March will probably be the best month in 2021! My mom, baby Nem’s grandma, arrived! How could Jon and I express our gratitude to this strong, brave woman, who had never travelled abroad on her own, and barely speaks English, made it to the US. She once told me in the past that I will not understand how much she loves me until I myself become a mother. And now I see what she means.

One of my aunts says as a mother, we have to be strict and discipline our children, so we can’t wait to be grandmothers to spoil our grandchildren! Oh my how clearly I can see that! In Vietnamese we have this “con đầu, cháu sớm” idiom, meaning the very first child and grandchild in the family gets all the attention and love, the special and unique kind from everyone. Jon and I are both the first child, first grandchild, and now so is Nem. I would never forget every time I walk downstairs from my office seeing Nem being held on Mom’s lap. I was even to the point of worrying that he’d not learn how to crawl being held constantly! All the previous sleep training attempts were also useless, because as soon as he cries in the middle of the night, grandma would fly to this crib to pick him up and make sure he knows “grandma is here! Grandma loves you and you have nothing to worry about!”.

Before grandma’s arrival, Nem also had his first night away from home as we went to south Jersey to celebrate Jon’s 40^thbirthday at GGP & GGM’s. We had a week-long celebration at home first, and then literally packed the whole house so that we have everything for this little creature’s trip. It’s still amazing to me how much stuffs are needed for this one less-than-20lbs human. Grandmom baked the best cheesecake on earth, and although it’s Jon’s birthday I got to go to Flaggs, one of the most famous nurseries in South Jersey, recommended by plant peeps in the crazy plant people group. It’s a cute little greenhouse, well designed and organized with both common and rare plants. It’s a happy feeling when stores and nurseries are getting ready for springtime! 

Talking about plants, I made a friend in town from selling and buying plants, and we pulled the trigger to adopt the entire plant collection from this one lady who’s moving to, guess where? Oklahoma! Kim and I each got about 30 plants, some rehabs, about one third of the batch is propagation in water, but we both super happy about it! I had to bring the coffee table out by the big window to have a new home for the new addition, and start selling them! Maybe someday in the very far future when Jon makes all the money, I would be serious about a plant business. Although, I did have my very first issue with a buyer after selling 100-ish plants so far. Someone who was pretty grumpy and accused me for not being honest and sold her two unhealthy plants with root rot. Why? Why on earth would I do that? I was really saddened about the incident, because plants are supposed to make people happy! But, we can’t have happy customers all the time, right? And I did learn a valuable lesson: always ask buyers to check on the plants before they leave, even when they do porch pickup. Money well spent!