Once upon a time, she designed buildings and interiors of corporate offices and on the rare occasion, homes. Now, she cleans poop and is student of a patience management course. From the drawing board as a London Architect to the realities of Motherhood, she has certainly learned many lessons in humility. And then others.....
To succeed in the corporate world, first succeed with your kid as the happy boss. Seriously.
This blog is about Mamapumpkin: A crazy, demented Mom who cares full time, alone, without any help, for an even crazier preschooler AND a baby with a boob addiction problem.
She writes anything that comes out of her head, mostly without thinking first, which almost always gets her into trouble (according to her husband, whom she considers the love of her life.......on a good day).
Her 2 pet monkeys drive her towards challenge after challenge, 24/7. Day after Day.....and by the way, her parents are Muslim, her in-laws Buddhist, she's Catholic and her Hubs, an Atheist. She's thinking her kids should be Hindu, just to complete the rainbow religion cycle.
Gotta love it.
She'd love to hear from you : Mamapumpkin at gmail dot com
Recently, T1 had a best friend down from London whom we met a few times to play. People automatically assume that when you are a child of a designer, you naturally inherit your parents genes and are talented in creating stuff.
It is a myth.
First of all, creativity can be developed. The following is an excerpt I stole off the internet written by Dana Davidson,
Characteristics that signal creativity include intense absorption, curiosity, ability to put together seemingly unrelated things or ideas, sense of humor, unusual vocabulary, eagerness to share new discoveries, spontaneity, and willingness to consider new ideas. Creative people are often either interested in ongoing experiments and need time to pursue ideas in depth, or they may jump from idea to idea very quickly. They may show fluency and flexibility in their thinking. They may ask surprising questions. They may be more independent than others in their approach to doing things. They get excited about new solutions and ideas.
Creative people need time to entertain ideas, prepare materials, and let their ideas simmer for awhile. They need privacy and tolerance for ambiguity. They need to be allowed to try things out in different ways until they are satisfied with their own work. They also need to be able to select and discard efforts of their choosing— pressure to produce may stifle their creative efforts. Creativity thrives in an environment that allows questions, exploring, observing, skill-building (even Michelangelo had to practice!), communicating, and self expression.
To develop creativity, the home or classroom environment should contain a variety of materials and encourage lots of different experiences.
Developing a childhood interest—being “in love” with something and sticking with it for some time—is related significantly to adult creative achievement. Building anticipation before a trip or lesson, digging deeply into material during the lesson, and keeping the ideas alive for some time after the lesson are also ways to keep the creative processes going. Children and adults need to be introduced to examples of creative excellence. Their own work should be recognized and truly appreciated. If possible, creative efforts should be put to work and not simply acknowledged and then shelved. Adults who experience creativity programs tend to experience dramatic improvements in the quality of their lives. Self-expression, the zest of discovery, the pleasure of creating something, and freedom to try new things are all aspects of the creative process. Children can be encouraged to grow creatively, and this does not interfere with other kinds of educational achievement. We can all grow with the further development of creativity.
Long story short, if your dad isn’t an architect, you could still be the most creative kid on the block.
The kids built hotels out of Lego blocks (blocks of any kind are really the best toys in the world).
Windows to The World Hotel
Hotel Sails on the Sea
Giraffe Tower Hotel
De Castanet Hotel
What do you think? Fascinating stuff.
Allow me to encourage you to spend an hour this weekend playing lego or blocks with your child. Ask your child to build a hotel. Explain what a hotel is i.e. a place for people to stay when they are traveling. Explain the concept of a hotel – pay money, get room, facilities for guests, etc. Then allow your child to build.
Once he is finished, ask your child these questions:
What is the name of your hotel? Where is it located?
How many rooms does your hotel have?
Who stays at your hotel?
What kind of facilities does your hotel have? Explain the word facilities if your child does not know the word!
Are pets allowed at your hotel? Why/Why not?
What kind of food is served at your hotel?
What is special about your hotel? Why should I stay at your hotel instead of the hotel just down the road?
When you’ve completed this exercise of quality time with your child, whilst exercising his creative brain at the same time, please do come back to share your stories with me!
If you knew my girl, you’d know that feminine she is not. She prefers all things boys and cannot stand being in a ballerina tutu, flings Barbies out of windows and would cook High School Musical if she could. She reads Ben 10 books (apart from Enid Blyton) and knows the Ben 10 characters.
