I could go on - for paragraphs or hours - on the afternoons I spend with my children. After I pick Nora up from school and the three of us retreat to the cozy confines of our little house while I start getting dinner ready. Maybe Nora watches a show and Gabe scoots around the floor playing with toys and hoping I won’t notice when he gets his hands on the remote control. We’re in a very nice phase and I’d be foolish to think it’s going to last forever but I will certainly take it for now. It is slowly but surely making up for the five days of my life that I’m still, amazingly, not over, that we shall forever call, “Right After I Had Gabe and J Was Bed-Ridden With the Flu and my Mom Had a Broken Arm and my Dad Didn’t ‘Feel Like’ Holding the Baby and No Other Family Was Around and Also the Incontinence.”

It’s a million times better than that.

One of the greatest things I’ve been able to witness in our time together is Nora growing and changing as a sister. I’ve got to tell you: she’s a natural. She’s good at cheering up her little brother. She’s good at distracting him and playing with him in a gentle, appropriate way.

And then there was her crowning moment, just the other day. I was in the kitchen, doing something that required my total attention - which is, by the way, not something I’d recommend when your two young children are all the way in the next room - when I noticed Gabe pushing his way over to this small pile of post-Christmas tree/decoration debris we’d swept into the corner and neglected to put into the trash. He can’t truly crawl just yet, leading us to believe - falsely - that most things are out of his reach, but he can definitely get around.

I realized that as soon as he got there he was going to put whatever he could into his mouth, as fast as possible, as babies love to do, so I yelled out to Nora, “Hey! Stop him! Don’t let him get that trash!” I don’t usually count on Nora for things like this, because, you know, she’s three, but I was stuck. Sure enough she rose to the occasion, ran over, took her brother by his shoulders, pulled him from the menacing pile, then grabbed his clenched little fist - as he’d made it before the intervention - pried his fingers open and began vigorously wiping pine needles from it.

She didn’t look for praise; simply abandoned him there on the floor, a safe distance from the problem, and went back to whatever it was she was doing, succumbing, it seemed, to the fact that she’d be getting him out of situations like this for the foreseeable future.

If their nascent personalities stay on track, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Sister and brother, sure. But also rule maker and rule breaker. While their dad and I sit back and watch. And laugh, quietly.

Our mornings can go one of two ways. Before this fall, our mornings were almost always a source of calm during what were otherwise frantic days. Coffee. The news. Everybody content.

Once Nora started school, though - J takes her every morning - things changed. On good days mornings are serene, like they used to be. Good days. Days when, like, we lay out everybody’s clothes the night before, and I get up in time to take a shower, and Mina doesn’t decide to take advantage of the freedom we allow the dogs when we let them out the back door and into our unfenced back yard by trotting on out into the neighborhood streets to have some fun, without our knowledge.

Nora has to be at school at a fairly early hour and we simply have to be super organized if we want things to go smoothly.

So, you know, sometimes we aren’t super organized.

This morning, for instance. We were at a disadvantage going in. Gabe and I have colds and neither of us had slept well, so I woke up and put a robe on and stumbled downstairs envisioning getting right back into bed once everyone was off and on their way, which is a really funny thing to envision when you have a baby to take care of. Really funny.

And then when I went in Nora’s room to see if she was awake, she popped up in her bed and shouted, “I want a snack!” She has breakfast at school, but she often has a little something before. Her saying this is a terrible omen of things to come, because when she’s in the “I want a snack” mood, every thing you have to do from there on out is not only going to be the normal level of annoying…brushing teeth…brushing hair….walking down the stairs…it’s also going to be one more thing she has to do before she can have her bunch of grapes, or clementine or what have you.

So Nora’s angry off the bat and Gabe’s coughing up a storm and I look like I did that week I was doing my college essays and I refused to get out of my pajamas for five straight days and J is making coffee frantically because no matter how little time we have to do it, the coffee must be made. Otherwise we’re no better than barbarians.

I was holding the baby and went to put him down on his back on the floor, but he wanted to sit up, a skill he’s mastered very well, although his balance isn’t yet 100 percent. Just as I let go of him, Nora called my attention to something, most likely the whereabouts of her snack, and Gabe toppled over and hit his head on the wooden part of our ottoman. I always try to keep him away from this particular piece of furniture for this very reason, but this wasn’t one of our good mornings, and my parenting wasn’t quite up to par.

