As Izzo turns. And turns.

Dear Fam.

I'm simply chasing here, in newspaperspeak, trying to catch up with all the action in an overdue report, and, yes, chasing literally a lot of the time, too.

A lovely Thanksgiving blew past. Enjoyed a warm, growing gathering at Tatik's, where relatives and their significant others kept showing up, which kept giving Izzo a reason to show off: Conscious that she had the floor and everyone's eyeballs, she worked up a serious sweat (I'm serious, about the sweat) boogieing for them all.

Also, with Momom following behind, Izzo marked the day by figuring out how to crawl herself up the stairs, and went back for more more than a few times, giving us both a wicked post-turkey workout. I tried to teach her to go down the same way, for safety's sake, but, really she was more interested in going up than down. Still, I do really want her to learn the hands-and-knees approach, instead of the bipedal grownup way of doing it, because she's not quite ready for that yet and I have a firm hunch she'll find herself alone on those stairs at some point before first grade, and I want her to know what to do.

(And then I learn, this week, that homegirl Katy's baby girl also conquered the stairs on Thanksgiving -- but Sam's all of 9 months young! That's OK, though. Izzo'll get where she's going when she's meant to.)

Another lasting Thanksgiving impression: Izzo and Gigi, the unshy little champion Maltese at Tatik's, chasing each other, circling each other, kissing and hugging each other, just generally loving each other -- and Izzo's uncontrollable heaves of laughter in reaction to the fun. I hadn't seen Izzo laugh quite that hard. She'd simply fall on her bottom and sit laughing for a few minutes until she could get a hold of herse-- then, there came Gigi charging back!, continuing the joke, and my daughter would absolutely lose it all over again.

That, Tatik told me, is how it goes all day around there. And that, I must say, makes it just a little bit easier to leave Izzo in the mornings.

Izzo's all about fun. (And how I'd like to keep it this way for her forever; here's hoping.) Fun, fun, fun. Morning, noon, night. Like, midnight, sometimes.

The bedtime thing.

It's to the point where I think she's probably old enough to have a better bedtime. We've got a routine that should have her down by 9:30. I'd settle for 10. (Remember, we usually don't get home till close to 8 p.m., so...) But this little rambunctious party animal of ours ain't feeling that most nights.

I'll go lay with her, sing quietly and stroke her tummy and her face and watch her appear to drift softly off. Listen to her breathing find its sleepy, measured pace. And then, give it another five minutes or more, just to make sure. Finally, when I'm totally sold on the fact that, at 10 p.m., my toddler officially has conked out, I sllllowly and, shhhhhhh, quietly start to excavate myself from her and the bed and -- BOING! Like a jack 'n the box, Izzo's up, wide-eyed, happy, raring to go: That whole let's play-pretend sleep game was great, Momom, what's next?!?!?!

What's next is that it's Daddy's turn.

And so Hamlet takes his protesting daughter in his arms, into her own darkened room, winds up the music dial on what used to be a mobile and rocks her. Rocks and sings to her. And rocks. And sings. And sings. And rocks. For half-an-hour, until she's good and, well, limp and absolutely done for the day.

Until, of course, her head hits the mattress. Then she goes all jack 'n the box again.

But, nunh-unh, Izzo. That's it. We've had it. You're staying in your crib until you put YOURSELF to sleep. Don't care how much you beg and plead, that's where you're spending the rest of the night.

And so we listen to her (try to) jump up and down in her crib for a few minutes, listen as the commotion eventually settles and stops. Ten minutes of quiet go by, 15, 20, 25... we assume that at, oh, 11:07 p.m., she's done it, that she's actually fallen asleep. So I peek my head in to check and...

... naturally. I'm greeted by a pair of BIG, glowing eyes -- and then a stream of oversized laughter, the likes of which I heard in relation to Gigi at Thanksgiving.

