Saturday, October 11, 2008

Izzo: "Let's go, DODG-ERS!!!"‏

Dearest Fam:

You can officially add another word to Izzo's ever-growing list of 'em: DODGERS!

"Wow. This just feels so sweet. I know we aren't there yet, but this victory is pretty awesome. I watched the game up in Ventura County with family and friends, including my 2 year old nephew. He's been going to Dodger games since he was a few months old and the team gets him going like nothing else, excepting a few Disney flicks. He's got a baseball wallpapered room with Dodger fatheads and bobbleheads. His favorite teddy bear is a Dodger bear named Brox the Bear. I went to 30+ games this year and he went to at least 20 and he loves it. He can't wait to scream when the "Charge" chant comes up. No matter what else happens this season, I can't wait to tell him 10 years from now how he danced and yelled with the rest of us when Loney drove in runs or Broxton got that final out."

That wasn't written by me, and, obviously, wasn't about Izzo, but that celebratory post on one of the Dodgers' message boards after last night's Game 3, NLDS-clinching win over the Cubs kinda summed up the mood at our house this week, where Izzo's been trained to cheer for Manny being Manny and where any hint of the Dodgers' famous clap-along organ draws enthusiastic tsapik-tsapiks from Izzo, no matter what she's doing or where in the house she may be doing it. Soon as she hears a clapping chant brewing, there she goes. So there's been a whole lotta clapping going down 'round here.

And it ain't over yet, Angels.

Even if Jammer's shown up and brought that childhood jinx back into your lives.

I swear, the Angels are allergic to me. You guys should be glad I left them alone all this time, because now that I've reappeared -- I was on sidebar duty Friday's come-from-behind-just-to-lose-when-Frankie-blew-it heart-breaker -- they're looking not like themselves, but like their former selves.

But they're 3,000 miles away tonight, Oma and Grandpa. They oughtta be OK.

And, potentially good news for "The Azul," as some Angelenos call them, I wasn't home to watch the Dodgers either. I was just down the freeway, on sidebar duty for USC's utter smashing of my alma mater, 44-10.

See how this works?

Unfortunately for Izzo, I'll be rooting hard for all of her teams/bands.

If she plays hoops, however, she might be immune. (Lakers season is just around the corner, baby!)

Anyway.

..............

Hey, I owe photos. I'll send photos. At some point today. Really. Maybe.

..............

Izzo had the first half of her flu shot Friday, for the record. And thankfully, that went fine. (She weighed in at 23 pounds, 13 ounces... but she was wearing sneakers, so that probably added a few ounces to the not-quite spot-on scale of theirs. She might weight more? Or less.)

After the flu shot and pre-Angels game, we took a nice long nap together. I woke up a little before her, woke up to find my smiling, sleeping daughter wrapped around me, her arms wrapped tight around Momom's arms in a slumbering, comfy hug. And so after extricating myself, I had another of my can't-stop-staring-at-Izzo moments. As I went about my way, getting dressed and ready for work, I just kept gravitating back into the bedroom to peek at her, and every time the same thought sprung back into my head: "I sure do dig that little girl. I sure do dig her."

Sure do dig how she loves to "talk" to everyone. Or, just about everyone.

She's full of earnest, detailed monologues that come so close to making sense in the way that a foreign language can, if we're just going off expression and tone. And so she showers her toddler knowledge on people in the store, on Dr. Green, on our neighbors, on Badu, on us, and on that cool Mommy we met at Starbucks yesterday morning.

I'm proud of myself. Despite it's so-tempting location less than the length of a football field from our front door, I let myself do Starbucks once a week and I stick to it. So what ends up happening is that instead of grabbing the delicious, ready-made caffeine on a day I work, which would seem to make sense, I tend to treat myself on days off. 'Cause, really, I'm hustling so hard on mornings I'm driving to Riverside anyway, a trip to Starbucks only presents another metaphysical hurdle, which kind've defeats the experience.

Not that I was off yesterday. But I worked late, so I WAS off yesterday morning, and thus: Starbucks with Izzo.

I've had so many fun moments there. The sorta psychic lady determining Izzo would be, and was, a good person... and was destined to be "a little bit famous." The girls behind the counter who nicknamed her, when they saw her more often, "the happiest baby in the world." All the smiles and well-wishes we generally get while waiting for Momom's cup o' coffee...

... and then yesterday, when we met the first mom I've been seriously comfortable and eager about conversing with.

And that certainly that says more about me than the other moms, but it's weird, I write these behemoth accounts of Izzo, and blast them off on e-mail to all of you, but in reality, I'm pretty shy about sharing Izzo stories with other people -- unless I'm absolutely sure they actually care.

