You never know what being a parent is like until you become one. As a father of two sons, I appreciate and love my mom even more for what she had gone through. Every now and then, she would remind me how angry and worried she was when I came home late or didn’t come home at all when I was in high school. I didn’t do anything wild. I just stayed at my friend’s house and played tien len (Vietnamese card game) for dollar bills all night. At that time I didn’t think it was a big deal, but now I can see why my mom was terrified.

Our mom placed all of her hope and love on us. She chose her kids over her men. One of her legend stories is how she broke up with my sister’s father. She told him to watch his daughter and he covered her up with the blanket when she cried instead of trying to calm her down. She confronted him that he might suffocated her. He beat her up. She just let it go. Once she napped her daughter, she beat his ass and filed the divorce. This is just my mom’s side of the story; therefore, I am not sure how it all went down. Still don’t ever fuck with my mama’s babies.

With my father, she rather took up the opportunity to go to the States to give us a better life then stayed with him. When he came to the States with us and decided not to stay, she bought him one way ticket back to Vietnam. She let go of husband but never her kids even though rising kids is a tough challenge. My dad either couldn’t live up to the challenge or simply didn’t care. Now that I am a father, I can see why he couldn’t deal with it, but unlike him, I won’t run away from my responsibility.

Like my mom, being a parent trumps everything else. Even if my relationship with my wife turned sour, we still have our share of responsibility for life. Just that bonding alone should hold us together if everything else failed. Sure, we fell in love, but we can so fall out of love. We have gone through tough times, but we can no longer just think of our own lives once we have kids. We simply can’t throw the kids away if we don’t want them any more. No one put a gun to our head and said, “you two better make some fucking babies.”

Yes, I am a flawed father. Sometimes I felt like, “What the fuck had I gotten myself into?” I never prepared for this, but I will not give up. My mom is my best role model, but I also learned the experience of not having both parents. I am not saying that my mom didn’t do a heck of a job raising us, but still something felt missing. I definitely don’t want that missing piece to fall on my children.

This morning Dao’s classmates gathered around Ms. Julianne, one of his favorite teachers. They all sat on the floor interacting with the teacher. Dao came in and made his way to Ms. Julianne’s lap. He sat right on her thigh as if that special seat has been reserved for him.

Em Dan has been completely recovered from the cold. He’s now working hard to gain weight. Because of his chubbiness, he feels so good in my arms. He starts to smile quite a bit nowadays like this one my wife took. He looked at himself this morning and also started to smile. We gave him a bath last night and he enjoyed it quite a bit. He seems to be the opposite of anh Dao.

And Dao irritated me last night. He kept scratching my arms and keloids. His finger nails were so sharp that I felt like needles poking me. I stomped out of the room to change to a long sleeve shirt. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I am going to wear long sleeve to bed from now on and trying to get him off my arms. I felt so bad because he kept saying, “tay, please.”

About the biting incident the other day, his teacher called me to apologize. I was cool about it, but I emphasized the important of letting us know things like that occurred at school. As I was giving him a bath, I asked him how was school and if anyone bit him. He said that he told his friend, “Please ‘A,’ don’t bite me, thank you.”

We spent the Saturday at my sister’s house and Dao played with Eric the whole time. Most of the time they played well together, but they get a bit rough once in a while. Dao cried and said that Eric hit his hand with a (toy) car. Eric also complaint that Dao started it. After calming them down, Dao said to Eric, “Please don’t hit my hand. I am a little small.” He sounded so cute the way he said “little small.”

Being a parent is hard, but seeing your kids grow and develop make it all worthwhile.

When giving Dao a bath last night, I noticed a red bruise on his back (below his left shoulder). I asked him what happened and he told me that one of his classmates bit him. He told me the name of the kid and where it happened. He cried and the teacher tried to comfort him, yet no one reported to us.

I was sad and irritated, but I stayed calm and spent the rest of the evening with him. This morning I was going to have a talk to his teacher, but she was reading to the kids so I didn’t want to interrupt. I reported to the administrator instead, but I didn’t say who did it. He’s going to find out and contact me sometimes today.

I am very glad that Dao was able to tell me exactly what went wrong. Although I was outraged, I didn’t flip out or anything. I just wanted him to be able to communicate to me if things don’t go right with him at school. The clip of the Asian kid attacked by seven kids still traumatize me. I told my wife that we will make sure that our kids will go to school and home safely until they go to college. Yes I am a helicopter parent when it comes to the safety of my kids.

