Dear Shannon

Times files. You are now 8 yrs old! When you were a 18month old toddler, you think the world of Barney and Hi5. Now, you hum to the songs of Tayler Swift and Justin Bieber.  You have since switched your ambition from being an air-stewardess, ballet teacher, fashion designer to the most recent, POP STAR! It's also because of you, I hope I have become a better MOM than 8 years ago. Of course, every stage and every year is different, So, I guess, I will be doing trials and errors as a mom for long.

You were once very "xiao jie". Now, you started to explore the world of your own and even completed the whole Tree Top walk without any whining. You have started to ditch those pretty dresses for pants so that your actions could be louder and bigger. Your vocabulary now amazes me because of your intensity of reading. Maybe because you are a first born, you aim to be first at everything, and suffer dreadful melt-downs if you're not. It comes in handy when we are trying to encourage you to achieve certain goals . I can only hope that this competitive spirit is one of the traits that gets you where you want to be in the future. Being Mummy and Daddy's only girl, you hold a very special place in our heart. And you are always ultra sweet, you wrote and drew various love notes to us when we were away for holidays or even when Daddy and Mummy are out for a date, we would come back with your love note hung at the door waiting for us. We kinda of treat it as a norm now and expect love notes every time we are away.

What gets into us is your love-hate relationship with your brother. While mostly, I try to leave you two to settle on your own first, your buttons are often being pushed and led to some undesirable explosion. Yet, the other minute when you have some goodies, you would never fail to leave some for your brother. I guess you may have felt that our love for you has somewhat reduce because of your two cheeky brothers. But God has enlarged our capacity to love.

You are sweet, determine and a young feisty girl. You are bubbly and yet emotionally sensitive. You talk a lot and you are not shy about it. With the gift of gab, your Daddy even strongly believes that you could follow in his career footsteps. But now that you wish to be a pop star, we will see how we could support your dreams. Since you love to dance and God has given you this gift, we are sure that if you continue to work hard and you should not be too far from your dreams.

Happy 8th birthday, Shannon. Please don't grow up too fast. :D

Love you always
Mummy