Izzo, when you were 1, we elected Barack Obama

Fam, friends, future: What's up!

Happy... New Year?!?!

Or, as Grandpa was singing when he answered the phone Tuesday evening:


So long sad times/Go long bad times/We are rid of you at last

Howdy gay times/Cloudy gray times/You are now a thing of the past

Happy days are here again/The skies above are clear again/So let's sing a song of cheer again/Happy days are here again

So, yeah. Let's write about, oh, hmm, let's see, how about... Tuesday?

We got up early, expecting longish, at least, lines at my new polling place (I finally changed my address just before the deadline); Kit came over to join us and we all bundled up (it was, like, 60 degrees, yo!) and strolled around the corner to the Toll Middle School auditorium.

Strolled past the house on the corner, now for lease, where the woman was murdered by her boyfriend a few months ago.

Strolled, after looking both ways and then looking both ways again, and -- got that Izzo -- looking both ways again, across to Toll's campus.

Strolled past the huge memorial of flowers and cards and dolls and candles and love set out, wet after that night's rain, for 11-year-old Meri Nalbandian in front of the gym, stopped and paid respects, as a few other voters were doing, too. One of them was in tears; I wasn't far behind. Picked up Izzo and squeezed her real tight, and then turned away, tried to refocus on the day at hand, wishing, somehow, that what I was about to vote for would, in some way, honor little Meri, but I couldn't forge a connection.

I entered the auditorium blue and bummed and feeling very, very small.

There wasn't a line at all, they quickly found my name on the blue sheet, I signed, I voted with my ink-a-dot pen in my right hand and Izzo in my left arm, watching how it worked. Kit snapped a quick photo of us, and we strolled to go get our free-for-voting Starbucks coffee (Izzo got a vanilla milk packet) at the other end of the block.

From the beginning, it was a remarkable and remarkably emotional day. It just felt, well, it just FELT.

One of those so-rare just-rained days in L.A. where you can clearly and crisply see the mountains. Where the blue sky peeking out of the rapidly dissipating clouds shows brighter than usual. Cool, but not cold. One of the few days that could win an Oscar, or at least a Golden Globe, for acting like fall. And that big, big something brewing. Seemed like every conversation you heard a snippet of included the word, "Obama." We all knew what the polls told us, but still there was an edge to it. A weight to it.

And through it all, we tried, all day, to get Izzo to join in the chorus, to say her first, "Obama." We chanted and sang and 'peat and repeated O-bam-a, O-bam-a. But Izzo wouldn't even give us an "Oh."

After our free coffees, Izzo and I took off for the, yay, flu shot. Stopped behind two cars at a red light halfway there and got rear-ended. Tapped, really. Enough that I noticed, but not enough that Izzo appeared to, thank goodness. Still, I motioned for the driver behind me to pull over, and when the light changed, we moved forward and pulled along the side of the road, where amazingly a big stretch of curbside parking was available.

I got out, told myself I was gonna be cool about this as I turned to greet the woman getting out of the gold Lexus SUV behind me. It was one of those moments where you tell yourself, OK, I get to be an adult here. OK, I get to be a good example for my daughter here.

One of those moments where I was thrown completely off my game because she said, "What were you doing?! Why did you back up into me!"

Huh?

Long story short, there was no damage, except to my faith in my fellow women. The chick immediately went and called her husband! And put me on the phone with him! And then he tried to bully me: "If there's not really any damage than I suggest you just drive away, we don't want to make things hard on you." Oh, the things I wished I said to him in retrospect, after telling him, "That's nice, but I don't want to make things hard on YOU."

No damage, except to my faith in democracy. Maybe, I thought as I watched the woman nearly collide with another car as she hurriedly pulled away, we shouldn't actually give the American public a voice in really important matters. Television ratings, yeah, we can handle that as an electorate. We deem that American Idol will be huge. But Presidents and major state constitution-amending propositions? Maybe that's better left to actual smart, responsible people?

