Just another CarleSpawn weblog

Ezri now has the complete indestructible book collection.
Thanks, Aunt Coral, for the surprise package.
She likes the firefly page especially and her mom’s owl hooting while looking at the owl page is also appreciated.

Ezri has been practicing walking behind the wheels of the Radio Flyer walker and the alligator walker.
We also do laps hanging from a parent’s hands around the loop of our house through the kitchen, dining room and living room.
Ezri has taken one or two steps unsupported. She is really loving walking with help and we figure it’s only a matter of time before she’s up on her own.

Babies love paper. It crumples and it’s fun to turn pages, but paper is flimsy. When moistened paper turns into mushy yuck.  Even a nice cardboard board book can be turned to pulp by a dedicated baby with just a tooth or two.  This leads not only to book destruction, but possible choking hazard and ingestion of ink dyes and paper whitening chemicals.

So, books for babies are mostly board books and reading them is mostly an activity shared with an adult, rather than an opportunity for solo exploring.

But, Ezri is so happy when she gets ahold of a magazine or catalog.  She loves looking through books on her own.  Enter Indestructibles which seem expensive at $5 for a seemingly flimsy magazine like pamphlet book.  However, Ezri has flipped through hers multiple times, she has put them in her mouth and pulled a full mug of cold coffee down from a bookshelf onto one and they are still standing.  They are a little rumpled, but still together with nary a tear or soggy page.

Indestructibles look flimsy and feel like a high quality paper, but they are not.
They are made of Tyvek – a material developed by Dupont and used for maps that are to be taken into the wilderness(rain doesn’t phase it), medical packaging (it’s hard to tear), and housewrap (it’s just that tough).

We own two of these Indestructibles. There are only 3 currently available.  All three feature brightly colored paintings of animals by Kaaren Pixton with no text.  Wiggle! March! features barnyard creatures and offers the opportunity to make animal noises.  Ezri likes my chicken and cow noises especially. Creep! Crawl! features the same style of paintings of bugs and slugs.  While some might consider the lack of text to be a cope out(yes, Eric I am talking to you), it is nice opportunity to just talk to Ezri about what’s in the pictures and point at things together.  We may have to pick up Flutter! Fly! which presumably features birds and has a hummingbird on the cover soon.

Here’s Ezri with that pinnacle of children’s book characters, Walter the Farting Dog. Oh, she loves the noises he makes!

Ezri does not build with her megabloks, but she does enjoy destroying the towers built by others.

Megabloks are also good for banging and rattling.

Cheers, Ezri.

Ezri has learned how to climb up into our IKEA Poang chairs.
She is very proud of her accomplishments.

Impressive things Ezri has done in the last week or so:
1) Walk holding only one hand of an adult.
2) Stand for multiple seconds holding onto nothing.
3) Lower herself from standing gently to sitting on the floor with no bump.
4) Eaten pieces of her first bagel.
5) Climbed up onto the IKEA poang chairs for the first time.
6) Begun to master the art of drinking from a sippy cup.
7) Used her radio flyer cart to walk around on her own.

2009 was certainly the year of Ezri for us. She’s ready for 2010.

Bring it on.

We checked out the board book Perfect Pets Peek A Boo! A Busy baby Book by make Believe Ideas Ltd. from the library.

While the text on this is pretty insipid, the flaps are great. Pets hide behind related objects – a horse behind an apple, a cat behind a mouse toy, a rabbit behind a head of lettuce and a dog behind a bouncy ball. The final spread shows all four animals and is covered by two flaps that open like shudders. When closed all the reader can see is the eye of the dog whose name is Bouncy.  Ezri loves touching the hole with the eye and then opening the flaps to reveal the animals.  The person who designed the flaps on this book gets two thumbs up.  The author – meh.

In other news, Ezri enjoyed rocking in a rocking chair all by herself for the first time today.  The chair used to be her Aunt Amy’s and is only a little big for Ezri.  She only tried to climb up and out of it once – mostly she was content to rock.  A big smile for the rocking chair.

With the holiday, I missed last week’s report on Ezri’s reading and am just catching up.  Here is Ezri looking at Sandra Boynton’s The Belly Button Book.
It features a song ode to belly buttons and many hippos proudly wearing swimsuits at The Belly Button Beach to show of their belly buttons. It is super silly stuff, but fun and the rhyming rhythms work well for reading aloud. Ezri currently loves belly buttons. She likes you to find hers and she likes finding the belly buttons on others. Sadly, Eric has discovered she may pull any hair she finds near the belly button.
In honor of her belly button fascination we read The Belly Button Book and we purchased her Where is Baby’s Belly Button? A Lift-The-Flap Book by Karen Katz. Various of baby’s body parts hide behind a hat, bath bubbles, a cup and a cat. It is a new holiday gift book and I am waiting to test it on Ezri, but I anticipate it will be a hit as it features babies and body parts which are keen interests of hers at present.