He immediately began crying so I picked him up to comfort him and noticed that he had a cut on his eyelid and was bleeding. I had put my wobbly baby in a sitting position near a hard piece of furniture and he’d cut his eye and had what looked like a blossoming bruise across his nose.

I felt terrible about what had happened, but he settled down after a few minutes and I could see that the cut wasn’t too deep.

Compare this incident to a similar one that occurred when Nora was about the same age. She rolled off the couch once when I had looked away for a second. No cut. No blood. Nothing like that. But I cried for about two hours, in the midst of which I called the doctor and deemed myself an unfit parent.

She was fine.

I knew this time around that Gabe was fine, too, despite the visual drama. But as we were planning on calling the doctor anyway about his relentless cold, we decided to add this latest injury to the mix and contact them sooner rather than later.

We got an appointment at 9:15 and J offered to meet me there after dropping Nora off since I wasn’t feeling great. And looking like a homeless person. I mean, he didn’t present that as a reason I might like a companion, but I know what’s up.

The doctor’s visit confirmed that the cut was no big deal, but that the cold was a bigger deal than we thought. He hadn’t been presenting any of the typical symptoms, but the doctor discovered that Gabriel has an ear infection - a double one, in fact, as both ears are affected. “What a trooper!” we proclaimed, as he rolled around on the examining table, enjoying the sound of of the crinkly paper underneath him and babbling happily.

This behavior continued as we waited downstairs for his prescription. Bruised, beaten, in need of antibiotics, and charming everyone with his wide smile and array of baby noises.

I thought about the time Nora had fallen and skinned her knee, and proceeded to talk about it for three or four weeks. And about how I’d been wandering around like the living dead for the past couple days. About how J’s day is basically ruined if he finds a hole in his sock.

I wondered if this carefree dismissal of pain and suffering in favor of good times would follow Gabe out of babyhood and, if so, where the hell that attitude came from.

I asked J if he thought maybe this child might differ from us in certain, crucial ways, and what strange and unfamiliar events could occur as a result.

“Is he going to be a quarterback?” I asked him. “Oh my God, is he going to be in a frat?”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about karma and how “what goes around comes around.” And also about emotional detachment and being zen.

Because I was a philosophy minor? No. Because of potty training and nap times and tragically mundane stuff like that. But still. You can get lofty.

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece for The Huffington Post called “What Potty Training Taught Me,” in which I hinted at the hell potty training has been in this household. Honestly, guys, nothing about parenting - not the fussiness, the sleeplessness, the loneliness, the tantrums, the contrariness - has been this hard for me.

People have a lot of advice on the subject, as everyone does on everything parenting-related, and I now truly understand, more than I ever have before, that kids are simply different, and what works for your kid may not work for mine. People who say that kids have to train themselves had kids that effectively trained themselves. People who say that you have to be strict had kids who responded to strictness.

What we have is an adorable, blue-eyed little girl, who will mindlessly pee all over the couch, then look at my face, as I try to judge how I want to play this one (our latest tactic is saying little, letting the responsibility lie with her) and then ask, softly, “Are you happy?”

Not because she’s perfected sarcasm at age three, but because she is honestly interested in emotions lately. And so when I say something like, “I’m not that happy when you have an accident,” she’ll say, “I want you to be happy.” Now we’re not even talking about potty training anymore. Now we’re dealing in feelings.

This is just one example of many when it comes to how non-interested Nora is in potty training. And for a few weeks I thought constantly and relentlessly about how to get her to change her attitude. J and I have been nothing but positive about the whole thing - at least for the most part. Maybe we needed to be more aggressive? Maybe more enthusiastic? Maybe less cloying? Maybe more hands-off? We’d tried every tactic in the book and then some but perhaps we weren’t doing it right.

Then one day I was talking to Nora’s teacher, who suggested, when I asked her advice, that we let her wear pull-ups to school for the time being to alleviate the number of accidents she was having, that her teachers were having to clean up. Less stress for everyone.

I don’t know why that did it, but I decided that very day to just let it go. Nora could have accidents. I didn’t care. She would get it. She was the only person in control of the situation - I’d always known that - and she’d get it when it meant enough to her. That day, when I brought her home from school, I didn’t leave the baby crying on his activity mat to take her for the potty break I knew she needed. Instead I asked her if she had to go and she said no. And I said “ok.”

I have felt a million times better since. When I get worried about the time it’s taking her to learn, I think about the fact that I was three-and-a-half at least, according to my mother, before I was fully potty-trained. Payback. Or genes. Or whatever.