Flu shot went fine, as far as flu shots go. Izzo conked out for a couple hours when we got home and I did something I hadn't in months: reclined on the couch and read the newspaper. Then I ordered pizza (including one Hawaiian-style, for the man of the hour), picked up Robert, welcomed back Kit and got into election mode.

Fox News couldn't stop showing shots of a pair of guys they were IDing as Black Panthers, though I was never clear why they were showing them except for the overhanded attempt to scare white folk. Them folk at MSNBC seemed extra chipper. Both MSNBC and CNN decided to use these bizarre, offensively bad green-screen digital sets that didn't exactly reek of a stringent focus on reality and truth.

And still, Izzo refused even to give us that "Oh."

The action, naturally, picked up when the first polls closed on the East and the tallies starting coming in. For a minute, McCain led. But before you knew it, Fox News, of all networks, moved Obama in front.

Fresh off voting in his first general election, Uncle Rob controlled the television and gave us his own commentary from the numbers that were coming in at latimes.com on the laptop. The numbers started piling fast, so fast that within a couple hours, before Kit was done cooking up yummy couscous and chicken, with the polls in our West Coast blue states still open, it became clear: Obama was, indeed, gonna get to that 270 electoral threshold, no problem. Obama was gonna win this thing.

And still, Izzo wouldn't say it. Wouldn't even say "Oh."

We pleaded and nagged and teased and taunted, O-bam-a, Izzo, O-bam-a!

She laughed at us. And danced to us. But she wouldn't join in the chorus.

Instead, at around 6 p.m., she started her own chant: "BrrakBrrackBrrackBrrack! BrrakBrrackBrrackBrrack!" Which she followed with a necessarily sassy bet-you-didn't-see-that-comin'-didja smile. Seriously, ask the boys.

At 7 p.m., we turned away from the supposedly serious networks to Comedy Central, where the Daily Show/Colbert Report went live, offering the same updates as the networks, but with funnier, probably better analysis.

And suddenly, party girl Izzo, whom I can't get to drift off before 10 p.m. on a really good night, wanted up into my lap, where she curled herself into a ball and went right to sleep.

Maybe the emotional weight of the day exhausted her? Maybe she saw Jon Stewart and registered that as her bedtime? Either way, she slept the rest of the night.

Slept through the cheering and partying and champagne-swigging that happened over the next couple hours, during which both Daddy and Caitlyn showed up. Slept through Obama's amazing speech in Grant Park, so that I'll have to tell her what that was like someday, how it was the type of inspiring moment that I never imagined I'd get to witness, a moment I thought they didn't make anymore, a moment sharing words and the spirit of Lincoln and King, a moment where great things actually seemed possible, a moment that Izzo can already claim, 17 months in. And how that thrills me!






I'll tell her, later, how I find myself feeling differently about President Elect Obama than I have about other presidents. It's a strange sensation, actually, to not simply be preferring one guy to the other guy, but to be believing in the guy. To be trusting the guy. To be trusting him to take good care of us.

And I was a Hillary supporter.

... of course, it's all a bit tempered by the narrow passage of Prop 8 here in California. It's odd, to be hearing the incessant and wonderful talk of our great civil rights victory and have this issue wedged painfully into the mix. The increased irony, of course, is that exit polls tell us that 7 out of 10 African-Americans voted in favor of Prop 8, voting on the basis of religion rather than party, and that so many African-Americans turned out to the polls to support Obama likely made the difference.

Talking to Hamlet about it afterward and my husband tells me, "It's just marriage. It's not that big of a deal."

To which I get to reply, "Gee, thanks honey. And what do you mean, it's not that big of a deal! Everyone should have the same rights as everyone else. Discrimination is discrimination is discrimination. That's what Amo told me, all that she lost in World War II taught her you have to beware of and fight discrimination in all its forms, all the time..."

"What I mean," he says, "is that gay people won't be equal until one of them can be elected president. That is a big deal."

"What!?" I hadn't seen that coming. "C'mon man, I won't live to see the day..."

