Father and son shaving together

I remember the time I was young watching my dad shaving his facial hair in the morning. He got soap fluffy covered his face, and smoothly ran the stainless steel razor with replaceable double-edge blade down the cheeks. It was fascinating, like the coolest thing ever and I wondered when I could get to do that.

… Fast forward in time …

As I was getting ready for work this morning, Benjamin sat in the bathroom watching me holding an electric razor in my hand.

Benjamin: “What are you doing, daddy?”

Me: “I’m shaving.”

He continued to watch for a few seconds, then said: “Daddy, when I’m big, can I have a ‘mouth lawnmower’ too?” (His word in Vietnamese: cái máy cắt cỏ miệng!)

Me: *laughing out loud*  ”Certainly, Ben. And this, this is called a razor.”

(Image from Getty Images)

I just love road trips. There is just something fun about driving, discovering places, trying new foods, being outdoor, being spontaneous. For Thao, she just doesn’t like the part sitting in the car for too long. I don’t think the kids like sitting in one place either, not to mention the dreadful repetitive question: are we there yet?

With recent little short road trip to Denver with the kids, another issue arise: bathroom break. Benjamin was quite fussy and kept requesting bathroom break like every fifteen minutes. When he was younger, he just slept the entire trip in his car seat, which was a whole lot easier. He’s not wearing diaper anymore, but for little road trip like this, we put him in diaper just in case but he refuses to go in the diaper.

The we have the little guru in back seat giving us tip: “Mommy, usually he wet his pants when you don’t tell him. If you tell him pee in his diaper, he won’t. You should tell him: don’t pee in the diaper, then he will!” Then, she turns to her brother: “Don’t wet your diaper, ok?” I couldn’t help but laughing out loud during that little therapy session. She already uses reverse psychology at her age.

This gets me thinking of the huge “road trip” the Israel took from Egypt to Canaan, the promised land. Now, that is some road trip, 40 years long, crossing many desserts – not so much of a scenic drive. There was a shorter route but of course due to their constant complaining, God made them took the long route, wandering in the dessert.

Forty years, can you imagine that? There were lots of them, like sand on the seashore, like stars in the skies, with donkey, camel, pets, cattles, belongings, kids. That is one heck of a trip. I don’t know how Moses did it, leading millions of people, knowing when to start moving, when to stop, what to do for foods. Then, I got to curious how the bathroom breaks were handle. That trip was a miracle in itself.

Road Trip

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Lately, I notice how Grace and Benjamin play and interact, and their differences in solving problem just amaze me.

When we give Ben a toy still in its package, he immediately goes for the “main content”, yanking it off the box, then try to press on everything that might be a button, or flip it up side down to locate a switch. If nothing happens he gives it couple bangings against the floor. If still nothing, he concludes: “het pin roi!” (translation: it’s out of battery!) and will try to find a screw driver to open it up.

As for Grace, she goes for …the manual booklet first. Ha ha ha. She carefully pulls out the piece of paper from the box, spreads it across the table, and starts reading the instruction and follows the steps. When she got stuck, then she goes to daddy.

(On a side note, I’m so proud of her on the reading part. She’ll read just about anything she sets her eyes on, whether it’s her Bible, her books, Mommy’s book, back of a cereal box, or.. a toy’s manual booklet!)

The other day I bought them Happy Meals at McDonalds (bad parent, I know! Lol. This is not a frequent thing so it’s OK .. ha ha I hope), so they both got the toys that come with. Benjamin already gave me the Iron Man toy so I could turn it on for him while he’s eating the fries. I was driving away from the parking lot, finding the switch on the back of the toy and flipping it on, Grace shouted from the back seat: “No Daddy! That’s not correct. You have to pull the tape off on the chest first. That’s step one!” I looked in the mirror and saw Grace already had the instruction sat squarely on her legs with the toy already blinking light on her hand.

Isn’t that something?! We are blessed that God gave us 2 beautiful children with very unique in personalities and characteristics, which make our parenthood quite flavorful and completed.

