Happy New-ish Year!

My New Year's resolution was to update this blog more often, to keep family and friends up to speed on the little rocket but mostly as a reminder for ourselves. Since we last posted, when Ida was 19 months, she's changed so much, but the days, weeks, months are all blurry. I don't remember when she started talking in complete, complex sentences. I don't remember when she learned to write her name. I don't remember the first time she called me "dumbass", a word she hears more often than she should (drivers in Chicago drive like dumbasses).

Tomorrow IRX turns 3, which astounds me. I miss all the past iterations of her. When her personality started to show around 6 months. When she started walking at 13 months. Her hair at 19 months. Full-on talking soon after she turned 2. Sassiness about 3 months ago.

Today, we are spending the morning at a cafe/playspace. A little town with a kid sized grocery store, firehouse, gas station. There are slides and puppets and books and trains. I love watching Ida interact with other kids. She She has no qualms about going up to someone and striking up a friendship. A few minutes ago, she came running up to me because the little girl she was playing with was crying. I guess she had had an altercation with another girl over a doll. Ida went into “fix it” mode and found another doll for the little girl who was crying. That’s one of the traits I’m so proud she has. She has been empathetic since she was tiny. Always worrying about other kids. That’s not to say she’s completely selfless. She just asked me to hide two sticks of fake butter so no one else could play with it.

Ida as a 2 year old, about to be 3:

+Her favorite color is pink, something she feels everyone must know. She is unwavering in her love of pink. Black is her second favorite color.

+She is obsessed with princesses. She wants to be Cinderella when she grows up, even after we’ve told her that Cinderella was an orphan who lived with mean women who made her scrub toilets all day. I wouldn’t mind if this Cinderella obsession manifests into clean floors and toilets in our house.

+She is dying to take ballet and soccer lessons. She practices at home all the time.

+She can spell her name and CP’s name.

+She loves to sing and dance. I love listening to her sing when she doesn’t know we’re listening. I love that her first criteria for a dress is if she can spin in it.

+She is crazy verbal and since starting at her new daycare, understands (but won’t speak) a lot of Spanish.

+We still haven’t cut her hair.

I’m a little over-caffeinated and I seem to have lost her amongst the roomful of children. So I’ll let CP fill in some other stuff and post pictures later.

19 Months!

A few things about Ida:

Still small. She's still not forward facing in her carseat. Ours has a 22lb minimum to face forward and Ida has been hovering just under and just over 20 lbs. We got a stern talking to from one of the pediatricians (not our regular guy) and have been adding tons of butter and oil to everything she eats. She's just SUPER active and probably burns it all off as she puts it on.

She's got lots of new words and phrases, mostly related to food, animals, and body parts. She says "igotcha", "idunno","goce" (gross),"howyou" (how are you), and "thanks".

She's learned "me" and "mine" but loves to share. She wants to do everything by herself these days.

She's very particular about what she wears and is actually pretty good at accessorizing. The other day CP put her in a denim dress and tried to put on some navy socks, but Ida protested. She wanted the pink socks, which she paired with a pink barrette and her "puhse."

Here she is wearing my socks (with help from her friend Tin) and galoshes.


Her new favorite activity is hanging from a bar at the park. And climbing up the slides.

Practicing for sullen teenagerhood.


She loves spending time with her cousins.

She is very affectionate. The other day, she was the first one to wake up and she demanded "a kiss...a kiss" from her sleeping parents. She hugs, kisses, laughs and dances when she's happy.

Favorite foods: balki (broccoli), papas, rice, beans, peas, mame (edamame), gapes (grapes), m m m (m&ms), cheese, and pasta.

Favorite favorite: still elmo, always elmo

IRX at 18 Months

Have I mentioned lately how much I love IRX? I think I'm feeling it today because she and CP left for Washington DC yesterday. I'll be meeting them out there on Saturday to go out to Virginia with her dad and family.

She's just a great kid and more and more her personality is showing. I mean, she's always had the same personality, but it's getting more and more developed and nuanced. She is fearless. She never scared of going down head first on a slide. She is not afraid to explore unfamiliar places. She loves with all her heart and will show affection when she's happy. Luckily, she's a very affectionate kid. Days are filled with kisses and hugs.

Days are also filled with dancing. There's a dance she does when she's excited to eat. And then the dance she does when she's excited to go outside. And the dancing she does for fun. And singing. She can sing her ABCs (thank you, TV) although you can't really make out any of the letters except G. She sings the songs she learned from her music class. She just sings.

She's a sweet and caring child. If she hears one of us say "ow" or hears a loud crashing sound she will ask "you okay? you okay?" until we confirm that, yes, we are okay. Of course, she will sometimes purposely throw something at us, say "uh oh..you okay?"