And then I stopped myself when I realized just how many times (hundreds, easily, literally) that I'd heard just that statement uttered on airwaves and in real life over the previous 48 hours or so.

Progress. It's slow. But it's real. And Izzo, your generation will get the baton next, whatever that means and wherever that takes us.

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

Izzo is afraid of sticks. Loves leaves and flowers and plant life in general, but if you want to hear her scream, introduce her to a stick.

Izzo weights 24 pounds, 8 ounces. Or she did, the morning Obama was elected.

Izzo is saying more and more words in Armenian -- and English. Not counting Brrack, which actually, probably, was mostly an accident. Maybe. In English, the vocab is growing, too. Lately, she's added Shoes, Chew, Bye-bye, Baby and Doggie to her collection.

Izzo can take off her pants and socks by herself (almost) now.

Izzo's newest thing is throwing away stuff. Stuff like our socks, our mail, my unused Christmas cards, bookies, newspapers, magazines, canned food, her shoes, just about anything she can lift high enough to dump in the trash can. I just know someday I won't be able to find my keys or cell phone...

Izzo has a very distinctive whine for "I'm stuck." I recognize it immediately, this muffled but borderline frantic "Nnnnnnnnnhhhhnnn!" It comes when she's managed, somehow, to squat underneath one of the dining room chairs, and can't get out. When she's caught in the laptop chords. Or, lately, when she's almost completely submerged under the couch, for who knows what reason.

And there's more, of course, but my goal was to finish this before The View comes on. So I'm about to head over and make Hamlet watch it with me.

Good times. Great times. So, so glad Izzo is here to experience it, sort of, with us.

Love,

Us

IZZO IS SO FREAKIN' COOL

Fam 'n friends: Hello, hello.

So, last night, Izzo and I were having dinner together (Daddy was off jammin' with some drummer, 'cause Izzo's still too little to do that, for now...) and she holds up her sippy cup for me, to tell me, naturally, that she'd like more juice. I see this, and as I take the cup from her, I ask, "Do you want more juice, Izzo?" And she says, "Yeah!" And so I proceed toward the kitchen -- until I realized what she just said.

I stop in my tracks and look back at my daughter looking at me, and I ask her, "Did you just say, 'Yeah'?"

She doesn't miss a beat: "Yeah!" As in, yeah, I said yeah!

And then she starts doing her crazy Izzo cackle that she reserves for moments like this. Moments when she's pulled a new trick out of her hat, moments when she's tickled herself by catching Momom or Daddy off guard again, moments when she sees any of our faces light up when we register that she registers.

Yeah, she said yeah.

And then, in between fits of laughter, she goes, "Yeah! Yeah!"... "Yeah!"... "Yeahyeahyeahyeah!"

One of those moments that had me calling Hamlet, calling Kit, calling home and thinking, "Oh, this will totally be the lede of our week-in-review (if I get around to writing it tomorrow)!"

One of those moments I wondered about, before Izzo was born, when I heard other newish parents talk about their newish children. Things that would seem so trivial and so totally basic are so anything but. Like the first time Izzo responded to my asking her what she wanted to eat with "IceCream!IceCream!IceCream!" to the time she let me wipe her off after breakfast on the condition we go "Alk!Alk!Alk!": these first tangible moments of true back-and-forth conversation are so freaking cool. Feel like a small crystal-ball glimpses into the future, almost.

Also so freaking cool: Watching Izzo interact with another little one about her age at our park yesterday.

Fourteen-month-old toddling around at Casa Adobe De San Rafael, little girl named Sophie, who brought her Tatik along to play. Tatik spoke about as much English as I did Armenian, but she seemed to get a kick out of the fact that, every now and then, I'd throw in an Armenian word as we followed our two little princesses around the yard there.

"Duu!" (which is certainly NOT how it's spelled, but how I say it...) I told Izzo, asking her to bring me the sun hat she decided she didn't want to wear anymore. And she did.

"Tsapik! Tsapik!" I said, at another point, when the two girls were dancing and clapping together. (See, I'm tellin' you, this was a party!)