I don’t remember the first song I sang when I was a kid, and I doubt if my parents would still remember. As for my kids, Grace’s first songs  were both “ABC” and the “Barney’s Song: I Love You“. That’s right, she knew both song, sang it loud and proud.  Songs are pretty easy for Grace to remember, and she sings some Vietnamese children song as well.  Quite the opposite for Benjamin, words and English vocab doesn’t quite stick with him.  He knows them, but he doesn’t say it back. When he was younger, Thao usually sang to him a Vietnamese lullaby and he remembered it.

You start singing and he can sing the next words for you, but he doesn’t sing the song. His babysit lady is from Hue, a central region of Vietnam, and she speaks with thick central-region accent. Ben also now has some Vietnamese central accent when he talks. It’s quite funny. The other day he went home from daycare and sang first line of  ”Ai Ra Xu Hue” (a well-known song about that central region) and we had quite a laugh.

Today mark a milestone for him as he can sing his first English song, “Happy Birthday to you!”  ”ABC” didn’t quite work out. Too many letters.

Here are our little superheroes dressed up for Halloween night. Grace is Blue Power Ranger (yeah, it’s her choice of color since they don’t have orange, and she prefers blue over red), and Benjamin is Superman.  Grace was excited walking block after block for trick-or-treating, while Ben preferred sitting in the stroller and being pushed around the block. Not so super, after all!

Our superheroes

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Also, beautiful sunset sky on Pikes Peak the night before Halloween.

Pikes Peak

Sunset

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…And then Benjamin turns 2! That was fast! It seems like he was just learning to walk yesterday. Asking him “How old are you, Ben?” and he would say two but spreading all of his five fingers because he can’t quite use the thumbs to hold down other fingers yet. Cute!

Thao prepared the Vietnamese noodle for dinner, and family and couple friends, with short notice, came over to celebrate. Ben dressed in his Halloween costume as Superman, though he was confused and kept saying “Batman”… hahaha. We lighted up the candles on the cake for Ben to blow out, and he was very excited and wanted to do it again and again.

It’s a joy being parents and watching our kids growing up. It’s really is! It’s busy having kids for sure, and definitely tiredness is part of the equation. But on the bright side, seeing them laugh, learn, play, walk, talk with full of energy and curiosity, it’s priceless! Oh how we love our kids!

Blow out candles	Grace and Ben
Family and Friends	Vietnamese noodle

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Both Grace and Benjamin caught a flu bug and were down for two days.  They had fever, coughing, and vomitting.  They’ve been sick-free for quite a while until now, so we were little frantic, worried, and afraid if they have got the swine flu, H1N1 virus. But we also trust in God’s authority over our lives, and nothing is out of His reach. We prayed and certainly God had heard our prayers. He gives them strength and they are sick no more. Grace showed sign of recovery in the afternoon, while Benjamin recovered the next day. Today, they are up, running around,  laughing, and active as they can be. Praise the Lord for His mercy. He reigns over sickness, or even death. What an almighty powerful God we serve!

The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised – Job 1:21b

Grandpa gave Ben a haircut, and he looks handsome in it. Thank you grandpa! Before taking him to daycare this morning, I told him: let me take a picture of you, and he just squatted down right on the floor… hahaha!
 

Ben with new haircut

Ready for picture

Why Arizona State? Because it was on sale, that’s why!

It was so… last week,  thing in the past, but I didn’t get the time to blog it. Just busy, busy, busy, you know?!  So let me quickly write about it before another weekend is coming!

It was a good weather warm and sunny weekend. It’s June already but we still have snow on Pikes Peak. That is not unsual at all!

Snow-covered Pikes Peak in June

So, it was time to hit the park with the kids. The bicycle gang is ready for some laps!

I'm ready	honk! honk! Coming through
Daddy push me!

On Sunday, after church service, the weather was just perfect for volleyball. We haven’t played volleyball much lately due to rainny weather.  I was so ready to hit some balls, and I got my sports clothes with me in the car. Oh wait, I forgot to grab my tennis shoes.  Shoot! Anyway, we didn’t get to play: not enough participants. We figured 2-on-2 would waste lot of time in collecting the ball on the open field. 