Presumably, she knows the moves too?
I asked her what she was doing on the floor and she just grunted. Then she bounced up and shouted, “Ben 10!!”
These pictures below were taken when T1 had first started school this year and I was the ever anxious Mom who had to be at school to check exactly how they conducted their swimming classes and to make sure my 5 year old could actually handle getting changed and dry herself properly, and not enter her air-conditioned classroom dripping wet. After a few weeks, I told myself I couldn’t be at school every week just to dry her hair so we decided to cut it.
I bit my tongue and went through the steps with her on what she had to do whenever she got out of the pool. Seriously, we’re dealing with a 5 year old here.
Don’t let any of your stuff touch the wet floor.
Squeeze your swimsuit dry and put it immediately into the plastic bag.
Rinse yourself quickly (there is no time for a proper shower) and squeeze your hair dry.
Wipe your hair. Wipe your body super dry.
Put your clothes back on. Towel dry your hair again.
Pack your stuff neatly. All wet stuff into plastic bags provided.
Do not let your swimming slippers touch your stuff. It belongs to the slipper bag.
Comb your hair neatly. Listen to your teacher.
Swimming is T1′s favourite class of all at school. She LOVES swimming.
Walking to the pool.
Swimming……
So this week, the Hubs and I went to school to check her out since the coach told me she has made progress.
I had a heart attack when I saw how she handled herself after swimming. AARRGGHHH!!!! I feel as though I have to go again every week !!!
When she removed her swimsuit, it dropped to the floor. And she left it there. Her towel, dropped SEVERAL TIMES on the wet floor. She barely rinsed herself, it was rather a walk in-walk out out of the shower. Her hair was still tied then. She simply placed her cap and goggles all over the place as she moved and chatted with her friends, which means she could have easily lost them. You know how kids are. And by the time she was done, her hair was still dripping wet and making her T-Shirt wet as well. And her legs were still wet too. HOW!!!!??????
There is just no way she is ready for this. Maybe in another year. Hopefully within the next year.
And as much as the Hubs says to just let her get on with it, she’ll learn eventually, I cannot let go. It makes me so stressed out thinking and knowing that she is walking back to an air-conditioned classroom with wet hair and wet parts on her body. What shall I do???????
Whilst I was complaining to the Hubs that my Blackberry batteries don’t seem to last very long, and that I needed to find a Blackberry car phone battery charger, T1 decided to add to the conversation:
Because I bet it’s made in China. Everything that is made in China is lousy……
Ever since the formula milk scandal that hit us, T1 has formed an impression on products from China. She even warns my in-laws every time they go to China that they should at all circumstances stay AWAY from milk.
Whilst eating some fish and chips at The Club today, T1 asked if she could have more tartare sauce. The Hubs was carrying T2 showing her around so I told her to wait alone at the table and walked off to ask for some tartare sauce. As the restaurant was very busy, the wait took longer than necessary, and when I returned, T1 asked:
Did you guys just go on a holiday?
Talk about sarcasm, eh? One day, I might just stuff a chilli padi into her mouth!
Now that the Hubs is home 24/7, he sleeps with the baby whilst I sleep with T1. This is so he knows what it’s like to wake up several times throughout the night with a crying baby wanting to be picked up. Incredibly, he has not complained yet. But this morning, when the baby woke up at 730am, the Hubs just let her be because he was extremely tired. I had gone out all day yesterday from 8am to 2am the next morning and the baby hadn’t seen me at all! So she woke up almost every hour on the hour all night. T1 and I were both outside in the kitchen making breakfast and after 5 minutes of the baby crying, I sent T1 into the master bedroom to tell T2 that Mama was coming. Bless the baby, she stopped crying as soon as she saw her favourite sister. Soon I walked in to carry T2 out of her cot and T1 said:
Mommy, I think Daddy still needs more training with the baby…..
I thought that was quite funny because she thought that Daddy was in training.
I was frantically searching for a pen from the diaper bag and mumbling and grumbling away that when I really needed to find something, it always disappeared. T1 says:
What are you talking about, Mom? It means your eyes are just old eyes!
Because my Mom has pretty much lost her taste buds from her cancer, she gets us to taste her cooking whilst she is cooking just to check if there is enough salt etc. One day, T1 overheard Nana calling me, where’s my food taster? and she immediately let out a cry!
