I was beat by a three years old. He completely shut me down yesterday. Can’t talk sense to him because his replied was, “Don’t talk to me.” Whipping his ass didn’t work either. My only choice was just do it. When I gave him a bath, he screamed as if I was torturing him. Even my wife had to check in to see if I was torturing him. Putting on his clothes was also a battle. The positive outcome was we both tired as hell when it was time for bed. We both slept through the night. Parenting a three-year-old is a challenge and I am failing. He turned me into a taciturn. I am not giving up. I am just giving in.

For the past three years, I have been through a lot of shit, but nothing beat tonight’s shit. After dinner at Red Hot & Blue, I took Dao upstairs for a bath. Suddenly the shit hit me. My head started to pound and I was damn near vomited. If I were stuck in a box with that shit, I would have die.

Something strange about the shit. It was not stinky. It had a light fragrance like someone was putting on some fucked-up, expired cologne. Not sure what he was eaten, but that was the worse shit ever. Even grandpa couldn’t tolerate it. I had to stop breathing as I was taking off his diaper. I was suspecting that he pooped a lot so I told him, “you pooped a lot.” Usually when he looked into it he would agree, “yes, I pooped a lot.” Tonight, however, he said, “I only pooped small ones.” He only pooped a few marble-size balls, but somehow they were killers. For a few minutes, I could understand why American can’t stand the smell of the durian.

Three-year-old must be the most terrible age. Not only their behavior is bad, their shit is also the worst. I told my wife about it and her reply was, “And you think your shit doesn’t smell?” See, you can’t even tell your wife this kind of shit, but that’s good thing that I have a blog. I can rant about shit all I want. I probably lose all my readers after this stinking post, but I can’t help it.

Then again no matter how awful his shit smells or how irritate his attitude gets, I still got mad love for my boy. This is what I called true love. You have to love everything about him even his shit.

Monday morning, drove Dao to daycare as usual. Pulled into the parking lot, he started mumbling, “my tummy hurts.” Before I could unbuckle him, he vomited all over his jacket. As I tried to reach for some paper towel, he threw up again all over himself. I told him to stay put and we drove back home. He said “yes” softly and remained quiet the whole way home.

I called off work and stayed with the boys and grandparents. We rebuilt the track on Dao’s table train. We added a bridge and added more rails. I held cu Dan on my arms and played with cu Dao. I had such a wonderful time with them. Dao was behaving quite well. I even got him to eat some rice and stir-fried vegetables grandma made. He took a bite of a string bean and said, “This is amazing.” Amazing? where did he get that word from? Then I got him to nap.

Later on grandma went in to nap with him so I took cu Dan out for a stroll. I walked around the block listening to music for over an hour and he was still napping. The weather was gorgeous and I was so glad to have a day off with the kids. I love interacting with Cu Dao and talking to Cu Dan. He smiles every time I talk to him. He only cries when he’s hungry or dirty. He’s a bit irritated with his eczema at times, but he’s doing really well. I really don’t want him to lose his chubbiness.

If nothing else, the boys take after me their loud farts. Nowadays Cu Dan trumpets really loud when he poops, but the funny thing is that Cu Dao immediately blamed on me, “Daddy dit (farted).” I was like, “No, I didn’t do it. Your lil brother did it.”

We got complaints from Dao’s teachers that him and his best buddy played together as well as fought against each other. Grandma asked him why he got into the fight with his best friend and his reply was, “Aidan quay qua (acted naughty).”

Whenever reading a book with Dao, I try to translate the texts into Vietnamese so that he could also pick the language. One of our bedtime stories for tonight was P.D. Eastman’s Go, Dog. Go!. I read to him, “Đi Chó Đi.” He repeated, “Đỉ Chó Đi.” My jaw dropped and I asked him, “What did you just say?” Then I quickly changed my mind, “Don’t repeat what you just say. Let’s read on in English.” I was laughing my head off and the poor kid didn’t know why. Sometimes just a slight tone could change the whole context in Vietnamese. An innocent word could turn into something quite pejorative.

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.