Izzo knew, just knew, I'd poke my head in there eventually, and so she draped herself over the corner of her crib closest to the door and staked me out. And she got me! Ohhhh she got me. And she let me know.

And so, that night, Izzo fell asleep with us, like she wanted, around midnight.

The thing is. She fights for her right to paaaartay most on nights we've worked. Figured before that it had something with the two naps a day she got at Tatik's, as opposed to the one-a-day she gets with me, due to all the running around we end up doing on Momom's limited running-around time. But these days, she's copping just one nap a day at Tatik's too, and so I have trouble understanding why she still has SO much energy that late in the day. And the notion's dawned on me, not that I'm right about it, but I wonder, actually, if it's Izzo trying to stretch her time with us. Like, she hasn't seen us almost all day, and she wants and is gonna get her Momom and Daddy time, darnit. Or, maybe she senses that even though we're trying very dutifully to put her to sleep, that we, also, have missed her all day and that, in the end, we don't actually despise the fact that she so tries to stay up with us. Maybe all this subconscious stuff plays into the late-night quality time?

Or maybe she just takes after Momom as a baby? Or Daddy as a grown person? Or maybe, maybe she's really a rock star in training? 'Cause, lately, getting her up in the morning (ESPECIALLY after the later nights, but not necessarily) isn't the happy-smiley-sunshiny business it used to be, where she'd crack her eyes open, see me, and want to join me in the awakened world again right away, all smiles from here to Holland and back through Armenia.

Oh, no. Now it's like, Are you serious right now? You're waking me up NOW? Well: I. Don't. Want. To.

... at which point, she'll roll over and go back to sleep. It isn't until I've got her in the bathtub or her high chair, gotten some juice into her and some food in front of her that she's back to her familiar fun-fun-fun self.

Whatever the deal, I'm writing it here: I will get this little girl to sleep sooner -- and soon.

...


...

Izzo, I think I mentioned last time, became a picky eater faster than you can peel a banana. She's got the talk-to-the-hand thing going for food she's uninterested in. Food that, in a blink of an eye, included the old breakfast staple bananas, her old favorite apples, her regular spoonfuls of late-afternoon soup at Tatik's.

We traced the change to Robert's birthday party, where two things happened. No. 1, she tried her first taste of birdsmilk cake. No. 2, she was teased by relatives for eating everything.

Tatik and I agree that the teasing made her self-conscious, and that, really, that's the problem. But just in case, we've issued up a holiday challenge to ourselves -- so sorry, Izzo -- and sworn of sweets. Sworn them off for Izzo, that is.

Until she gets back to eating almost everything she was eating before, she's not gonna get to split dessert with any of us; there won't be any special trips to the ice cream shop down the street; there won't be any vanilla cookie good-girl rewards; or, because she asked so nicely, bites of chocolate from the bar she somehow managed to spot on Tatik's kitchen countertop. Sorry Izzo, but as Daddy reminds us all, "We're raising an athlete..."
...


...

Always loved how beautifully decorated my house was around this time of year when I was a kid... but never got into it, really, after I moved out. The night before Christmas I'd find myself sticking some ornaments here or there, but generally I was too busy and too cool (no, not really, on the last part) to full-on decorate. But there was a caveat, of course: This lameness would last only until I had a kid.

Now, obviously, I have a kid.

So I pulled out the box with all the decorations I've come to own (thanks, mostly, to my generous, sweet, inspiringly festive Mommy...) and found a spot in the apartment for everything. Looped lights all around the living area, coordinated the eight Christmas stockings (we need more children?) into the fray, found spots for other holiday trinkets and best of all, bought the mini tree I'd promised Oma I'd get, so that every morning, Izzo and I can open the advent box and pull out that day's baggie, containing that day's ornament.

Izzo's starting to catch on, too, now that, for six straight mornings, we've gone straight to the box and the tree and inaugurated a brand-new ornament to our little tree. She's all smiles when we pull down the box and, when the new piece is dangling, she likes to delicately touch all of them, and to tell me just a little something about each. It's becoming quite a wonderful little routine.