And finally, "Bacheek!" I told Izzo, when the little girl, after 20 minutes or so of play, decided to wrap her arms around Izzo.

Little kids like this are so funny, when it comes to interacting in general, but especially when it comes to touching. At least mine is.

Izzo is not shy about getting up close and personal, about studying the other one from as short a distance as possible. And will Izzo ever obsess over their clothing! (Yesterday, it was the little patches and buttons on the bottom portion of Sophie's T-shirt.) Izzo'll reach out for them and talk and talk and talk to them, just bare her little soul with volume after volume of impassioned, demonstrative speech. But the instant one of them reaches back to embrace her, or to just simply return a gesture, Izzo rears back, afraid they'll make contact WITH HER.

And she certainly isn't the only baby I've seen with this touch-but-don't-be-touched mechanism. Like yesterday, it was simply comic, watching the little Sophie attempt to hug Izzo only to have Izzo withdraw and then return the favor by trying to kiss Sophie, only to have Sophie pull back and, after giving it a split-second, try to kiss Izzo, who would step backward like, "Oh, I don't think so!" before going in for a fruitless hug of her own... and on and on.

Talk about awkward. And cute. They sure were trying.

Sophie ended up following Izzo most of the time. Like, Izzo wanted to go up the short flight of steps separating the bottom part of the yard from the top. So Sophie wanted to, too. So while I helped Izzo up, Sophie's grandmother helped Sophie up. And then we brought them both back down.

"Uh, no," the babies said.

First Izzo started screaming in protest. Then Sophie started screaming in protest. Like, the same specific screams. First one, then the other.

So, laughing, Momom and Sophie's Tatik went back up the steps with the girls, who happily played on the upper level until Izzo decided she wanted to go back down. And then the same thing happened, with first Izzo and then Sophie complaining loudly when it didn't happen just how they'd anticipated it.

I guess perhaps Izzo and I don't do enough interacting with people Izzo's size, because it was so fascinating to me, in a real Animal Planet sort of way, watching how these two behaved together.

And a good kind of distracting too, because before Sophie got there, Izzo and I were racing on the grass. Izzo almost beat me, actually, but then she was still going fast when she reached the end of the patch of green stuff and ended up tripping on the sidewalk. Tripping and skinning her right knee. Her -- and my -- first boo-boo of that nature.

I know I shouldn't, but still, I always feel a slight bit guilty when something like this happens. I feel like I got this perfect little angelic creature almost 17 months ago, without a blemish to speak of, and here I am, constantly allowing her to get knicked up and damaged. Silly, I know, but still... it helped that Izzo handled it like it wasn't a thing, pointing down at the scraped spot on her knee a few times as if to make sure I knew, because, apparently, so long as I told her it was going to be OK, it was OK. Really, that's what it seemed like. Which is also pretty freaking cool.

Talk about empowering: "Momomom, this stings!" "Oh, I know, Pookie, but it's gonna be OK, I promise." "Really? You sure?" "Yeah, my love, you'll be fine. We'll get a band-aid on it when we get home." "OK, Momomom."

Of course, SHE didn't say that -- c'mon now, we're still celebrating "Yeah!" -- but that's pretty much how it went.

Izzo's just so cool like that.

We went to lunch at Santa Anita today. To Izzo's absolute delight, we met Caitlyn, and then Kit met the three of us and led us up to the fancy Frontrunner restaurant where he does his thing. He told us not to order, that he'd send out a sampling. I've done this a time or two before, but still, it feels weird to be sitting a nice restaurant with the waiters constantly coming by dumping high-end food on your table, each delivery a surprise, each kind of trumping the last, when normally I'd order the cheapest thing on the menu and be great with that.

Kit had servers bring us, oh gosh, fancy starter bread; shrimp and corn and potatoes; a huuuuge crab cake; short ribs; paninis (with bacon); pizza (with bacon); fruit... and so on. Only thing: They also brought us two massive chicken salad sandwiches, sandwiches that apparently were supposed to go to a table nearby, which we learned after we'd started trying to eat them. Oh, snap.