Like, I dunno, these Izzo stories are so close to my heart, I find myself reluctant to just give them up to just anyone, even other moms who are hanging out in the Starbucks line with me. So every time I've met a mom, while out walking, or shopping, or playing at the zoo, or in line at the coffee shop, it's felt forced. Moreover, it's felt predictable.

And then, well, maybe I'm just a weirdo-snob, but I often find that I just don't especially like the mom. Like the woman I met at the zoo a week ago, who was complaining what a drag it was to have to/get to spend all day, every day with her little one. Or our former neighbor, Ben's mom, who wouldn't ever put socks on the boy and would say things like, "The second one is going to be so boring."

I still shock myself at how judgmental a mom I've turned out to be, but darnit, I just couldn't picture myself being mom-buddies with a mom with whom I have such basic philosophical differences.

And then the ones who don't offend me, which are most of them, it's the predictable thing: How old? Name? (Sometimes, previously: Walking?) Aww, cute. OK, see ya.

Oma keeps saying we need to hit up the library for story time, and we do. For Izzo's sake and mine. Because Katy, my one true-blue new-mama-my-age friend, lives way up in Washington and apparently isn't planning to move to LA with Sam Raven anytime soon. (Or anytime.)

So, anyway. Starbucks yesterday. Kinda crowded, Saturday morning rush. Just about everyone gave Izzo a smile because she was smiling at all of them. (The most common question I/we get these days: "Is she always smiling like that?" Yes, yes she almost always is. And she seems to have forgotten about the out-and-out Mean Face, for now.)

So I didn't think anything of the smile from the woman behind us in line, because I was thinking more how Izzo's big green stroller was kind've impeding the flow of the shop. But when we ordered, paid and got out of the way, retreating to the waiting corner, the woman followed us and started talking to Izzo like she knew her before asking me, yes, how old Izzo was.

I reported that she was 16 months and she told me she had a 3-year-old daughter. Status quo, no? But then I went and asked what life was like, with a 3-year-old? And she said, "Better, no, well, sometimes, yes, mostly, yes, better, mostly, she's a May baby, so May and the months around May were hard, and then it's been better, mostly, yes, well, sometimes... it's hard, you know, to be a 2-year-old."

And I don't know why, but that was the best answer any mom has given me to any question I've asked. An honest, totally appropriately confused, intuitive, appreciative, wonderful response.

So I said the same thing, pretty much, to her that I did to the woman in the zoo who'd been dragged their by HER 2.3-year-old. Something about independence and opinions at that age.

And this lady -- wearing a ballcap and looking a little Sarah Palin-ish, actually, in those Tina Fey glasses -- totally lit up, "Yes!" she said. "It so is. And my heart goes out to her, 'cause she's trying so hard to be HER. That's such a big thing."

See, that's a response I can get down with (I ignorantly state, as the mom of a 1-year-old.) It made me want to meet this little girl.

Izzo, too, maybe? Because at that point, Izzo interjected a stream of stream-of-consciousness Izzo dialogue, at which the fellow mom marveled and added, "... you sound like my daughter at that age!"

Does your daughter talk a lot now?

"Oh, yeah. She talks a lot. And then she talks more..." which led to a story about how her daughter had, the day before, used "eventually" (one of my favorite words, actually) in a sentence. She'd said, "The clouds are pretty gray right now, so eventually it's going to rain."

Wow, I said, incapable of imagining Izzo making such a profound statement.

"Yeah," the woman echoed, "I was like, 'Who are you?'"

And then I looked down at Izzo and told her, Wow, Izzo, eventually YOU'LL say eventually. Which drew a laugh.

And then our coffees came and we went on our ways and as we did, I was hit by the realization that that was the first mom convo of that sort that I'd genuinely, thoroughly enjoyed. The first mom I really hope to run into again.

I think, actually, that I've been reading too many baby mags.

...................

More importantly:

Izzo meows at Badu now. But her meows sound like this: "Aaaaaaaaaah. Aaaaaaaah."

Izzo prefers (saying) Daddy to Momom now. And that I've noted as much aloud (a few times) is drawing me deserved ridicule from Hamlet, who points out that he didn't once complain or pout when Izzo was walking around chanting, "Momom, Momomom, Momomomomom."

Izzo can ID all her body parts in English and Armenian! She's got two ways to identify her nose, her hair, her hands, her smile, her teeth, her toes and so on...

And Izzo is done with her banana-and-toaster pancake breakfast and ready to get dressed for the day already.

So, we're off!

Love you all!

Us

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