Getting Dao to brush his teeth takes quite a bit of patience and effort. He doesn’t quite get the important of brushing his teeth yet. So I gave him a little demonstration last night using Photoshop.

I pulled up a recent photo of him and zoomed into his smiley face. I selected the yellow stains on his teeth using the Magic Wand Tool and pointed out to him, “You see all that germs running around your teeth?” He replied, “Yeah, like Curious George.” He referred to one of Curious George’s episodes on germs. I said, “That’s right and if you don’t brush your teeth, this is what is going to happen to your teeth.” I slowly darkened his teeth by adjusting the image’s level. He quickly ran into the bathroom and asked me to brush his teeth. I just took my time and did it slowly without having to hold him down. Afterward, he held water in his mouth and spat it out saying, “Go away germs. Go down the hole.”

With the daylight saving time changed this morning, he didn’t get up until almost 8 o’clock. I told him to go brush his teeth and the reaction was “no.” So I reminded him what happened yesterday if he doesn’t want to brush his teeth. He quickly got up and ran into the bathroom and we did the same thing we did last night. After we all done, he said, “The germs in my mouth are gone.”

I am not sure who long this method would last, but the message is definitely effective.

Seeing my wife breastfeeding my boy makes me understand why many women, especially working mother, don’t want to breastfeed their kids. It’s a hard commitment. She has to pump milk every few hours when she’s at work. Fortunately she has a very flexible job. Because breastfeeding baby gets hungry more often during the night, she has to stay up more often to feed him.

On top of all of that, Dana has to watch her diet. Our lil Dan has eczema and he gets worse whenever she eats beef or seafood. Now she has to give her favorite food like steak, lobster and crab for the sake of the baby. She doesn’t have to give up any of that if she simply gives him formula.

Every time I hold lil Dan in my arms, it never ceases to amaze me how a little boy who gets bigger and more beautiful everyday simply by drinking his mother’s milk. There’s a Vietnamese proverb that says, “Uống Nước Nhớ Nguồn” (drink water, remember the root). I say, “Drink milk and remember your mother.” Yes, breastfeeding is hard. It requires tremendous efforts. So my deepest respect goes out to all the mothers who breastfeed her baby.

These days we have tacos almost every week thanks to my mom-to-be sister-in-law. Last night we had tacos again for supper. Whenever I have tacos, I have to have some margarita to go with them. Last night I made a bit too much and I was the only one drinking it. After dinner I was buzzed and yet still had to do my parts: giving Dao a bath, brushing his teeth and putting him to bed.

Taking care of a kid with a bit of a buzz was quite fun actually. I was just bugging out with him. We splashed water all over the bath tube and screamed like drunken college kids. After giving him a bath and putting him on his new diaper, I told him to play in the bedroom so I could take a shower, but he wanted to come inside the bathroom with me. When you have kids, privacy is something that is completely lost. The other day, I was taking a shit while he was standing next to me watching YouTube video on my iPhone.

So I let him sat in while I took a shower. He told me to pull the toilet seat cover down so he could sit and wait. When I took off my clothes, he looked and said, “Wow, that’s a big one.” Then he pointed to his own and said, “I have small one.” Oh my goodness, I laughed so hard and I couldn’t wait to tell my wife what her son just said to me. I love this kid. He’s such a funny little boy.

Being a father of a three-year-old and a three-month-old gives me the best and the worst experience at the same time. Lil Dan is at the best phrase of his life. Even when the eczema irritates him, he puts on beautiful smiles every time we talk to him. I love holding him in my arms until he falls asleep. Even though I am encouraging a bad habit, he’s only being this good for a short period of time. I know how fast time has passed by so I am just going to hold on to the precious moments as long as I can. By the time he hits two or three, that’s when the worst comes out.

Dao is now in that terrible-three stage. It’s not his fault though. It’s mostly our fault because we’re not sure how to handle him. In fact, I have to give him props for being a pioneer. Dao is a bright and imaginative kid; therefore, he challenges us and prepares us for his younger siblings. I am still learning my ways around him. This past week things seemed to be much smoother than the previous weeks. I have learned one important key: not to let him get to me. No matter how frustrated I was with his constant revolts I remained calmed. If he knew that I was furious, he would push it even harder.

So now on weekdays from 6pm to 10pm he has my full attention. I wish I could spend more time with Dan, but this is the critical moment for Dao. Besides, I am sure Dan is very content with his mom. In these four hours, my focus is to feed him dinner, give him a bath and brush his teeth. As long as we can accomplish those three taks, we can play all he wants.

With that said, Dao is very funny sometimes. Here’s a clip that he’s trying to breastfeed his little brother. When I took a little dinosaur toy and touched his cheek with it, he said, “Khung long (dinosaur) please don’t eat me. Eat grass.”

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.