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.

I am admitted to George Mason School of Art‘s graduate program in graphic design. I feel like a high school kid getting his first college acceptance letter. In a decade of working in higher-ed institution, I am finally taking advantage of the tuition benefit for something that I truly want to learn and earn a degree. I am positive that the program will make me a better designer.

Many thanks to my bosses (past and present) for their wonderful letter of recommendation. Mad props to my sister-in-law’s husband for proofreading my expanded goal statements and my writing sample, in which I wrote about “White Space, Miles Davis and Responsive Web Design.” I am also sure that the portfolio that I put together in a couple of hours got in the the door. Visualgui not only landed me freelance projects, but also get me into graduate program. I am definitely looking forward toward the Fall semester this year.

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 work with MODX Evolution the day I took on a new job, which is four months ago, at George Mason Law. Since the site already built out, I just needed to learn my way around the system. I knew enough to redesign the entire site with HTML5 and responsive layout. It was a daunting task, but MODX gave me the flexibility to accomplish my goal.

Now I am learning to build a site from scratch using MODX Revolution and Bob Ray’s MODX: The Official Guide is indispensable. Through almost 800 pages, Ray demonstrates his inside-out knowledge of MODX. Using the book as a reference, I was able to put together a CMS-powered site with the exact markups I had intended. I am now in love with Revolution.

Highly recommended if you want to learn MODX. Must-have if you develop sites using MODX.

As mentioned last Friday, I invited my wife to lunch with me today, but she dissed me for her colleagues and didn’t even answered my call. Ouch! I was looking forward to it, but it’s all good though. I got a whole Sautéed Lobster in Shell with Salt & Pepper. This is perfect. Not too salty and not too messy, the lobster was perfect. If I want lobster, Viet Royal is the place to go.

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.

A love like ours could never die because it was never alived to begin with. Sometimes I can’t really tell if my wife loves me or not. I think she does or else she wouldn’t bear all that pain to give birth to my wonderful boys. I would never experience what she had gone through, but I get it. Let’s put it this way. If I was the one that had to give birth, we would have no kid. Yes, I am a pussy and I know it. She knows it as well and I am not afraid to admit that in this marriage, I am the bitch.

My wife is a strong, independent woman. Sometimes I even doubted me role in the relationship and just asked her straight out, “Why do you even need me? You seem to be able to do everything yourself.” Sometimes she responded, “I don’t know why either” and sometimes she just gave me that you’re-such-a-dumb-ass look. Whenever I can’t find the right answer, I always draw back to my mom’s theory: either she owed me something in her previous life or I’ll have to pay her back in our next life. I hope it’s the latter because I do want to be with her again if there’s a next life.

As much as we irritate each other to dead at times, we always think and care about each other. We knew from the beginning that the journey ahead of us is rough and treacherous, but we can make it through if we don’t let go. One of our favorite quotes from Lê Uyên Phương’s was “Rồi mai đây đi trên đường đời / Đừng buông tay âm thầm tìm về cô đơn.” (Later, on the journey through life / Don’t let go of my hand to seek your quiet solitude.) These have to be the toughest years of our lives together, but we’re pulling through. Hold on my love, please don’t give up on me. We’ll walk right up to the sun hand in hand.

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.