She especially totally digs the lights, though.

"Izzo, do you like the lights?" I asked her just after they'd gone up. "LIGHTS!" she glowed, pointing up and following them from one end of the room to the other, "LIGHTS!"

... and so we took her to see the light show near the zoo at Griffith Park the other night, where we walked, with a few thousand other revelers for a half-mile or so, down the road where I used to ride my bike all the time when I was riding my bike all the time, a road converted into the California Museum of Christmas Lights. All the Cali landmarks were depicted, from our zoo to the Observatory to Staples Center and the Hollywood Sign and so forth. They had Christmas music piped in too, and so Izzo sat forward in her small stroller, pointing and waving at the sights, kicking and singing along with the tunes and clapping appreciatively every time every song ended.

It's something, y'all, to be able to delight your child with an outing like that.

...

Izzo's continuing level of comprehension, while perfectly normal, I'm sure, astounds me.

Yesterday I tell her, "Izzo, go get the Dodgers book." Just to see, ya know. 'Cause she's so enjoyed that one lately, I thought, Hey, let's see if she wants to read it now? And so she runs off to her bedroom and disappears for a while. I assume she's long since been sidetracked by any and all of the other books and stuffed friends in there, but nope, she was just digging through the shelves of her library, which isn't, at this point, organized according to the Dewey Decimal system, for the right title, because eventually back she came running, Dodgers book in hand: "Dodgers! Dodgers! Dodgers!"
...
...

Oh, the ever-expanding vocab -- yogurt ("gogurt"), crocodiles ("croco"), etc. -- now features another very important word: Kobe. As in, "Ko-Be! Ko-Be!"

I kid you not.
...
...

All right, so, I know I've gone here before, but here it is again: Izzo is really so sweet.

Girl is just constantly hugging and kissing us.

I mean, yeah, we react affirmatively when it happens, so why shouldn't she be so loving, but still... that my daughter, in the midst of a diaper change, forcefully grabs my arm, tugs me close with all her strength, then latches onto my shoulder, then the back of my shirt, all so she can pull me close enough to settle a big smacker on my cheek, is pretty cool. That she comes running with a big-little bear hug whenever I come to pick her up, pretty cool. That I turn around and see her making a beeline for Uncle Bob, who gets a big-little bear hug too, pretty cool. That Daddy will be teasing and tickling her and that she'll find it in her, in between her screams, shrieks and giggles, to pucker up and kiss the 'Lakers' on his chest, pretty cool. That Daddy will be teasing Momom about something, and Momom will be feigning insult, only to have Izzo rise and come wrap me up and drop a half-dozen big, wet, loving smooches on me... pretty cool.

And so, enough. (For now.)

Big, wet, loving holiday smooches to everyone.

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

The ongoing, long-lasting, non-stop, oh-so-tasty adventures of Izzo...‏

Hey all!

Yo!

So, while Izzo was tripping to the zoo twice, setting up her drum set every night, learning how to pretend to lock the door, bashing her head into the hard part of the furniture and just generally being happy little her, there were a few things going on all around her. (For our literary (?) time capsule's sake:)

There was a debate! Didja watch? I caught most/much of it.***

More importantly, did you catch LETTERMAN? Yeah, well, McCain stood him up 'cause he was suspending his campaign 'n all, and this was how Dave reacted: "You don’t suspend your campaign. Do you suspend your campaign? No, because that makes me think, well, you know, maybe there will be other things down the road –- if he’s in the White House, he might just suspend being president. I mean, we've got a guy like that now!”