So, there we were, the three girls sitting at a prime table for six, directly overlooking the finish line, being treated too generously to start with, and then accidently even more generously than that.

Izzo wasn't the least bit troubled by it, though. She CHOWED. She looooves corn, you see, so she ate through both little cobs. She looooved the fruit, strawberries and pineapple and mellons, mmmm. Totally dug the different types of bread and the crab cake, too, but not so much on the short ribs. Too salty, perhaps? She's not big on salty.




She was a great sport the whole time, basically, seated there for almost an hour and a half, until the first race ran. Then she wanted to get up and at 'em, so I brought her down for a walk in the heat and a viewing of the next race, before she started getting tired and we took off.


She fell asleep in the car... and is still sleeping! Or should I call it hibernating? (This is a three-hour nap we're workin' on, folks.)

So, in summation, I'll just say we had a fantastic midweek weekend together, she and I.

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

Other random Izzo tidbits:

Izzo loves... Izzo! Her favorite book these days, beside the Very Hungry (and very played-out) Caterpillar? The little photo album of HER!

Izzo has figured out that the power of magnets extends beyond the fridge. She's got them stuck on the coffee table, on the wall heater in the hallway, on who knows what else. Man, our tiny apartment is in a constant state of crazy. And then I go and spend my free time writing to youall...

After a few promising days of going to bed at a decent time, Izzo's back to fighting it. I can just imagine it now, really I can, she and her kindergarten classmates will be talkin' 'bout their favorite television programs. The other ones will go, "Sesame Street." "Mr. Rogers." "Curious George." "Barney." Izzo'll go, "The Daily Show." And her teacher will go, "Doesn't that air way past your bedtime?" And Izzo'll go, "What's a bedtime?" About the only way to really get her to crash is for me to lay down with her. Then she'll be asleep, konked out and down for the count in minutes flat.

Only dilemma there? I, too, fall asleep. Which is no fun for Hamlet.

We'll figure it out.

Probably.

And you know I'll let you know when, or if, we do.

Till then.

Love!Love!Love!

Yeah!Yeah!Yeah!

Us

Izzo and the power of BA-CHEEK!

Fam 'n friends.

Hope you all are well, swell, healthy, happy, entertained and good. Seriously.

Which is to say, hugs and kisses to everyone. And kisses. And kisses.

Kinda the theme of the week around here. Izzo and her kisses, which sounds kinda like ba-cheek in Armenian. Izzo and the power of ba-cheek.

Here's the deal.

As she's been getting ever more proficient at kissing, actually puckering up, actually successfully making the smacking noise 25 percent of the time, and actually making the smacking noise at the appropriate point in the kiss 5 percent of the time, she's become incredibly, stubbornly, strangely particular about who she would and wouldn't kiss.

Who didn't get kisses: Daddy, Tatik, Robert, Papik, Kit...

Who did get kisses: Momomom.

And Momom got tons of kisses.

Just about every time Izzo sees me these days, she has to kiss me. She's reaching for my hand from the stroller seat and planting kisses on it. She's chasing me around the house, wrapping me up and kissing me. She's sinking her lips into my shoulder when I lift her out of the bathtub. When I return from work, soon as she's finished running a few excited laps around the living room (and, often, finished watching a commercial), I get a big welcome-home embrace and kiss.

Basically, it's like this: Soon as my face is level with hers, I'm getting slobbered like the Ghostbusters got slimed.

Meanwhile, while I'm away and Izzo is hanging with Tatik, who is playing with her, dancing and singing with her, showering her with toys and food and goodies and love and more love, Izzo's decided it's within her rights to cut way back on the kisses. Never mind that Tatik takes her for walks of both varieties (afoot and astroller), just like Momom. Never mind that Tatik will rock her for half-an-hour at a time at naptime/nanik-time. Never mind that Izzo gets so excited every time we get out of the car in the morning in front of Tatik's building.

