Today, my precious first born is 8!!!

She woke up all chirpy and the night before, the Hubs and I had prepared a banner to wish her Happy Birthday to stick on the bathroom mirror so that she sees it first thing when she wakes up to brush her teeth before school. We both knew that we’d be waking up AFTER her, ho-ho-ho, so relied on the banner to wish her first. Last night, I was so tired that I went to bed first and reminded the Hubs to put the banner up on the mirror before he went to bed.

This morning, at 6am, my maternal instincts woke me even before T1 was awake and I rushed to the mirror to check if the banner was up.

*eyeballs pop out and does a few somersaults before bouncing back*

I quickly rushed to the Hubs and nudged him, “Where is the banner?!!!!!”

“Oh shit, I forgot….Zzzzzzzz” with absolutely no urgency to get up to go find it……..

Before we knew it, T1 was awake so of course, I wished her a very Happy Birthday first hand, hugged her tight and loaded her with a million gallons of Mama love. Then we started discussing Venn Diagrams.

I cannot believe my darling T1 is 8. Eight????!!!!!!! She was a mere toddler when this blog first started.

Exactly, a year ago she was completing the Harry Potter books and was all Harry Potter crazy. This year, it is the Brady Bunch!!! Oh, my Lord. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not!!! The 2 girls, they keep singing the Brady Bunch songs and keep acting silly scenes out of the movie and are dying to watch the OLD series. Now, where can I get that for them? Even I haven’t watched the Brady Bunch. It’s so not my time……the Hubs, however…..could tell them that so and so (Shelley Long? Don’t quote me) is now the mother but used to be the kid blablablabla…….*snigger*

She’s also now matured by leaps and bounds wanting to do more adults things such as have an intellectual conversation. She loves Science thus her new found interest in the Microscope analysing all things with her microscopic eye. She still loves creating – she creates anything, cards, writings, notes, objects, masks, more objects etc and leaves the home with more mess than ever. She’s a very sensible girl, wanting more to save money than spend it (totally opposite from T2, who likes shopping!) and every time I am about to buy, she will stop me in my tracks to ask if I really needed something and offer me suggestions to counter act that spend. Frigging awesome most times when it comes to cupcakes and day to day impulse purchases but so not cool when I want to blow X amount of dollars on well, what I want to blow it on. Just as an example, we spent a fair amount at Laura Mercier the other day because Mama was bored and that new Laura Mercier store at Pavilion just sucked me right in by making me look all pretty, so we bought a cream foundation, a skin primer (what the heck is that, honestly???!!!!! Whatever, I bought it anyway….), some loose powder claimed to be the best, so fine that it blends into your pores, some lipstick, an eye shadow and some body scrub. Ho hum. T1 was not pleased at all.

She reminded me of our lovely home made scrub that Aunty Shireen had made for us and I was like, Oh My God!! Yes!!! It’s hard to keep remembering a body scrub that you need to extract from the fridge but that home made scrub was well and truly the best body scrub that we’d ever used. So why did I get the Laura Mercier scrub again??? Duh. T1 and I agreed that from here on, we shall no longer buy ANY body scrubs but make our own. Or better still, give Aunty Shireen a call……

Even when we go shopping and I offer to buy T1 things such as books, she will always ask if I thought RM200 was too much? I told her, with books, it is always never too much…….(whilst we can afford it, that is!).

T1 no longer plays with toys per se but still plays a lot. She plays a lot more imaginary games which is great because who frigging needs toys?! The girls, they make up their own games by using furniture props and whatever else they find around the house to pretend play. 2 toys I will keep for them and that is their doll house because we paid a small fortune for it and the ‘masak-masak’ kitchen and all its’ peripherals.

T1 is now doing less well at school than she was last year on a purely academic marks basis. That statement is debatable, really. She used to get 90-100 on average last year when she was still doing the local syllabus and the odd 80 for things like Bahasa or Mandarin but now at International School, she is averaging 70-80!!! If she revised, she might get 80-90 but revision isn’t one of her priorities at 8. So we live with 70-80……..she already knows a heck lot more than I ever did at 8 so I’m not complaining one bit.