This morning I dropped some candy on the floor. Dao yelled, “Chet cha (dead dad), you made a big mess.” My response to him was, “I am ok. I am not dead yet.” He picked up this phrase from Grandma. We have to be really careful what we say around him because once they registered in his head, he’ll find a way to use them. When he did something that he was not suppose to and got hurt, grandma told him, “dan doi.” Now he uses the phrase as well when the situation is similar.

As for poor lil Dan, he has caught a cold. He has been vomiting due to congestion and cough quite a bit. He was a roll for some Michelin rolls, but now he just not gaining weight. At least he’s not dropping. I really hope he’ll recover soon.

I was holding Dan in my arms, feeding him and watching Louis C.K’s Hilarious. I felt less guilty when he fell asleep. I hope that he didn’t hear anything. I definitely can’t watch this in front of Dao. He would picked all the uncensored materials right up. What I like about Louis is that he hits right on the shame spots.

I put together a minimal page for our second son Dan. Uploaded many new photos to our Picasa album. I also clean up his big brother’s page and added a few more photos. Love the shot in which he gave grandma a kiss.

Pampers’s Sesame Street diaper comes with various graphics including Elmo playing basketball, baseball and soccer. Dao only prefers the basketball ones. He wouldn’t let me change him until we use the basketball ones. Since the basketball one is quite limited, I switched out before I put it on without him noticing it. I know it is sneaky, but I am in no mood to fight with him which diaper to use.

When I didn’t have kids yet and when I witnessed a child disrespecting or disobeying his parents, I thought to myself, “If that was my kid I would beat the crap out of him.” Now I still want to beat the crap out of my kid for not listening to me, but the flashback of him falling off the playground with my carelessness haunted me. At times I got so mad at him and instead of beating the crap out of him, I just give him a big hug as if I am apologizing. Then he would say, “Are you happy, daddy? Are you happy?” Then I get this weird anger, amusing feeling as I responded to him, “Of course.”

After getting Dao to sleep around 10pm last night, I logged in to work on the new Mason Law School site cleaning up a dozen of pages inside MODx. Took a break at midnight to ring in the new year and then went back to work until 2am. I was so tired that I emailed my supervisor to stay home today. I also wanted to celebrate Lunar New Year with my family.

With the cold weather and the icy road, I haven’t stepped out of the house since Friday night. I stayed in and hung out with the boys. The little guy is now having a double chin. I just love holding him and watching him sleep in my arms. He is just so sweet.

To make the older guy not feeling left out, I engaged in some activities with him around the house like playing with trains, puzzles and any toys we could pull out from the basement. Yesterday I went outside trying to break the ice on the driveway. I asked him if he wanted to help me and he said, “no, you go and clean the snow. Go daddy go!” Dao says a lot of things now that I am sure we haven’t taught him yet. He uses phrases like, “Don’t talk to me,” “Don’t touch me” and “go away.” His answer to everything now is “No, thank you.” Do you want to eat? “No, thank you.” Do you want to take a bath? “No, thank you.” Do you want to brush your teeth? “No, thank you.” I feel like just let him dirty and hungry for days and see how he would react.

Dao is an adorable little kid when he decided to. I am sure most two year-olds are like that. I any rate, I am glad to have the couple of days spending with the kids. Happy Lunar New Year to you all. Yes, all three of you, my readers.

In the parking lot this morning, Dao said to me, “Daddy, am Dao. Xe dung Dao.” He told me to carry him to class so that cars won’t hit him. It was cold and I was in a rush to get to work so I just picked him up. I think I have to carry him to class until he goes to college.

Yesterday he helped me changed diaper for his little brother so he pulled up the stool to stand next to me and said, “I am too small,” and glanced around the room and went on, “smaller than the light.” I smiled and replied in Vietnamese, “I don’t think I’ll ever be as tall as the light either.”

I witnessed little Dan smiled at me for the first time yesterday as I tried to communicate to him with the five words babies use. He seems to use “neh” very often. The little guy is hungry all the time. He doesn’t seem to use “eair” (lower gas) though. He just drops a few loud farts to make sure that we heard him. That’s his secret language for “change me now.”