And that was just a slim sliver of dude's show-long diatribe. Jon Stewart, naturally, wrapped it up best: "And so it was, that on Wednesday afternoon, Sen. John McCain suspended his campaign, blew off his interview with David Letterman, and rushed back to... a different CBS building to an interview with Katie Couric, and then he left to rush back to... a delicious dinner in New York, but then he left, to rush back to... a New York hotel for a good night's sleep, but then he rushed off to... a hotel, also in New York, where he gave a speech to the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, and then because of the grave condition of this situation returned for a possible Senate vote for the first time since April 6 and as his plane landed in Washington, D.C., a mere 22 hours after his initial New York announcement -- I mean for God's sake, you could have walked there in that time -- THIS announcement greeted him at baggage claim: [News Clip: ‘Republicans and Democrats have reached a fundamental agreement on a rescue plan from Wall Street.’]

"So, to sum up the net effect of John McCain suspending his presidential campaign: angering David Letterman.”

And I KNOW y'all loved watching folks out in Washington play Jenga with the financial system, no?

I know I say this every week, but: Maaan! What a week -- and then Momom got to cover her first Angels game Saturday night, proving there are still milestones to be had. You know, first tooth, first step, first day of school, first Angels game....

Didn't seem like a big deal until I stepped in the press box and looked out on the field and at the stands where we'd spent so many summer days nights as a family, cheering our hearts out for those mediocre teams of old. I got chills, I'll admit. Certainly didn't expect to, but I did. Remembered marveling at the idea of this particular press box so many times, maybe ALL of those times, hoping that someday I'd be get to watch sports, talk to athletes and write about it. What could be cooler?

(Shooting and cutting videos to put on our newspaper's Web site, that's what! Maybe. I'm actually getting excited about learning to do this stuff, getting to play mini-film maker, to use that part of my brain, planning to label any contribution of mine "An MJ Joint" (after Spike Lee). I hope I get to stay excited about it, now that I am...)

OK, OK, OK, OK-OK-OK, to get to the point of this e-mail... last night's experience made me think, too, of Izzo, and what her dreams might be and where they might come from and whether or not she'll have a chance to achieve them, even if it's in bits and pieces, here and there, and never exactly as she pictured, perhaps, but swell and probably in the right order, anyway...

There's just so much ahead for her, it's marvelous. Caught myself watching her play the other day and trying to imagine her as a 10-year-old. Couldn't quite do it, but it's the closest I've gotten. I almost asked her, "So, what'll you be into then?" 'Cause I so wonder.

I also wonder if she'll be a G'girl -- if we're bringing up a confident, loving little being, or if we're spoiling her and creating a monster?

I read somewhere that one of the most common first few words is "No." Which made me shudder -- because I didn't want to imagine Izzo saying, "No" to me.

And so, after issuing that semi-complete list of vocab last week (I left off "Duckies" by the way), I asked Tatik if Izzo had any Armenian words yet.

Yes, she has one solid: "Che."

Che, in Armenian, means, you guessed it: No.

And then it hit me. No one ever tells Izzo "No." Even here at home, I tell her "Che!" when I want her to stop chasing Badu, or tearing up my new Sports Illustrated, or trying to open the oven door on top of her, or opening and digging into the box of (thankfully clean) kitty litter, or turning the channels on us with one of the remote controls she's mastered... she doesn't hear it ALL that often, but she hears it enough.

I don't know why I say Che, vs. No, but I think once, 15 or so months ago, I might've weirdly had the passing thought that I didn't want Izzo to learn "No" as one of her firsts... which I'd forgotten, at least consciously, till this week.

But evidently, she's full of "Che" at Tatik's, even if I still have to hear it.... which I know I will, eventually, unfortunately.

..........

A couple of trips to the zoo this week. Warm, and so most of the animals were doing their best just to chill, understandably. Pretty calm in terms of crowd, too, which was cool (...to keep with that temperature analogy going.) Went with Kit and Caitlyn (Kit, it IS with a "C" right?) on Monday and again Friday, just the two of us.

