As if being picked up and carried everywhere wasn’t enough, Izzy has now discovered another form of transportation (or parental humiliation). It all began when she decided that climbing in and out of things i.e. boxes, baskets and such was fun. She has a little cart we gave her for her birthday. The concept behind the cart is for the child to load it with various treasures and for said child to push it to its destination. What a great concept! She can practice walking by pushing something! She can put toys in it since she loves placing and removing contents of, well, pretty much anything. Great toy. Until she figured out how to climb in it. And Mom in one of her less enlightened moments pushed her around in a loop going, “Choo! Choo!”

“How is that a bad thing?” you ask. Give Izzy an idea, and she runs with it! She deduced that if she climbs in the cart and gives the royal wave, she’ll get a ride. Otherwise she gets a little more demanding. This was fun the first eighteen rounds. However, as I am about to have another kid in less than a month, my back and general physical aptitude isn’t quite up to bending over a child’s toy pushing a 25 pound lump around several times a day. So I did what every desperate parent does when faced with a child’s obsession; I hid the Royal Chariot. Out of sight; out of mind right? Wrong! She takes an idea and RUNS with it! The next day or so, I see her sit on her red food tray (now named the Royal Carpet Glider), give the royal wave, and look at me expectantly. “Mom! I’m waiting here!” I push her back and forth with my feet, while sitting on my medicine ball. My aching back was spared. . .this time.

Downstairs she has a little tray with wheels that holds her building blocks. That tray has not seen its building blocks for many a day now as they are scattered throughout her kingdom. The tray hadn’t received much notice from her, until her agile mind discovered its true calling: a Royal Carriage! Yes, she sat in it, waved, and looked around expectantly. She was pulled around the living room by its child’s length rope and a hunched, harried parent, and disembarked satisfied.

Fast Forward to a couple of days ago with my first post “An Introduction.” As I had been typing, I heard her paging me to another room. I located her in the master bedroom. We usually keep it closed off from her, but the air conditioner works better if the air can flow through the house and I had left the door open. I didn’t expect too much destruction since she is never alone for more than a minute or so. No, not too much destruction; she had acquired a Royal Sled. Izzy had taken the clean clothes out of the laundry basket, climbed in, gave the royal wave, and looked around expectantly. I guess when she looked around expectantly and saw none of her entourage awaiting further orders, she had a moment of panic. Until she remembered how to raise her voice to summon said entourage. I pushed her about six feet, picked her up, and carried her out-closing the door behind us. Oy.

Now she’s on to bigger and better things: walking, trying to talk, and all the while keeping up with her Destruct-O quota! She’s a busy Izzy Bean. . .

The Royal Chariots

From left to right: The Royal Chariot (Original), The Royal Carpet Glider, The Royal Carriage, and The Royal Sled

At the risk of infinite ridicule over my horrible singing, I have uploaded this audio clip of me singing to Izzy.  It’s just a silly song I sing to her sometimes.  I’m uploading this wholly due to Izzy’s timely background vocals.  She is sooooo cute…

I recorded this when I got my iPhone using Griffin’s iTalk app. I was surprised by the iPhone’s microphone – it’s really good!  You don’t think that cell phone microphones would be of such high quality – but then again, this isn’t just a cell phone.   I’m having a blast downloading all these weird apps and games, I wonder what other silly things I can get out of this gadget…

Oh, and for those that don’t understand Spanish, sorry.  We’re Spanglish.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Here’s the little monkey trying to eat, destroy, or otherwise disrupt everything in sight – or at least reach.

I was actually trying to get her to talk, but she had other plans.

Destruct-o-baby from Juan O on Vimeo.

Izzy Eating Pizza crusts

I love pizza.   I could eat two pies on my own on a good day.   I think BJ’s Pizza makes my favorite pizza, but I really want to visit Chicago and try some real Deep Dish pies.

This past week, we had lunch at Cici’s Pizza with some of Ciri’s coworkers.   Izzy has started eating solid and she is doing great with whatever we give her.   The diapers are hell, but she’s having a blast snarfing sweet potatoes and green peas and carrots and anything else you can liquefy.   Ciri bought her a fancy space age sucker thingamabob that lets her suck on solid foods without choking on the actual food.   It’s a pretty neat little gizmo and it’s won tons of awards.   So far Izzy’s only had apples, but, she’ll sit there and suck on the little chunks of apples until the juice runs out.

At the pizza place, she started to get a little fussy.   I brought along a sippy cup with some juice, but she didn’t want it.   Instead she kept reaching out for my pizza, so I handed her the crust of my cheese and pepperoni slice.   She grabs it and stuffs it right in her mouth.   At that moment, I knew she was going to take after her dad.   If that’s not enough to convince you, well there’s more.

After a few minutes, she would soak through the crust and in order to keep her from choking on it, I’d flip it to the dry side.   Well, she wasn’t having any of that!   I had to pry her fingers off the pizza crust before I could flip it, and in the short amount of time that it wasn’t in her hand, she would scream!   I’m raising a pizza natzi!   She went through three pizza crusts and along with the crusts she had three seperate tantrums.   Luckily, each was less furious than the last.

I’m happy to announce that Izzy, without a doubt, is going to be just like daddy.   Mua ha ha ha…