No! She cannot be the food taster or she’s going to get fatter and fatter!!
When T1 was having a conversation with her Kong-Kong from Kota Bharu, she was as usual being extremely cheeky (for eg: when he asked her what she was doing, she said she was talking to him, what else?) , so her Kong-Kong said that he was going to smack her bottom for being so cheeky. After which, T1 said,
Kong-Kong? Do you know that I have a very solid butt?
OH. MY. GOODNESS.
We have mentioned before how solid her butt is because it is rock hard and we sometimes smack it because it just calls out to be smacked, and T1 is very proud of her solid butt. When talking to her Kong-Kong, she was showing off that even if he smacked her, it’d be OK since her butt was so solid, she wouldn’t feel any pain.
Oops. It IS kind of messy back there. Shoo! Shoo! Darn it! Those clothes back there? On our red couch? They just won’t go away. What the hell are they? Who knows!!! Who cares!!!
Ever since we stopped having a helper, we stopped sweating the small stuff. Like even if T2 ate some used tissues, or lizard shit, it’s all organic, right?
And what’s with the leg spreading? For some reason, T1 always, always does her homework with her legs open. I’m not sure why concentration makes her hot down there. As far as I know, people usually get hot in the head whilst the brain works but not my daughter.
She’s also recently had a fetish with hats. It’s either the Santa hat, the summer hat, or the winter hat. Indoors. What’s up with that?? 5 year olds. What I’d pay to get into their little heads.
But the year isn’t even up yet! Dang! At the beginning of the year, we bought T1 a super cheap pair of school shoes which lasted all of 3 weeks. The moment we washed it, it shrunk and she could no longer fit her big feet into them. A real shame as they were the prettiest white canvas Mary Janes. Off trotted the Hubs into Adidas to get her PROPER white leather sneakers. We bought them slightly larger and she really did look like Ronald McDonald in white. They didn’t have any more feminine looking girls shoes unfortunately. We figured, okay, perhaps if we paid a bit more, the shoes will last?
Nonsense!!!
They have lasted 7 months. Yes, 7 short months. Is that the shoe life of children school shoes these days? We’re talking Adidas here. There are holes everywhere where the upper shoe has detached itself from the rubber sole thus if she stepped into a puddle, her socks would be drenched. I was livid! The Hubs suggested that perhaps it is the way she walked (backwards?) or who knows what she got up to at school. Kick boys? Remove her shoes to use as a pencil eraser? Glide on walls? Who knows indeed!
Now, we’ve got to go on a shoe hunt again. I wish that school wasn’t so strict and allowed the kids more flexibility for shoes. As it stands, the girls shoes have to be absolutely white without any logos or colour. If they become a prefect later on, they can switch these to black leather shoes, again without any logos showing. But what would really be perfect was if they allowed girls shoes to be lighter in weight, yet durable; looking simple but pretty at the same time.
Maybe I should be a school shoe designer! Seriously, if you’re concerned about your child’s feet and what they’re covered and protected with, watch this video to educate yourself on how you should find the right size shoes for your child’s feet. Too big and you’ll have problems. Too small and you’ll still have problems. And problems like pigeon toed feet, flat feet, ingrown toe nails, painful feet, deformed feet etc are seriously problems I can live without!!!
At the very beginning, T1 said she wanted to be a vet, an animal doctor, because she loved animals. Then when I became pregnant with T2 and she began following me to see my gynae, she decided that she wanted to be a paediatrician with T2 as the gynae. She liked the idea of being a paed because she liked her paed very much, and of course, we know our paed so well because she has been there to visit him so often in her 5 years of life! I know……don’t we sound like hypochondriacs? Every time before we go on holiday, T1 would fall ill and we’d zoom to see Dr P to cure her asap. A sick child + traveling? No way. It only equates to head banging and a flow of expletives. I’d much rather sip pina coladas on a Jamaican beach with three pairs of hands on my body. Kneading…..what were you thinking?
T1 has wanted to be a paeditrician, so she gets to treat babies and children (she thinks its will be fun!) and she says that T2 will be an obstetrician so that all the babies she delivers will pass on to her (talk about good planning!), and then Daddy will be her receptionist (she asked, “do I have to pay Daddy since he is family?”) and Mommy will be her assistant cum nurse.