Made our usual loop past the flamingos, get-along gorillas, favorite zebras, bobbing elephant, booty chimps, smiling giraffes, invisible brown bear and tigers before ending up at the playground Izzo loves so much. It's a pretty active, pretty fantastic set. Several-sized slides and climbing apparatuses that Izzo has yet to grow into. A statuesque hippo and croc peeking up out of the rubbery soft floor that modern playgrounds incorporate. A spray mister that the kids can turn on themselves -- well, the kids who can reach a single inch higher than Izzo, anyway. (Though she tries.) And, best of all, kids.

On the weekends, that place is just plain nuts. Wave after wave of kids rushing in and out and over each other like a big, bustling ant hive on fast-forward. How they manage to navigate one another (most of the time) is beyond me, seriously, a marvel of (little) man.

The scene was much more subdued Friday morning, when it was just a third-child-outta-four granddaughter enjoying being the center of her grandparents' attention for the day, a beautiful little Indian boy who smiled at Izzo from way above on his playground perch, and a 2.3-year-old blond boy who at first scowled at Izzo as she followed him under the mist, who scowled harder when his mom offered Izzo some of HIS goldfish, who scowled and scowled and scowled until he sprang to his feet and wrapped his arms around Izzo in a big little boy bear hug.

Stunned, Izzo was floored, literally.

Anyway, I was talking a little to the little boy's mom, who started the conversation by apologizing to Izzo about her boy's scowling, telling my smiling, toddling little princess not to worry, that she wasn't having much fun hanging out with him, either.

She proceeded to talk to me, assuming, I guess, because I was a mom there hangin' with Izzo on a workday morning, that I did that every day. That I could empathize with the fact that her husband "just didn't get it, just didn't understand that it's not all fun and games, spending every day, all day with the kid. That sometimes it was a drag, that sometimes the kid drove her crazy..."

Now, granted, I don't have a "terrible" (but really adorable) 2.3-year-old on my hands all day. And I won't predict that there won't be at least a few moments up the road where Izzo drives me up the wall.

But I love that my girl Katy, who works part-time up in Washington, so enjoys her time with her little Samantha Raven, who isn't 2.3, either, but who just turned 6 -- months!

I'd like to think that, when I win the lottery and get to stay home and write story all day, I'd still cherish all of my time with Izzo the same way I do now.

Not that this woman doesn't cherish her time with her son; she was just having a bad morning is all, but... I nodded and said something along the lines of "them getting ever more opinionated as they get older" instead of saying, "you know what, you're really lucky. I wish I could spend all day, every day with the kid!"

Sigh.

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

Played at the park yesterday evening for a long time. Izzo led me on a walk all around, making friends with just about everyone there, especially an 8-year-old girl and her 5-year-old brother, a talkative twosome who informed me, off the bat, that they were really good with babies because they had a 1-year-old nephew who they helped take care of and who just LOVED them! So they proceeded to shower Izzo with attention, jokes and hugs and baby talk, while breaking to tell me of their lives at school and at home and in fantasy land... it was fun.

Until we had to go.

What was I saying, earlier, to the mom at the zoo? The older they get, the more opinionated...

Yeah, well, Izzo let me and all those new friends of hers know exactly how she felt about being forced back into her stroller (kicking and cursing and crying and spitting as she went): AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. Couldn't take everyone's looks and comments -- "Oh, the baby got tired!" "Oh, poor girl!"

So I played the Ice Cream card: "Izzo, if you're a good girl, we'll go home and have ICE CREAM."

On a dime, the screaming, blood-curdling protests halted, and she spun in her seat and stared me down to see if I was serious. I was. So she let go a few more whimpers before taking a deep breath and launching into a new chant for the next few blocks.

You guessed it: "IceCream! IceCraem! IceCream! IceCream!"

Went home and shared a "Healthy Choice Fudge Bar."

...........

Izzo does this thing now where she pulls all of the pan lids out of the kitchen cupboard where they live and brings them to the living room, where she arranges them just so on the coffee table. Arranges them, I kid you not, as if they were a cymbal set on her drum kit. I'll send a photo if you don't believe me... but she seriously in the habit of building her own drum set around here.

