Our `Eldest Daughter's Birthday!'

Yupe. We seemed to be celebrating lots of birthdays lately. This round was for our `eldest daughter' in the house, our maid. She has been with us for slightly over a year now, and we have come to refer to her as our `eldest daughter'. While news of maid abuse and rights seemed to dominate the local headlines recently, we are only too glad that we are lucky enough to have minimal problems with her so far.

She has her limitations but then who doesn't. While we continue to remind her of our expectations of her performance (we made it a point to lay down our expectations and work schedule the moment she arrived), we are also constantly reminding ourselves that she is also taking care of Ryan now. With Ryan being quite a handful, we have also lowered our expectations on her towards her house chores (although we didn't specifically told her that). The biggest relief is that she has demonstrated time and again her affection towards Ryan and Ryan fondness of her as well. However, we are quick to ensure that we do not allow her to replace our love and our position as parents to him.

She was quite surprised when we took out the birthday cake and told her to change so that she could take some pictures. She loves having her pictures taken and sent home. We also make it a point to allow her to call home to speak to her family and daughters, so that they too could wish her happy birthday.

At the end of it all, I can see that she was happy and grateful. To us, we are only happy that she is happy and hoping that she will continue to treat our family as hers as well while she is here.