And for all the ambition that she has as a medical professional, a respected member of society, do you think the following image makes a good representation of a doctor?
If you asked me, she looks more suited to being a rapper – MC Hammer, You can’t touch this! No, No, You can’t touch this!
BUT having said that, we know quite a few doctors ourselves AND…..if you knew what they were up to, let’s just say you would worry that they were doctors. My entire A-Level class became doctors, short of a handful (me included). I lived with Medics at University. I know how crazy and wild they were. In fact, they had the wildest parties out of all the other students. They worked so hard till they had to release all that pent up stress
What do you think T1 would end up as? Doctor or Rapper?
I must say, I have never witnessed a stronger sisterly bond than these two and I’m not meaning to boast my pride but only that I’ve not been around many young sisters obviously!
T1 adores baby T2 to no end and will read, play and entertain her sister at any time. She is also the only person who will allow T2 to abuse her, scratch her face, spit on it, pinch it, kick it……without complaints. I wouldn’t do it. The Hubs yelps when it happens but T1? She just allows it to happen!!! In fact, I have to protect HER from T2 as her face is already scratched one too many a time!
And then, T2 is most excited everyday whenever we go to school to pick T1 home. You can see and feel her delight in her squeals, her smiles and her leg kicking and arm flapping. She genuinely loves her sister too – best play mate in the world!
The most amazing thing happened last night. T1 came into my bedroom crying because Daddy promised her he would go in to sleep with her before midnight and it was just passed midnight and Daddy wasn’t in yet. Coincidentally, T2 was still awake boobing but the moment she saw her sister crying, she got off the boob, crawled to her crying sister and rested her body and head on her. She was kissing and hugging her sister!!! I kid you not. T1 was SO HAPPY after that and the crying stopped and she went back to bed after Daddy said he’d be there in 5 minutes. It was the most touching moment for me to witness that.
What a pity that stupid turtle bottle was blocking T1′s face! Lousy photographer!
Wow! Can you believe it? She’s not even SIX and she has to revise??? Well, if she wants to stay ahead with her peers and keep her marks above 95% then yes, she certainly has to revise!
Having said that, we only revised Bahasa last semester and she actually got better results. So of course, she used that against me, “See? I didn’t even study and I did better. What does that tell you? I should NOT study in future!”
Dream on little lady…….
I do feel sorry for her and the rest of the kids. Even at seven, I feel that our kids are too taxed for Standard One work, what more at five plus.
Today was the Hubs first day at home so I managed to have some alone time with T1 at Nana’s place (she goes to Nana’s every weekend, remember?) and what did we do? We spent an hour revising for her English paper. It was very slow moving as little missy was very tired from her gym class and not in the mood to revise at all but it was our only opportunity to revise this weekend so I told her why she had to do it. Or NO IPAD!!!
Earlier I had threatened her, if you don’t eat your vegetables, then no cupcakes. Nana, bless her, is baking every other day and it is MAKING ME MISS PIGGY MAMA. Nana bakes the best cupcakes and today, she baked an apple crumble. What did T1 say to my threat? “No cupcakes then! I don’t care!”
Grumpily and sulkily, she rudely answered all my English Language questions (plurals, past-tensed, gender, similes, homonyms, opposites, vocabulary); and I didn’t understand what the big deal was. It is ENGLISH, and she knew almost all the answers. So finally, Mommy was comforted that she knew her English quite well so allowed her the ipad. Suddenly her tiredness lifted and she bounced up like she’d struck gold.
Meanwhile, Tok-Tok and Nana were grumbling about why a little girl had to study so hard to me, but they didn’t interfere. So I told them to go look into the matter then!
T1 showing off her ipad. Tok-Tok having a rest in the background because fasting is energy depleting……
Speaking of fasting, T1 came home saying she wanted to fast too because she learnt about fasting in school. What in the world for? She said she just wanted to but I suspect the real reason is because the school food is crap.
Further to the drama about T1′s collection of soft toys, I now present to you what we did and how the story ended. T1′s bears are like shoes to me. But as much as I love my shoes, I had to bite the bullet (PAINFUL!!! Have you ever tried?!) and gave away close to fifty pairs, keeping only the most expensive (even though I can never wear them again) only because they are still in mint condition and I just can’t bear to part with them just yet. I gave a pair of Ferragamo heels to one of my brothers girlfriends and then they broke up. I only wish I could have them shoes back. Blek!