I’ve had to face similar changes with Gabriel’s sleeping habits.

So maybe Nora isn’t the world’s potty-training champion. Doesn’t matter because she was the champion at sleep. Oh, that child and sleep. Slept through the night at barely 12 weeks. Shifted through time zones effortlessly and slept late when she needed it. Crashed when she became overtired, instead of giving us a hard time. Still, she’s an amazing and deep sleeper.

Not our darling Gabriel!

While he’s certainly not terrible, he’s required more work. A bit of sleep training and scheduling. We got him to sleep through the night a couple months ago, a feat I announced at the time with incredible pride, only to lose our stride. The past few weeks have been less than stellar. Yes, he’s teething and has gotten his first cold, but it’s hard to revert back to a place of such all-encompassing fatigue.

Plus, as I was telling J this morning, the fact that his sleep habits - when good - were because of my work, and not because of his natural patterns, it’s hard not to feel - when things aren’t going well - that it’s not my fault. Sure, he’s got a cold, but up three or four times to eat? Certainly there must be something I could do. Leaf through my copy of “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child,” for the millionth time, or not let him nurse so much at night lest he develop a habit or maybe check into a hotel for a week, and sleep there.

Well. That last one is more of a daydream.

It’s this sort of annoying and unrelenting self-analysis and doubt that might be my least favorite part of parenting. That I can obsess over the timing of Gabe’s morning wakeup for hours, wondering what in the world I can do to make it better (as in, later…5:30, kid, really?)

This line of thinking carries me so quickly to other questions, other overly-dramatic conclusions…perhaps putting him in daycare two days a week is ruining his sleeping patterns, or even worse, his life…perhaps leaving him to cry will have a negative and lasting effect on him, or maybe NOT leaving him to cry will make him needy and weak…perhaps a supplemental bottle of formula would help him get through the night, but what about the undeniable, God-given, guilt-producing, glory of my breast milk, I mean, come ON, am I Satan over here?

When I get like this, J always says one thing. He says, all casual, “He’s just a baby.” And for a while I was like, “Just a baby?! What do you even mean? He’s just a baby whose nap was 24 minutes shorter than it should have been today!”

But recently, I’ve started to get it. He is just a baby. Babies cry and are unpredictable, and me getting all obsessed over these minor details does nothing good for him. For anyone. Perhaps most importantly, for myself. Because thinking about how many ounces I can pump in a day when there is Herman Cain coverage out there - when there is Kim Kardashian and Jessica Simpson’s pregnant! - is, well, a little depressing.

So, as I was rocking little Gabriel last night, during his third wakeup of the evening, I looked over at my snoring first child - the two are sharing a room - and I thought about how easy this particular aspect of babyhood had been with her. Payback, I thought. I’m due for a not great sleeper.

And I let it go.

This is how I’m getting zen. I hope that when Justin comes home tonight, we talk about a lot of things, like whatever wine we open after the children are in bed, or how “Breaking Bad” has instilled in me a totally unfounded fear of Mexican drug lords.

Maybe just a little bit about how the hours between when I pick Nora up from school and he comes home are difficult, because the baby is fussy and I’m all worn out on motherhood at that point - because it is important that we talk about our days - but not too much questioning or concern because that seriously gets in the way of having a good time.

I mean, so does pee on the couch. But not as much as it used to.

Yesterday morning I was washing dishes when one of Nora’s plastic cups - the little ones I got at Target, decorated with monkeys hanging from trees - lodged itself in the drain. I was cleaning up after Halloween festivities at our house, and although the job was totally manageable, there were chips and dips and whatnot left on plates, and so when that cup (without my knowledge, as the sink was full and I couldn’t see a thing) slipped into the drain, it formed a perfect seal, thus leaving me with a basin of dirty water. With stuff floating in it. Gross.

I immediately thought, “How the hell am I going to get this thing out?” Because I could fit my fingers between the rim of the cup and the drain just slightly, but not enough to budge it, so I experienced this moment of, “Well, this is how our sink will be now. Filled with water and tortilla chips and unusable, but we will get by.”

I quickly corrected this line of thinking, however, by reminding myself to try harder.

I know this is going to sound annoyingly sentimental, but I’ve been telling myself to try harder a lot lately. Not in a depressing way, like when a lost cause type looks at his or herself in the mirror, all bedraggled and wearing sweats, and they’ve just lost their lover and then the music montage begins and they get totally awesome right before your eyes.

