We weren’t going to do a Christmas card this year because we kept missing the opportunity to take a family portrait…but wouldn’t you know it — we came across an extra 15 minutes on Christmas Eve to set up the tripod, make ourselves presentable, and snap some pictures of the four of us!

Believe it or not, this is the very FIRST picture of our new family. And we’re pretty pleased with how it turned out!

(I wish Comang could have joined us, but he is still at my parents’. )

I hope that you all have a jolly Christmas and a wonderful new year!

(I know that I said I will not be posting until 2012, but I figured that our very first family portrait with Aerin, in addition to a last minute Christmas card, deserved a post.)

I have decided to take a holiday break from blogging. So barring unforeseen circumstances, this will be my last entry until 2012.

I won’t be completely offline though. You can still find me sporadically posting stuff on my Facebook Page, Pinterest, and Twitter.

But because I didn’t want to keep you guys completely hanging for over a week…

And because my last BB Cream giveaway was so popular…

(And because everyone should have a chance at great skin in 2012… )

I have decided to host another BB Cream giveaway!

And this time, you will have three chances to win as I will be
giving away three tubes of BB Creams!

And, just like last time, the winners will be able to choose a tube from the following six options:

(from left to right:)

• MISSHA M Perfect Cover (in shade 21 or 23)
• Lioele Beyond Solution
• SKIN79 Pink Label
• Dr. Jart+ Silver Label
• SKIN79 Gold Label
• Hanskin Super Magic

And if you would like more information on them, please feel free to refer back to my original post on BB Creams.

As a mother of “two under 2″ I hardly wear makeup anymore, but when I do I only apply BB Cream and some lip stain. (If I have an additional 2 minutes I’ll add some eyeliner and blush.) And sometimes, I use BB Cream not for the coverage but for its skin-enhancing properties.

If you can recall, my favorite used to be the Dr. Jart+ Silver Label for the oil control it provided. But my post-partum skin has been dry and flaky — not the oily cesspool that was my pregnancy skin. As a result, I have started to use MISSHA M Perfect Cover and it is perfect for my needs.

That being said, the SKIN79 Pink Label is the most popular of all my friends who use BB Cream. (And I am not just saying this because it’s the cheapest of the bunch!)

And while I know that BB Creams are now starting to become available stateside at stores like Sephora, I have decided not to include those in the giveaway because I have read that they are not nearly as good as the BB Creams above.

In other words, I have gathered above some of the most popular
and best BB Creams in the market! And you have not only one,
but THREE chances to win!

Now, onto the giveaway!

As before, I will be using Rafflecopter to run this giveaway. Not sure how to use Rafflecopter? Watch this 45 second video for a tutorial on how to enter a giveaway using Rafflecopter. There are 5 methods of entry, with the first method (commenting on this blog post) being mandatory while the third method (Tweeting about the giveaway) can be used once per day:

The winner will be chosen randomly via Rafflecopter on January 1, 2012 and will be announced here then. The winners will be notified via an email or a Twitter DM, so please use a valid email and/or Twitter handle so that I can contact you if you win.

Good luck to all those to enter! Have a wonderful Christmas and a happy new year!

We’ve all seen the commercials. A doting spouse surprises his or her significant other with a brand new car for Christmas, complete with a big red bow on top.

A screenshot from this year’s “A December to Remember Sales Event” commercial

And if you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking, “Does anyone actually do that?”

Apparently, yes — there is even a warehouse in California that stockpiles the iconic oversized red bows because the demand for them is so high! Granted, the article referenced is a bit old, but as Lexus’s annual “December to Remember Sales Event” is ongoing, I highly doubt that this tradition of the financially privileged has expired in recent years.

I always told J that I would be pretty angry with him if he ever did this for me. Yes, the sentiment is nice, but to make such a big purchase without consulting me first — one that is surely to affect our financial future — is wrong in my eyes.

