A thesis on parenting

Jaejoong was very busy in the kitchen. It’s been so long since she was cooking in her kitchen instead of watching her mother or mother-in-law cook. It has been a while since she could do the housework without any problems, which made the family happy as it was a sign that she has recovered well.

Even the sisters of fate would agree that she’s fine. That’s why the day she got a clean chit from the doctor, her son and husband were found to have caught chicken pox.

It’s been a week and she’s been playing nurse to father and son, which she’s quite enjoying. Her boys are the cutest when they’re sick.

Right now, she’s preparing lunch for the three of them while Yunho slept and Changmin did god knows what in his room. There were sounds of things falling in his room followed by a ‘I’m okay!’ Jaejoong just let him be. Knowing Changmin, he’d stumble in the kitchen for food soon.

“Mama, what’s this?” Jaejoong resisted the urge to laugh at her son’s predictability. Changmin came in holding a worn-out diary of some sort.

Jaejoong glanced at it and went back to her stirring. “I don’t remember. Where’d you find it?”

“I’m out of notebooks, so daddy told me to take the half-used notebooks in the study. Found it among those.” Jaejoong wiped her hands on her apron and took the book from Changmin. She examined the cover and came to know the cause of Changmin’s curiosity. The name of her husband made Changmin interested. Jaejoong smiled slightly. “are you judging a book by its cover? You're not supposed to do that.”

That earned a smack on his head with the diary. Jaejoong opened it and showed the front page of the book. “I know what this is.” Jaejoong pointed at the page decorated with crayon art and stickers around fancily drawn words ‘Daddy’s Dairy’.

Changmin took the diary. “daddy had a diary? He says diaries are for girls.” He said incredulously.

Jaejoong brushed that off. “despite that, your daddy made this. Actually, when you were around one, someone gifted him this baby diary and he got interested. Your daddy only wrote occasionally though until he stopped altogether. He became addicted to taking your pictures because of it. after that it was more pictures and videos and no writing.”

“does this have any embarrassing thing about me?” Changmin asked with dread..

“It’s simply cute. Not embarrassing.” Jaejoong turned to her cooking, “you should go through it. It’s pretty much a thesis on you when you were a baby. You’ll be surprised by your own self.”

Changmin turned the first page and was greeted by a smiling baby picture of himself. “I’ll read it. But if I’m traumatised in any way, I’m telling the therapist it was your idea.”

“I’ll gladly take the fall.” Jaejoong winked and shooed him off.

Changmin went to his room and laid stomach down on his bed perched his elbows on the mattress. He stared at the first page of the diary while praying that there’s nothing embarrassing in that diary. With anticipation, he turned the page.

“what on earth?” he exclaimed. He found the title of the first entry quite unusual. Nevertheless, he continued. 

Roses are red, violets are blue and so is grass.

I always wondered as a teen why babies just sit in one place for hours and look around. But since Minnie, I wanted to check it out myself. So when we took him to a park, I sat next to him and would look where he was. I stared at the ground just like him and for the first time it hit me. I never noticed the gazillion shades of green in one square foot patch of grass. I mean seriously! I thought grass is just green. Truth is, not a blade is the same. I think I even saw a blue one….okay…. maybe not blue per se. maybe it’s the yellowness of drying grass and the natural green that made it look blue. And maybe it’s the lighting too. BooJae says what lighting! It’s daylight.

And then he does the cutest thing. He’s petting a ladybug! That lasted about 1 second because it turned out to be one of those of stink bomb bugs. Yet my baby boy was checking his own diaper and silently asking me to change him.

Any who, never going to assume that everything is the same.

 “I got stink bombed and you learnt that grass is not green?” Changmin scratched his head. Deciding not to think too much, he turned the page.

The sky is better than monkeys

So Jaejoong wants to see a zoo. I mean, we went there not for our son but for my 23 years old wife. What am I saying? I’d build a zoo just for my Boo…….moving on…. So while Jae is obsessed by some mommy monkey eating the bugs from the baby monkey’s fur (ewww!) Chwang kept staring at the sky and all of a sudden he goes “Appa car!” so I look up and yeah…there’s a cloud shaped like a car. To chwang all tin boxes on four wheels is Appa’s car. But I was excited and looked for a funny shaped cloud. I found a flower and one that looked suspiciously like Nicole Kidman. That’s beside the point. The thing is, I remember when dad took me and mom to Nice. On the last day of our vacation, dad and I sat on a beach and looked at the clouds. That was one of my best days as a kid. So this felt like that.. I wish Minnie would remember this day but he’s too small ne….One day I hope we can lie down in our gardens and see clouds or stars.

“You never asked me…..” Changmin pouted feeling a tad bad that he has no memory of something that was important to his father. “okay, next o