I mean, I don’t want to sing my own accolades or anything, but I feel pretty good about myself lately. I’m in decent shape, thanks to exercising when I am able, and eating well most of the time and my darling Gabriel, who I estimate is helping me burn five or six million calories a day with his aggressive nursing regime.

I get up in the morning and get dressed and I have a a lot of fun, snuggling up with the baby and writing and doing things around the house.

It’s so different than after I had Nora. So different. Both experiences were good, but brought totally different emotions, and I’ve been comparing them a lot. With my first child, I was almost immediately seeking social outlets: other new moms, emails and phone calls looking for and giving advice, classes, being out and about.

I had to get used to being home. I had to learn to schedule my time and accept my new life, which did not include the vision I’d always held for myself, of being a full-time working mother.

I did make it work, but it took a lot of energy and annoying self-analysis. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy, but becoming a mom for the first time was a big adjustment, especially since my life wasn’t the way I thought it would be. Now, I’m glad it all happened the way it did.

With Gabriel, on the other hand, I felt almost immediately at peace. Not those first five days or so, after he was born and J caught the flu and everyone we knew was out of town and I was peeing all over myself all the time due to post-birth incontinence. What? Yeah you guys. Admitting it. Thankfully that, and the generally chaotic nature of having two kids calmed down week by week.

But even in the crazier moments, being a mother to a second child was so much easier. So much less angst and worry and none of the wondrous fear that new parents simply have to go through that first time around.

With Nora, it took me forever to learn how restful it could be to simply let her sleep in the crook of her arm while I read a magazine. With Gabe - when I had a quiet moment in our new, crazy life - I did this every chance I got.

So once Nora started school this fall and I had some time - which has recently increased since the baby’s started a couple days of daycare a week - my energy didn’t have to go towards the insanity of taking care of two little kids, and it didn’t have to go towards my new redefined role in life. Because if you want to know the truth, I’ve never felt more defined. Or lucky. I’ve been working hard at specific goals, like getting Gabe on a good sleep schedule, and making sure J, Nora and I sit down to eat dinner together at least a few times a week.

I’d be doing great at getting tons of sleep, too, but we’ve started staying up late watching “Breaking Bad,” on Netflix in bed at night so that’s all shot to hell.

My energy is now available for other pursuits, too. Which, by the way, brings me back to that cup in the sink. Really.

I was halfheartedly trying to get it out of there when I thought about this conversation I’d had with my mother the other a few days before. She’d been at Rosemont College, where she went to school, at a committee meeting with Ronnie Ahern, who somehow stumbled upon this blog a few years ago and has been reading it ever since, which is absolutely the best.

Anyway, during the meeting, Ronnie came up to my mother and asked why I hadn’t been posting much. Nothing about the new baby. When Nora was born, she said, I wrote a ton. Now, barely at all.

She’s right, and I have a hundred excuses but I’m not going to list them all here. Excuses are dumb and the important point is that when my mom said that, my immediate reaction was, “Hey, I should write more.”

Maybe because it’s better to spend the free time I have writing than it is to keep checking the same web sites over and over when there aren’t too many jobs available.

Or maybe because one day the things I write casually will become the basis for a book of essays. Or because someone will see that I’ve written on a blog for many years and think that shows true dedication.

Or maybe just because Ronnie, and perhaps a few others, like it. And that the process of writing and someone actually liking it makes me feel really good.

So I was thinking about that, and how my sink was going to be clogged by a plastic monkey cup for the rest of our lives, and I had one of these moments where I said to myself, “Listen, I realize you didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, but you’re going to have to try harder right now.” Then I got a knife and wedged in between the cup and the drain and slowly pried that thing out of there. Then I also decided that I need to write on my blog more often.

Thank you, Ronnie, for the reminder, and thank you for reading, and I promise I’ll send Nora to Rosement. I mean, if she wants to go. Because when she doesn’t want to do something, she’s real good at throwing herself on the floor and having a little fit. And I know people say she’ll grow out of it, but that girl’s got dedication, so, you know, I’ll believe it when I see it.

The other day I was talking to J about something, I don’t remember what, and he said, in response to something I had said (complaining? I am willing to bet that maybe I was complaining, like maybe about how it’s unfair that I have to wear pants at this point), “Well, you’re eight months pregnant, so…”

And I was like, “Yeah I am!” Eight months pregnant is when you get to say you are “eight months pregnant” all the time, in reference to being tired, or being starving to death or being demanding. “Well, I’m eight months pregnant, so yes, I think I am really going to bed at 7:30.”