So how did T1 accumulate so many bears? Really, I have no idea. The Hubs and I have bought her less than a handful of bears and even then, they were momentous. So really, the rest of them fury things were from friends and family…..and competition wins, and maybe even stolen.
Underneath this pile are the BIG ones. The Hubs was saying that he wondered which lucky kid would get the big red dog that is bigger than T2. And then there is the big bear, also larger than T2 and frightens the living daylights out of her. Just kidding.
Well, T2 does look strangely at the big brown blob of mass that remotely resembles her, yet doesn’t. She looks at it very, very hard deciding if it is friend or foe.
And whilst I’ve worked so hard to be brutal and detached from all these creatures, the Hubs (and he is least likely to do this) suddenly bursts out asking, “What about Paddington Bear? Are you givng away Paddington Bear?”
I nodded frowningly. Hell yeah! They’re all going. Sentimental or not, we’ve got photographs for reminiscence!
“But you CAN’T give away Paddington Bear!!???!!!!”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s Paddington Bear and we have to save him for T2!!”
HUH?
I couldn’t believe this grown man was getting all sentimental on me and now I’m not sure what to do with the bears that have a story.
Paddington Bear, the iconic British bear, was carried all the way from London by Tok-Tok when T1 was very young but even before that, T1 had already large Paddington Bear stickers on her bedroom wall telling a story. I remember her younger days lying in bed together, gazing and mixing up the sequencing of Paddinton Bear stickers on her wall, randomly creating what Paddington Bear did each day……..so fun.
Right, I’ve just this very minute been to the Paddington Bear website and discovered that ONE UNIT OF PADDINGTON BEAR costs Pound Sterling Fifty Five!!! Perhaps we should keep him for T2 after all. Yikes! What a rip off?! Now I know why the Hubs is all sentimental about Paddington Bear. He certainly knows his bears.
We finally shortlisted 16 bears that we’d keep purely for sentimental reasons. Starting from extreme left, the wide eyed doll with the big white bow on her head was a gift from a friend of mine from London who said the doll reminded her of me and she just had to get it. The doll is wearing a silver sequinned leotard and black knee high leather boots! To those of you who say I am so different in real life than my writing…..I guess you don’t know me that well yet, huh?!
Paddington Bear is beside her and next to PB, is Brownie with the even darker brown ears. Brownie was mine since I was 3 years old and has fallen into a huge Cheras drain. He is now blind but T1 says she wants to keep him because it was Mommy’s bear since Mommy was little *heart melts*
On top of Brownie in red is a little devil, which was the first ever soft toy T1 had in her crib at the hospital. It was a devil I’d bought from Teddy Tales which squealed I LOVE YOU whenever you pressed its belly. I thought it was real cute.
Next to the devil, the blue puppy, also belonged to me since I was a teenager; along with the pink bear right in front of Paddington Bear. These two were my favourite bears since my teens and stayed with me from boyfriend to boyfriend until I married the Hubs. They were my Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum, my security buddies, and as soon as I married the Hubs, they were kicked out of our bedroom.
The pink furry dog below the blue puppy was a gift to T1 from the Hubs’ Japanese friend when we were invited by astronaut Aki Hoshide during his launch to space. She doesn’t know him very well at all but it serves as a reminder of our spectacular, rocketfying month in the US.
The yellow duck on top right with the black sunglasses is a duck that I’d begged for a whole month an ex- client of mine from India to give me, just because. Yeah, just because. When I finally got it, I was over the moon. And now T1 wants to keep it because, well, because it’s a cute duck……
Below the duck is a pink camel from Daddy when he returned from the Middle East. Below the pink camel is a Kahloo bear that Godpa Dave gave T1 from New York. On the left of the camel which you can barely see, is a lamb from my cousins in Oz to T1 that snores. It’s damn cute, the lamb snores for quite a long time when you press its leg and it actually puts kids to sleep! And last but not least, because I’m tired already, is a few bits and bobs of furry things given to T1 by her best friends, one (the grey dog) of whom she named Joshie as it was from???
Nite-Nite or Good Morning, depending on which part of the world you’re at. Have a great day today/tomorrow.
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