I do find the Year 4 work tough though. They are starting to write phrases for their answers and you need to be able to articulate your facts and thoughts onto paper which is a skill that needs to be developed. For example, state the differences between the Athenians and the Spartans and discuss which Government model works better for a developed nation and why. I mean like, WTF right?! Do I frigging care at this point? But the girl is thriving. Yup, she’s thriving. As long as we don’t apply any pressure on her, I think she’s A-OK. She seems to be thoroughly enjoying school and learning, the most important of all. I think the British curriculum really sets a standard for learning and the love of it. It is much more interesting for kids to study the British curriculum thus I don’t understand why our Malaysian Government just doesn’t COPY it. How difficult is that???! Our kids deserve a good education and the English have a proven system so why don’t we just use it?! We used to!!! Until everything went belly up several years ago and the language went down the toilet.

T1 was complimented on her very neat writing at school recently. Her hand writing has REALLY improved and I am really proud of her because even the school Head said she had very good handwriting and he surely must have seen a lot of student’s handwriting in his time. She has also taken a passion for chess, of all things. One day, I got a message from Malaysia’s Number 2 Chess Master and he asked if T1 could attend a Chess Workshop because she had talent. He said something about training the kids up for the SEA Games for Chess and I was like, huh?! As far as I can help it, unless my child wants to compete with nations out of her own will, I will discourage it. This is because I myself have competed and found it taxing and stressful to be training every day, so if there is anything she can do to increase her chances into a good University, it’d just have to be something else. I don’t know! Maybe, it’s just her wit and sense of humour? Maybe some other great thing that she does? I certainly don’t want to spend tireless hours for her to be training and then driving to north and south for every competition just for this. Nuh-uh. I respect others who do it. I just can’t be arsed.

Coming on to food, T1 eats anything. Well, almost anything. She does not eat durian still but practically everything else. She’s not a fussy girl that way. She’s not too interested in clothes and shoes or looking pretty so much, but more involved in creating inventions and ideas and learning about the world around her. She’s definitely more front brained! She likes talking and performing but her vocal pitch isn’t the best in the world. Yet, she tries very determinedly! Oh well……you never know!

One of T1’s weakness that we’re still working on is her attitude. More often than not, she’s well behaved but there are moments when Medusa surfaces and she comes up with some snide, smart ass remark that is just unacceptable to me. Like, the other day, I told the kids not to disturb me because I had a lot of work to do. Then whilst waiting for some documents to load, I hopped over to Facebook to have a browse. I very rarely have time to enter Facebook but sometimes I even do it for work. Let’s face it, Facebook is an excellent contact base to shout something out or to source for something. The bugger, she really had to say it when I was stressed busy that day, “Mummy so busy working but still got time to go Facebook…..”

Wahhhhhh…….I lost it. I totally lost it and she was sorry she ever mentioned Facebook to me. In fact, I don’t think she’ll ever bring Facebook up again. Muahahahaha.

My dearest, dearest T1. At this point, you still want Mommy and Daddy to follow you to University and we are most happy to oblige. We only hope you won’t change your mind somewhere along the line. One thing though, we wish to see you soar to the stars to reach your dreams whatever those dreams may be……..and never stop dreaming, my love, because nothing is impossible. We love you so, SO, SOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!

Happy 8th Birthday to our Number One Rocket Girl!!!

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Who is Mamapumpkin?
Mamapumpkin is a former Design Architect turned Multi-Million Dollar Digital Entrepreneur. She sets out to prove to all that you can have anything and everything that you want; if you have that fire of desire burning within and the drive to work hard. Even better with much love.

Mamapumpkin has not only grown corporate businesses successfully in the past and doubled her salary 5 times over 5 organisations but has grown THREE BUSINESSES to 7 FIGURES within an 8 year period. She now shows others EXACTLY HOW after retiring her own husband from employment. He is now the official dog walker, family driver, chef and THE BEST FATHER to their two girls and THE BEST HUSBAND to the woman who CHOSE HIM!

Mamapumpkin is the girl who has nothing but fights for everything including YOU. She is idealistic in her desire to put unbelievable amounts of money and extrardinary happiness into the lives of good people so we can change the world together believing in happiness for ALL. She strives to impact lives authentically wanting to reduce poverty cycles and enable quality education for all and always supports the voiceless. She believes we can all have a life of our own desires to enable real contribution into the world. But first, one needs to understand what this all means.

A beautiful life without limits.

If you wish to learn how to propel your life forward guaranteed, be brave to take action. Mamapumpkin's purpose is to build people. Her gift is to help them UNCOVER their HIDDEN GIFTS. She operates fairly and always leaves an impression. You either love her or not and she is alright either way.

She is a living testimony that women really can have a lot. Being financially and time free has enabled her to travel the world anytime, anywhere, doing anything with anyone, as she spends most of her days with her children, having fun, supporting others wherever she can. Also having fun.