To tell you the absolute truth, I don’t feel that bad at all. I have to admit at this point - nearly all the way through my second pregnancy - that I’ve had it very easy both times around. No back pain. Barely any heartburn. Still, though, pregnancy can be weird and uncomfortable even at the best of times. And poor J has had to bear the brunt of my specific objections at the end of some of my longer days. Me saying things like, “my pelvis hurts” and “this baby is hurting me on purpose.”

There are many differences between my pregnancy with Nora and this one. Some of them have to do with the physical manifestation of things, and some have to do more with how I feel about and have reacted to the whole affair. Like how I drink coffee every day this time around, and with Nora I didn’t. In fact, I remember this one time when I got a decaf coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts, and I was all, “Huh, this is making me feel awake. I wonder if they accidentally gave me regular coffee? And what will that mean for the baby?!” I can’t believe that person existed, but she did. And it was me.

This time I’m much more relaxed about what I’m putting into my body, which feels good, and I’m also more relaxed about what I’m doing, which is nice, too. I kept running through my first and some of my second trimester, and I’ve continued to go to my exercise classes with friends, including other pregnant women. I used to think people who said stuff like this were beyond obnoxious, but it feels great to be active while pregnant. It also feels great to watch TV for three hours straight, don’t get me wrong.

As long as I get a good night of sleep, which I have luckily been getting lately, I feel good and pretty energetic, and I think I’m in better shape than I was when I was pregnant with Nora. But hey, I’m also eight months pregnant, as I mentioned above. So there are things. Things like how I wake up thinking about birthday cake in a obsessive manner. The kind with tons of buttercream frosting. And in my mind I’m like, “What in the name of GOD IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE that that’s not a suitable breakfast choice?” I have to talk myself down. A lot of times I don’t want to eat dinner either, which, as you know, isn’t like me. I want to go straight to ice cream, but I know that wouldn’t be a good idea because I’d eat way too much ice cream. So I have to eat dinner first. But these rules! They’re starting to get to me.

Also, as I alluded to in the first paragraph, a lot of the time I don’t want to wear pants. At the end of the day, I just don’t want to. I know you’re thinking, “Ok, she means that she wants to put some drawstring pants on,” and what I’m telling you is what I mean is that I don’t want to wear pants at all.

My motivation to work isn’t ideal, I’m already - right now - thinking about how maybe we can go out for pancakes Saturday morning and sometimes I go from not having to pee in the slightest to a complete emergency situation where if I don’t pee immediately I am going to die in, like, two seconds. Less than that.

Overall, though, I do have the sense to acknowledge that things are fine. That being pregnant when you already have a little kid is definitely more tiring, but I’m also enjoying the no-big-deal aspect of it all.

Mostly, I’m beyond excited for it to be over; not because I don’t like it, but because I want to meet the baby. I felt this way at the end of my pregnancy with Nora, too, but I remember feeling a bit of premature nostalgia too, worrying that I’d miss being pregnant…feeling that little baby kicking inside me. Feeling like I needed more time to get everything done. I remember I used to picture her in there maybe writing a novel or quietly composing a symphony. Content.

That’s where this time is different, too. This baby boy kicks like he means it, up high and down low and at least once a day I am forced to let loose a very heartfelt, “OUCH.” He feels strong and huge and like he, too, is excited to get out here, and when he does I am pretty sure he is going to be immediately curious. And very, very hungry.

These are the names Nora has given to the beloved dolls that she often puts down for naps (face down on the kitchen floor, after gently singing “Twinkle Twinkle” to them) and lovingly feeds and is looking for almost constantly. So, you know, I’d better know which one is which.

With the exception of Maggie, she named them all by herself. Um, obviously:

Strawberry-Strawberry

Coffee Baby

Different One

Laughy

Maggie

Laughy, who was given such a name because - you guessed it - she laughs, currently holds the place of honor as constant companion in Nora’s crib, which is way, way better, than the period that lasted a couple weeks where she was demanding she sleep with this blow-up Dora the Explorer that I got from a street vendor one time when I was trying to bribe her into walking herself back to the car, rather than have me carry her there. That situation (basically, a plastic balloon in the crib) didn’t seem safe. But all’s well now as I let the air out of the thing and hid it in the basement. Shhhh. Just keep that between us and we’re good. Nora can’t read. Yet.

