the youngest is on Kinder 2 and all of them are now having theri face to face classes.

On the other hand, me, who's already a 4th year college student, is still on online classes. Switch roles, eh? LOL. Anyway, what I just want to share with this one is my happiness now that the kids are now finally having face to face classes. They now get to enjoy and make the most of their high school life with friends that they can see physically.

I'm just so glad about it especially for my Grade 11 nephew. That kid is really an introvert when we're only at home. For the past years even since the pandemic, I rarely feel is presence on the house, I rarely hear his voice and most of the time, he just stays on his room.

Modular and online classes came and he wasn't even doing good with his studies since he doesn't study at all. He doesn't want to attend classes and he's not doing his requirements on time. I don't know why but maybe that is how pandemic hits him so I was really concerned about him. But now that face to face classes is back, I can see how much he is enjoying it because originally, he isn't really an introvert when it comes to school, actually, he's even considered as one of the noisiest among the class and I'm just so glad that his noisy self is back.

He's also started opening up to us again. Sometimes, I'll just be surprised when he'll share something with me out of nowhere. And I can now see him doing his assignments every night without us bugging him to do it.

So far, the comeback of face to face classes seems to have good effects on my nephews and nieces and hopefully, the implementation of this will be successful without compromising the health of both the students, teachers and all the school staffs.

My Roomies!

As the new academic year started, I also decided to move in to another room here at home for a better study area. I haven't been productive academically last year so I just want a fresh start now.

Actually, I have already been thinking for a long time now whether to move rooms or not since my previous room was downstairs and the bathroom and kitchen is more accessible in there compared to my room upstairs now but I finally decided to move here.

Well, I now have a better study area but here comes my roomies who decided to move in to the room with me. I have my Grade 11 niece and Grade 7 niece as my roomies. The room is quite huge so we're fine in here. I was even able to put 2 study table for us so we can all study peacefully.

But here comes my Grade 11 nephew too joining the bandwagon! LOL.

As I have said, he became more active now that the face to face classes has come back and so most of the days, he likes sleeping on our room too. He and my other niece are in the same class so they do their assignments at the same time, and they just become inseparable.

That left me with no bed since he's occupyung my space so whenever he's sleeping on our room, I always sleep on the folding bed which is luckily comfortable enough for me. But I have no complaints or whatsoever with my nephew sleeping with us, actually, I am even glad about it since he's starting to open up with us and he's not isolating himself on his room anymore.

To sum this all up, I moved in to another room, my nieces moved in with me, and here comes my nephew who enjoys our company too. But this just feels so great being able to just fool around with them.

It's not bothersome too since during day time, I am the only one at the house since all of them have face to face classes and the adults got work so that's the time where I got some peace and quiet time and the moment they go home, that's when the havoc will begin. Hehe.

I don't know what's the sense of all these which I wrote but the kids are really growing up so fast, and I am just so glad that despite them entering their teenage years, they are still sharing things with me and that I would always be their "titang ina" who will take care of them no matter how old they get.

Cheers to all titang ina or titong ama out there!

:))