Izzo ain't kissing.

And so Robert, so used to all his niece's ba-cheeks, resorted to begging.

Still: Noooo kiss.

Which is totally, obviously, a phase. Something, perhaps, tied to Izzo's burgeoning independence. Some new-found decision-making function or experiment. Some toddlerbaby code that only -- or not even -- toddlerbabies understand.

See, I get these e-mails from babycenter.com every week, all of them almost exactly, eerily on-point timing-wise (which indicates to me that Izzo is pretty healthy and pretty normal, in addition to being so pretty.) This week the e-mail offered a list of "eight reasons why your toddler pushes you away."

Here's one of them:

(S)He may be going through an "independent" phase.
At age 1 your child may have seemed glued to your lap. As he gets older he may refuse to even let you near his block tower. This could be because he needs you less, because he's testing you to see if you'll be steadfast in your love if he tries pushing you away, or simply because he's going through a busy stage where his focus is elsewhere (and you're just interrupting his learning time with your requests for kisses).

How to respond: Try not to take his rebuffs too seriously. He still loves you but may not need your hugs and kisses as much right now. If it seems like you're bothering him when he's hard at work, save your hugs and kisses for bedtime or when he's not so occupied. As long as he's sure you adore him, he'll know where to find you when he's in a cuddly mood.

(That's from Susanne Ayers Denham, developmental psychologist.)

Maybe?

Anyway. I won't lie. I'm glad I wasn't on the kissing black list.

Goodness, that would kill me.

Izzo, see, has been giving me kisses since the morning she turned 13 weeks old -- one of the finest mornings of my life, to be sure. It's one of the few areas Izzo was thoroughly ahead of babycenter.com's schedule. There was a kissing break for about a month sometime before she turned 1. But otherwise...

I don't, however, always get a kiss when I ask for one. But I get so many I end up not having to ask.

What I'd prefer, though, Izzo, is for everyone to get lots of kisses from you.

And she's showing signs of thawing, thankfully.

I worked Friday night, covered a prep football game in Ontario. Meanwhile, Hamlet worked Friday night football, too. Laid out both the Daily Pilot and News-Press, and thanks to updated technology, got to do it from home. Still, we needed help with Izzo. And so Robert, ever the cool uncle, was on hand taking care of a well-behaved Izzo, still asking for kisses... and finally getting one. After Daddy got one.

Whew.

G'girl, Izzo, g'girl!

...........

As I write, Izzo's in the living room, jamming out to Dave Matthews, putting on a dancing recital for Badu, who is perched on the TV stand watching intently. Kinda how it's gone all week, there, too, with those two.



Izzo's become slightly less distinctive in her dance steps. For a while there, she was nailing each and every genre: shaking her booty to hip hop songs, waving in the imaginary breeze to hippy faire, twirling ballerina style to classical compositions.

Now she's streamlined. She tap dances while spinning to just about everything.

It's fierce and fabulous expression/experimentation.

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

Our pre-work morning (w)alks rarely incorporate a stroller anymore.

Instead, I go, "Izzo, wanna go for a walk?"

"Alk! Alk! Alk!" she shouts while running (yes, literally) to the front door.

The doors opens and we hop (yes, literally) out. She'll stand still, for a split-second, once she's standing on the alley that serves as a driveway and our front yard, her left arm extended toward me. She knows she's not going anywhere unless she's holding Momom's hand (finger), so hurry up, Momom, gimme your finger so we can go!

And then we go! Her grinning, ear to ear, off to the corner across from the bustling junior high playground and back. Stomping crunchy leaves, waving at passing cars and buses, greeting too-cool and not too-cool high-school strangers, stopping, of course, to talk (yes, literally) to sweet ol' David, who gamely lets an appreciative Izzo inspect his walker from her new two-footed perspective, and ... pointing, each time, at the pair of black and yellow Jordans hanging from the big tree near David's complex.

Shoes that clearly have been there for months, they're so faded and ragged. Shoes that I never noticed and probably wouldn't ever have noticed, if not for my observant daughter.