We sat on sofa, like an hour trying to figure out what to do. We’ll try to think or remember any news or commercial for weekend community events, but we got nothing.  Finally, we decided to drive to downtown and would more more decision from there. But t here was nothing in downtown. It was Sunday, and businesses  closed early.

Well then, we thought we might just have some ice cream while we already made the drive to downtown. We  stopped at this ice cream hut in Old Colorado, called Colorado City Creamery. It was a very nice little shop, with lots of flavors, buffet topping, inside and outdoor sitting, and with live keyboard music.

Colorado City Creamery

Jazzy tunes from the organist

We enjoyed our ice cream outside, picture posing with the cow, and strolling couple blocks in downtown before heading home.

Our family	Bao and Hoa
Destiny	Nguyen
Nhan	Grace (and the cow)

It was just in time for dinner. So, on the way home,  we stopped by groccery store and grabbed some chicken legs and wings for  BBQ.  Few hours later, our hunger was satisfied. The chicken was very tasty. Sorry, I was too hungry and forgot about taking pictures.

But, you can check out the rest of the photo here.

How’s your relationship with your immediate relatives? I grew up in the same house with most of my cousins, so we develop strong bond. We used to do lots of things together, played together, argued and  fought each other, and got whipped together … hahaha. Even now everyone has their own families, separated by distance, we are still pretty close and connected.

Last February, Thao and the kids visited Vietnam so my children got a chance to hang around with their second-cousins. They seemed to have fun playing together. Here are couple pictures my cousin took, and you can check out more pictures from his photo album. I wonder if the kids would remember each other when they grow up.

The monument in the background is of Alexandre Yersin, a physician and bacteriologist. I don’t know much about him, but apparently there is a Wiki of Yersin that you can read, if you are that curious!

There is some virus that causes coughing and vomiting going around. Kids from our church have got them in the last couple weeks, including my nephew, Jahmal. Now, it caught up to Benjamin. He’s been having some nose congestion, and minor coughing here and there. But last night, Benjamin was already sleeping, and he started coughing then threw up in bed. It was a mess. He was half asleep as I brought him to the tub to wash up, but he didn’t want to get out after I was done washing him. He likes water. The kid slept soundly ’til morning with no further incident after that. Compare to what other kids had, this is nothing yet. He still eats normally without throwing up yet. The thing is there’s no medicine for this kind of virus. Doctors say they just have to overcome it by themselves. So, stay strong, Ben!

You know, I’m just used to these bathing-kids, sheet-changing, laundry in the middle of the night. I had quite a few experiences with Grace. It’s not to scare you, but this is part of the fun of raising kids. It’s a package deal thing. I just hope I don’t have to deal with this very often though. Consider what my parents had experienced with me when I was young, I have this kids thing easy!! I had asthma and had trouble breathing every night. I’m sure my parents couldn’t sleep well either. God knows our limit, and He goes easy on us. We’re blessed.

So the first month raising Benjamin went by just like that. He is doing very well, and growing fast. Weighting in 11lbs (5kg) and measuring 22 inches (55.9cm) in length. The first month wasn’t so bad since he slept most of the time, well breast-feed, and stayed warm and comfortable with humidifier machine turned on 24×7.  Besides, Grace was extremely helpful with getting baby socks, diapers and such. She loves her little brother, and there wasn’t much a jealousy problem. We thank God for this beautiful baby boy, among many other special blessings that come along with the package. We are thankful for: no waking up much during the night, no rocking baby to sleep, no jaundice (yellow-skin), no severe illness, etc. He is just wonderful! God knew our limits, and He gives what we can bare. That’s what so amazing about God.

In our culture we celebrate baby-1-month-old. It is kinda like Baby Shower in the western world but we celebrate after birth instead of before birth. Lots of people from church are talking to be involved helping out with setup, foods, cooking and such. We are blessed with many loving, caring people around us. We will definitely post that here in our blog.

For those we missed sending the baby announcement, we apologize. Benjamin Christian Le was born on October 29th, 2007, 1:55pm, weighted 7lbz 1oz (3.2kg), measured 20 inches (50.8cm)

Here is a recap video Animoto Clip – Introducing Benjamin Christian Le