And I know that I can not the only one who thinks this way, because I saw the following strip from Dog House Diaries just this morning:

Would you ever purchase a car as a surprise present for your spouse? How would you react if your S.O. surprised you with a new car?

Last week, I wrote that breastfeeding Aerin was going splendidly.

Well, this just goes to show that anything can happen in the wild, crazy journey we call motherhood, because I am no longer breastfeeding.

So what happened?

I had mentioned earlier that Aerin was suffering from 3 different types of skin ailments: eczema, baby acne, and little red bumps that our pediatrician guessed was heat rash.

Aerin developed these skin problems when she was about a week old, and they seemed to keep getting worse and worse no matter what we did.

No only that, she was spitting up and vomiting frequently (I will never forget the Exorcist-like vomiting she performed on my birthday). I know that many babies spit up a lot, but Claire had only spit up a handful of times total since birth — yes, I know we were extremely lucky — so all the upchucking was simultaneously worrying me and driving me crazy.

Then, last Thursday, I just couldn’t take it anymore. Aerin’s skin was so bad that she had pus oozing out of the various bumps on her face. The little girl would cry after every feeding — straight from the breast or from pumped bottled milk — and I felt like I was going to lose my sh*t.

It was at that moment when a thought occurred to me: what if it was my breastmilk that was causing these problems?

So we decided to experiment by only feeding her formula for an entire day.

Within just 6 hours, her skin was looking remarkably better and she was no longer crying after each meal. The change was so significant after the 12-hour mark that we decided to continue with formula for another day, just in case it was a fluke.

And within 48 hours, ALL of her skin problems were gone save for some leftover discoloration blotches. Not only that, she seemed more satisfied after each feeding and was sleeping better.

See for yourself. Look at my beautiful, happy baby!

The problem was obviously my breastmilk.

So I did what any logical, sane mother would do: I cried to my husband, “I am POISONING my baby!” 

After the emotional outburst (okay, so there were several emotional outbursts), I realized that we needed a plan of action.

I know that very, very few babies are actually allergic to breastmilk and that the most likely culprit was my diet.

I honestly couldn’t think of anything I was eating that could be hurting her, as I was staying away from the major sources of food sensitivities, such as dairy, certain vegetables, and spicy food.

I knew that if I wanted to keep breastfeeding, I would need to go on an elimination diet so that we could determine the source of the sensitivity. But an elimination diet in my situation would be difficult as we would need to purchase, and prepare extra food for me when we already have our hands full with two babies.

J left the decision up to me and told me that he would support whatever I chose to do.

I decided to take the easy way out. I decided to quit breastfeeding.

And that was that.

In case you haven’t heard, Kim Jong Il has passed away.

(And if you’re just reading about this now on this blog, I welcome you whilst you climb out from under that rock from which you’ve been living!)

I had a brief conversation with my father about the late North Korean dictator’s death. He tells me that he is a bit worried, for there are three possible scenarios for the future of North Korea:

1. Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il’s third son and his successor, is still pretty young but headstrong. He may just do something stupid as a display of his power.
2. Someone may use this precarious transition period to usurp the dictatorship role, and those in North Korea who have the power and influence to do so are not very nice. Or, they will take advantage of Kim Jong Un’s youth and naïveté to use him as a puppet for their own needs.
3. Not much will change, because Kim Jong Un is too much like his father.

We will just have to pray and hope for the best.

I think that many around the world share my father’s worries, but the majority of what I’ve been seeing on the web are humor-based. Like how “Team America” became a trending term on Twitter. Or how a clip of the HORRIBLE monster movie Kim Jong Il created (after kidnapping a director) is regaining in popularity on YouTube.

Or this jem, created by the folks over at Happy Place, of what his obituary would look like if it were written by the man himself:

I still say that the best/funniest Kim Jong Il parody comes from the old LiveJournal blog he used to keep.  The AIM conversations he has with George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, and Dick Cheney are stuff of legends. Go give it a read if you have some spare time — I guarantee you won’t be disappointed!