Her latest things that I love include asking people "how u?" which she got from our neighbor. Sometimes we wake up early and sit on the porch and look at the disgusting, ugly pigeons that congregate in our yard every morning and she will say, "hi birds how u?" Same to the neighbors dog. But not the neighbors. And hand shakes. And cheers-ing everything she eats or drinks. She loves carrying a purse. The other day, a woman almost ran her over with a shopping cart and she looked at her and said, "ohmygod". Hasn't said it since.

Finally, my baby has learned to pose for the camera. Unfortunately, we can never get her to do anything on video. Should could be singing for 5 minutes but as soon as she senses the camera is on, she stops. Anyway, here she is saying "cheese".

IRX is a year and a half today. This realization is stunning, exciting, sad...

Recently, we've had a few flashbacks from the past that remind me how little she used to be and how much she has grown in a very short period of time. We attended the premiere of a movie she shot last summer, appearing in the part of "baby." Of course, I am infinitely biased, but she was very good. That is my professional opinion as an actress and a director, and also my gooey melting mother's opinion as well. She was cute, cried on cue, stopped on cue. Possibly sound editing had a lot to do with this, but like to think not. And oh - she was amazingly and impossibly small, a BABY. Now, even though I call her my baby, in reality she is a toddler - an insanely active, reckless, constantly in motion toddler, basically a kid, and practically a teenager!

I've also been trying to sort through all of the photographs I've taken of her in the past year and a half. So far, I've gone from 3500 to 2500, which is no small task - especially when each photo brings me back to the day it was taken, to my memories of what she sounded like, acted like, looked like then. Facial expressions she only made for a while... Facial expressions she makes now, with words attached to them. I see pictures and video of her struggling to roll over, and remember how much time I spent trying to get her to do it how proud of her I was when she did. And then I think of this morning, when she busted her chin climbing over a chair. Or yesterday, when she climbed onto the windowsill and stood there, surveying the room.

Meanwhile, we have a new niece. At two weeks old, she seems like a (gorgeous) creature from another planet - incredible and tiny and alien. She was a pound bigger than IRX was when she was born, and yet - how can it be that IRX was ever that little? It happens so fast. And yet, when I see her next to her cousin P-LO, who is three, she seems so young. Just a baby, really. My baby.

Teeeeeth

After months of no new teeth (she has 8 now), IRX is cutting 3 teeth! Poor thing, she's super crabby and biting her mama while nursing. She was banished from nursing after 4 incidents of biting and responding by running around the house until almost 10pm, all sweaty and with a glazed look in her eyes.

Don't know if it's because her nap schedule was compromised, she missed her afternoon nap and we put her down at 7pm, hoping she'd sleep through the night, but that was just a dream we had. It didn't work out that way. She finally fell asleep, in my arms, watching Maisy (don't judge, I can't lactate, I have nothing to offer and it was the only way to calm her down).

I hope the teeth come in quickly and that there aren't anymore for awhile.

17 Months!

The other day, I called IRX a baby and my sister corrected me, said she was a toddler and it hit me. Whoa, she's a toddler! She's a walking, talking, singing, dancing toddler! I didn't listen when people said the time would fly by. It totally flies by.

New words: broccoli (balki, which she LOVES and asks for ALL THE TIME), cookie (another new favorite, but she says it like Cookie Monster does), robot (bobot - she puts a "b" in front of everything lately, like biaper and bapple), go, bird, ice, ca-te (aguacate) and a whole mess of words why can't decipher and feel bad we can't decipher because she says them with such urgency and confidence.

Her Zadie came to visit over Memorial Day and we took Ida to her first baseball game (but not her first sport game, that honor has been taken by the Bulls). In true Cubs fashion, the were losing 5-0 within the first 10 minutes. I guess this is an early glimpse into the heartbreak/disappointment of being a Cubs fan, if Ida decides that's where her loyalty lie.




It was a gorgeous day for a game though and Wrigley is a great place to watch a game. Being a kid has it's benefits. A nice usher brought Ida a ball, said it was because she was the youngest person in his section.


I think it's safe to say that summer is here in Chicago. I think the last time I got hopeful and finally took down the rest of the plastic (in May!) we had a cold snap. But corn is good again, so that means summer, right?


Summer in Chicago can't be beat and so far IRX has gone to a concert in the park (and another one next week) and various neighborhood festivals, like when her Uncle Tom came to visit. Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have of them:

The warm weather is here, which is good because Robobebe was going STIR CRAZY inside! She's a super active kid, and loves running around after dogs, cats, and bubbles.

Here she is discovering her first puddle:

IRX and Rain from coya paz on Vimeo.

And here she is discovering her first Cadbury egg:


















And here she is relaxing with a drink at the bar. She's watching the game. Really.



















I bought her a baby pool today, so more summer pictures to come!