You hunted down and bought a toy that you thought your kid would really like, paid its price, wrapped it, gave it to him or her as present; then your kid in turn took it to school and gave it away freely to his or her friend. How would you react?
- Yell at your kid and give a speech about how much you had gone through to get that toy for him or her.
- Vow you would never buy anything for your kid again (but you probably don’t mean it)
- Question your kid about that “special” friend, and whether your kid is at the age of dating or admiring at the opposite sex.
- Wish you would have keep the toy for yourself instead of giving it to your kid.
- Wish you had told your kid that the toy is not to give away.
- Be proud that your kid is such a generous person, and will buy something else to reward your kid.
- Learn the lesson to make sure asking the kid first what he or she actually likes.
OMG. Someone stops me!! Too many reactions that I think I probably would react. Breath! breath!…. I guess I need to re-evaluate the joy of giving, tis the season.
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.
Au o vi dau cau van dong dinh cau tre lac leo gap ghenh kho di. Kho di me dat con di. Con di truong hoc, me di truong lang.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.
So I was in the dentist office to get my tooth fixed. As I was laying down on the chair, looking up to the ceiling, it caught my eyes with the warning label that sticked onto the steel frame of the dentist light, that said: “Suitable for use in dry place.” I couldn’t help but to think of a reason for such warning label. Must someone have thought that it’s a good idea to use the light in a wet place before?! But now I think of it, the warning label didn’t say “dry place only”, and the water is always readily available as they perform the procedure on our mouth. I could think of several death scenes involve with electrocution that would write up the script for the next Final Destination movie. Man, I need to get out of this execution chair! Oh no, I can’t feel my lips now. It’s numb.
This is another random thought of the day. Now back to work!!
Entering my favorite holiday season and also the most busy time of the year, Christmas. This blog has been sitting in corner and collecting dust for quite sometime. I’d like to write updates more often, but I’ve been spoiled with short tweets on Tweeter and Facebook status update. It’s hard to find time to write all cool things that have happened, because when I’m actually have some free time, my body wants to sleep. LOL.
Well, here are few past and future exciting things:
- It was good fun time hanging out with family and friends on Thanksgiving. We had lots of foods. We haven’t had game night/day for a while, so it was fun hanging out and playing games together. 8-people Bomberman party on PS3 was an addictive awesome time killer. I remembered we used to sit down hours playing Bombastic dice-rolling games, trying to kill each other on PS2. It was great.
- Still haven’t bored out with Sequence board game yet. Taboo is another back-up game plan. LOL.
- Nervous and forgot the guitar chords for the duet song on Thanksgiving celebration church service that I sang with my daughter, Grace. Saved by Grace for her cuteness.
- The fall volleyball league is ending in 2 weeks. Tournament is on the last week. It has been fun and exciting. Want to sign up for winter league but looking for teammates right now.
- I got a new tooth! Last week, I got root canal and the crown done for my front tooth. My smile is much prettier now, supposedly. The teeth bleaching has also done some wonder.
- Doorbell was broken. I got a new doorbell, but the transformer has broken as well. I have no idea where’s the transformer is located at. After couple searches, I have a slight idea.
- It’s been very very cold last couple days. Around 10F. Snow has been accumulated. It’s quite a White Christmas look right now. Great for snowboarding though I haven’t had time to go yet.
- Kids are excited to decorate the Christmas tree. That’s my plan for the coming weekend project.
- Christmas program is just around corner. Feel so unprepared this year. Still need to memorize the passage for the Christmas memorization contest that dues this Sunday as well.
- Got video games. No time to play.
- Looking forward to vacation. Excited!
When I was young, the concept of seeing a dentist is narrowed down to either having the tooth (or teeth) pulled, or making a denture. Actually maybe just the denture work because there were many “home remedy” options for taking the tooth out. It can be done by force with a strong flick of the fingers, or dungeon style using home tools such as the pliers, or tie the string to the tooth and pull, or tie the string to a doorknob and slam the door, or to the hammer and throw it… As you can see, we could get very creative with this task. There was no such thing called dental insurance when I grew up, and dental care was down to one option: brush your teeth. If the family could not afford toothpaste, there was always salt. Want strong teeth? Chew the areca nut (like tobacco). It tainted the teeth blackish, but makes them super strong (so you can bite the bullet if you want. Actually, don’t ever try this. I haven’t heard anyone doing that, but you shouldn’t be the first to try!! Again, just don’t!)
OK. That wasn’t truly my understanding of dentistry, but the truth is we don’t have dental care back in the day. Now living in the US, we have this dental benefit and we should take advantage of it more. Sadly, my teeth department has not been paid much attention and being neglected like the old college books in the basement. I was just going too keep ignoring it, but too many people had noticed my ugly, blacken front tooth. This was from probably 15 years back, when I was pretending to be a superhero, messing around, cartwheeling, flipping and ended up landing with my mouth on the cement floor. So the tooth was dead and stay dead for many years. With my recent visit to the dentist office, they gave me the estimate for crowning the tooth, and it wasn’t seem too bad. It does not cost nearly an arm and a leg, so I decide it’s time to drop the “dough” (as in dollars) to beautify my smile.
Actually, there’s several steps before calling this tooth a king and put a crown on it. First, I need to bleach my teeth to bring out the whiteness of the attractive smile. Then I am scheduled to sit in the chair and being knocked out for about an hour and half while the dentist does the root canal work. Actually it will be an attempt at the root canal because it has been so long, the tooth might have become fossil already and he might not able to reach deep enough to retract the dead vein. That’s lot of effort to save one tooth, don’t you think? But it’s better this way. Better than wearing a one tooth denture for sure, I think!
Talking about teeth whitening, there are so many choices: over counter/off the shelf products, take-home kit, or done in the dentist office. I got great tips from a friend, and decide to go with the the take-home kit. It’s still expensive but probably worth it, and save time. I got my teeth impression done last week which makes the mold that fit precisely to my teeth. I received the bleach gel kit today and it comes with two sets of 4-gel tube. For some reason, I thought of Botox injection when I first saw the kit even though I have never seen what the Botox kit would look like. Weird thought! The dentist assistance explained that there might be some chance of numbness and tingling pain would occur, which kind of scare me for a bit. Who would have guess that there would be some pain involved in bleaching teeth?! Oh well, no pain no gain I guess. Anyway, I can’t wait to try bleaching tonight. I need to watch it and not to leave them on for too long for them to become glowing-in-the-dark, as seen in one of the TV sitcom Friend’s episode when Ross bleached his teeth before going on a date. LOL.
Wait until I smile at you next time!
Tags: dentist, teeth whitening, Thuong
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
Also, beautiful sunset sky on Pikes Peak the night before Halloween.
 Pikes Peak |
 Sunset |
Tags: Benjamin, costumes, Grace, Halloween, Pikes Peak
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