Funny, amazing, and so, uh, duh obvious, that she has such a fresh, unique perspective. That she sees the world differently than I do. That she can show ME things.

Whoa. Duh.

I wonder now, how long she's been looking at those shoes from the stroller. How she might've tried to show me before, even, except that I never got it. But how, on our actual, literal walk, she was able to stop in her tracks and point upward and tell me, in her jibber-jabber toddlerbaby talk way, to look up.

"Hunh, Izzo, yeah, someone's shoes?!"

Smile. Finally, Momom, you see.

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

The ever-expanding vocab now includes these following solids: Lakers! Hot! (And if I didn't mention it before, I will italicize it now) GOOD GIRL!

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

Feel like I didn't get anything especially constructive done yesterday, except that I don't feel bad about it, because I spent the whole day playing and chillin' with Izzo, which is inherently constructive, big picture.

I slept in, too, this time. Till 9. So we got off to a late start. And because I was out of coffee filters, we made our way to our Starbucks, where I got a cappuccino and Izzo got a little carton of vanilla milk that we brought up to the quiet park at Casa Adobe De San Rafael. (Izzo finished the whole cartoon without making the slightest bit of mess for the first time. Good girl! Big girl!)

Anyway, about the park. Here's a quick description from the City of Glendale Web site:

Casa Adobe de San Rafael is registered as California Landmark #235.

The casa is believed to have been built in 1865 by Tomas Sanchez, and has a New England style of architecture.

In 1875, the property was sold, left abandoned, and fell into a ruinous state.

In 1930 the Casa was purchased by the California Medicinal Wine Company who planned to tear down the structure and to remove the large eucalyptus trees on the property. Local neighbors and community members stopped the demolition and began a campaign to preserve the house as a historic landmark.

The City of Glendale purchased the adobe in 1930, and by 1932 La Casa de Adobe de San Rafael was completely refurbished.

Today, the adobe includes a Monterey-style corridor (covered porch), beautiful sunken garden, brick patio, gray shake roof, and long narrow front windows adorned with green shutters. Interior furnishings are from the 19th century.

It also happens to be the spot where Hamlet and I had our wedding pictures taken. We were shocked when we arrived at the serene little spot then, which feels as historic as it should, because it was hidden up in a Hoover-area neighborhood, a real buried treasure... well-known, though, to wedding photographers, judging by the must-have-permit signs posted all over.

It really is a neighborhood secret, though.




Enjoying the (finally) coolish fall day, and the breeze that blew Izzo's hair around, she and I were there for an hour yesterday, and except for the Mommy and daughter who showed up for two minutes, long enough to see the building was closed, snap a photo, and leave, Izzo and I had the place to ourselves. A rarity in L.A., a rarer rarity when you consider what exactly we had to ourselves.

It's such a beautiful, interesting park. Two levels of grass; benches; little busy ants; all sorts of plants and flowers -- and, woo-hoo!, leaves; AND the building with its hollow-sounding, old porch. Izzo loved all of it, but especially the porch. She led me around the building several times, even though I would've prefered to play in the yard.

But that's only 'cause I happend to look up into one of the usually shuttered windows and get a short scare when I saw a pair of eyes staring back at me. A mannequin, from a display inside. Flanked by another few mannequins. All of them covered in blankets (?), staring our way. Creepy, for a moment. But not to Izzo, who happily passed back by that window eight more times...

... until the next time, when we'll surely make more laps around the building and past those staring mannequins.

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

At this moment, Izzo's in her bedroom, cheering on Daddy, who's doing his morning pushups and situps on the carpeted colorful hopscotch squares that cover most of the floor there.

Hamlet just told her, "Thank you, Izzo. I sure appreciate your support. You're the best daughter in the whole world."

I think I heard Izzo singing "Aaaaah" in response.

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

OK, now Izzo's at my elbow, telling me she's tired of watching me write about playing with her and that it's time to go play with her.

So.

More later.

Love and play!

Us

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