Happy one-month birthday to the only baby currently in my arsenal. Gotta catch them all, right? We celebrated with Ngày Đầy Tháng, a Vietnamese tradition marking a baby’s first full month of life. My parents helped prepare a special altar with incense and offerings, including sticky rice, dessert, and Nem Nướng (grilled pork spring rolls). One of the key parts of the ritual was presenting 12 small cups of chè—a traditional Vietnamese dessert pudding—to honor the twelve midwife goddesses, each believed to shape and protect a different part of the baby’s body and spirit. Hoping it actually does something.
With summer school now officially behind me, I can dedicate the next seven weeks of my break to fully nesting this little guy. That includes the usual lineup: bottle feeding (as needed), tummy time, diaper changes, and of course, recalibrating my sleep cycle to sync up with his erratic newborn schedule. Will it all be worth it in the long run? I sure hope so—assuming he grows up to be at least a half-decent human being.
People keep telling me I’ll miss the newborn phase the most. I have my doubts. Yes, he’s cute—but that charm starts to wear thin when you’re running on a non-consecutive sleep cycle. Still, I’m crossing my fingers for something exciting to happen in the coming weeks. Right now, things are starting to feel a little too repetitive. What exactly am I supposed to do while my wife’s feeding him? She’s clearly running at maximum effort, and I can’t help but feel a little useless due to my lack of female anatomy. We’re a bit reluctant to take him to big group outings as well, since we’re still waiting on all the proper vaccines. Maybe we’ll take him on more walks in the coming weeks – even if it will be a tad bit hot this summer.
Hopefully he starts talking soon so I can have an actual conversation with him. Until then, I’ll keep reading blogs to him, asking questions that go unanswered, and wondering what kind of person he’s going to become. Will he live life on easy mode with pretty privilege, or struggle with bad looks (a big forehead with a good sense of humor hopefully to compensate)? Will he be the jock who bullies others or the nerd who gets bullied? A future doctor, lawyer, or engineer? Or maybe—just maybe—the first Asian president of the United States? Time will tell.