Izzo does this thing where, if she can get her hands on them, she'll take Momomom's keys straight to the door, attempt to stick them into the bottom knob and clink away until Momom has thanked her and announced that the door's been locked, or unlocked, whatever the goal might've been. It's such a successful moment of make-believe, Izzo's figured out she can accomplish the same task with HER plastic set of keys. Eh?

Izzo does this thing now when I pick her up outta her high chair: Hug. Tight, real, full-on hugggs. She'd been in the habit of coming up to me, every now and then and again, and again, and wrapping her arms around my legs and pushing her face into my legs, in the most wonderful little quick Izzo hug. But now, now she's giving grown-up hugs, tight, come-close, I-love-you hugs. Nice. (Maybe it's too early to say so, but I think Izzo likes me. I sure like her.)

Izzo also does this thing now where she'll come sit next ON you. She'll climb aboard, and lean back and relax, having found just the lap she's looking for. Awesome! Awesome! I can't tell you how Awesome!

Izzo is becoming somewhat of a bookworm. She not only follows us around the house constantly with one of her 50 or so bookies (whoa, how'd that happen?) in hand, begging for a re-reading, but she didn't want to depart on our walk yesterday without "The Pilot Flies Her Plane," one of the books Uncle Kit bought for our trip to Oregon that didn't make it on the trip because it stayed behind in the trunk of Momom's car, instead. Anyway, Izzo was so into it yesterday, she didn't notice we were headed to the park until we were almost there. She was that immersed in "reading."

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

*** the debate: crash.

Yeah, so while Oma kinda started to fall asleep during the not-quite-riveting debate (seriously, though, if you've been paying attention, you learned nothing at all), I missed the last chunk of it because Uncle Kit came over.

He was going to come over and watch the end of it with me and Izzo (who I tried to let run rampent, basically, while I tried to watch the tube, hoping, actually, that Kit would hurry up and show so that I could really focus on the debate, 'cause, really, I'm not good yet at totally ignoring Izzo).

And, so, naturally, Kit came and Izzo, excited, went running for him, tripped over his foot, and fell, forehead first, into the hard wooden leg of the easy chair, that spot that's scared me for months as Izzo learned to walk, the spot that proved innocuous enough as Izzo avoided it during her wobbliest moments, the spot I'd stopped worrying about until I saw her head, headed straight for it...

"WWWWAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

"Go get ice!"

Whenever Izzo hurts herself, I take her outside.

Not sure why, except that it works.

Interested neighbors, all of them big fans of Izzo, poke their heads out to see. This is weird, but for starters, seeing their friendly, concerned faces helps distract her from the drama.

But more than that, being OUTSIDE distracts Izzo, who in this case was in real need of distracting.

We let her lead us on a walk out into the front and down the block a bit, kicking at crunchy leaves along the way, and sniffling not at all. Then we let her lead us back to the apartment after a few cool-down minutes of fresh air distraction.

As soon as she stepped back inside, she started pointing to the left side of her forehead, where she's got a big, red, Frankenstein gash now. It didn't bleed, but it's THAT kind of bruise/mark, poor baby.

I corralled her and sang to her as I held her as still as I could as I attempted to hold a wash cloth of ice on the wound, her thrashing and screaming again. Eventually, the ice numbed the pain and Izzo got up and went to play a bit.

Twenty minutes later she was back, though, tugging on my shorts and pointing at her forehead. Telling me it hurt. Asking me to fix it. I held her and kissed her and sang to her and eventually, she went off again.

But for the rest of the night, Izzo kept coming up to me, pointing at her head. Telling me it hurt, asking me to help. It was plain awful -- even as it was impressive, in the twisted parental way, that she's learned to communicate now when something hurts and where the hurting is.

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

And so on and so forth. I could write forever. But then I'd never take a shower.

Besides, Izzo is telling me I'm done.

Lots of love!

rock on be well peace

Us