I remember thinking a while back that when we had another child, it would be crazy and fun, most likely tiring and challenging, but that it wouldn’t be as big of a deal. I don’t mean that we’d love that second child any less than our first (who do you think I am?) but that everything surrounding the pregnancy, birth and those first few months would be somewhat familiar.

But you know me. I’m wrong, like, all the time.

We’re doing it again.

And a few weeks ago, when I was lying on the examination table in my doctor’s office, and the midwife had the heart rate monitor on my belly while we listened to the rapid, “woosh woosh woosh” sound of this new little life, I am telling you, it was all the excitement I could ever feel times a million. Familiar? No way.

Nora’s brother or sister is due in April. I think I’ll go ahead and start putting Prozac in Mina’s food now.

Nora’s really amped it up in the past few weeks. Amped what up? Well, the screaming for one thing. The contrariness. I know this is par for the course as far as her age is concerned, but seriously, after about a week of the thousand decibel cries of despair I pretty much knew that I was simply going to lose my mind. That this was it. This was as far as I could go in the realm of stay-at-home parenting and I Was. Going. To. Lose. It.

But I bucked up and did something I barely ever do, and that’s break out the parenting books we received when Nora was born. I mostly trust instinct and advice from friends and family, but I knew I had to bring out the big guns as far as this terrible twos behavior was concerned, and I’m so glad I did. After calmly reading a couple chapters on “challenging behaviors” (”challenging” my ass, I can think of some stronger words) I was reminded of really simple, age-old coping methods.

For instance, instead of throwing myself on the sofa near tears when Nora is yelling - at the top of her lungs - “Milk Mommy, I WANT MILK MOMMY I WANT MILK I WANT IT” - you can try a response like, “I can’t hear you when you whine. Why don’t you use your nice voice?” So easy! So obvious! And so totally helpful! I mean, I realize Nora’s going to be a bit of a tyrant for a little while, but as soon as I started using these methods I felt instantly more in control and happier. I remembered I was the parent who can say no and set boundaries. I remembered that distraction is an incredibly powerful tool.

Of course, sometimes the solution to a problem presents another. The other morning Nora was hanging out in bed with me reading when she, for no apparent reason, slammed the book shut and went into a mini rage. I patiently waited a beat before saying, “Nora, what’s wrong? Can you use your words to tell me what you want?”

And she instantly snapped out of it, sat up straight and said, so politely and clear as day, “I want cake.”

When Nora wants to be picked up she says “hold you,” and what she means by that is “hold me,” she’s just got the pronouns confused. Understandable as I sometimes ask her, “do you want me to hold you?” It’s cute.

Except! Except it’s not cute when she’s yelling it at the top of her lungs after I put her in her crib. “Mommy HOLD YOU, HOLLLDDDD YOUUUUUU.” She’s been doing this recently. In fact, you wanna know what? She’s doing it right now.

I know some people probably think I should go get her and some people think I should leave her there until she falls asleep, and the truth is that J and I probably fall somewhere in between those two parenting camps (check my other blog for a post about this very subject). Partly this is because we’ve got a really good kid. This new development is so difficult for me precisely because Nora never does this. It’s a stage - of that I’m sure - and one day soon we will get our perfect little kid back.

But for now, it’s total agony. I get this knot in the pit of my stomach when she cries like this, cries that are made worse by the fact that she’s capable of putting her feelings into sentences now. “Mommy hold you.” “Mommy’s bed, no crib.” We’ve been traveling a bunch and I’m sure all the transitions aren’t helping, plus I know that as she gets older she’s going experience new challenges. See, I realize there are reasons. But that doesn’t make it easier.

Add to that my own stresses regarding the aforementioned traveling that we’ve been doing and that is coming up. Don’t get me wrong, we love that stuff, but as much as I do it, traveling makes me anxious. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s all the packing and upheaval. And if there’s a plane involved and you have to arrive at the airport several hours in advance, forget it, pass me the Xanax. Since a doctor’s probably not gonna go for that, whatever, I’ll settle for a martini.

And then there are my current feelings when it comes to the fact that I’m not working much, which I won’t even go into again, but you get the picture. More stress.

Nothing major. A toddler yelling. Some silly feelings of inadequacy on my part. The normal insanity of a busy summer. But over the past few days I got to feeling all tense and annoyed, like I had no control over anything going on in my life. Like I had too much going on but somehow wasn’t taking on enough. I think it’s normal for everyone to feel this way from time to time, and possibly beneficial having to dig your way out of it.

Anyway, after going to the gym this morning, I took Nora to the local Starbucks so I could have a coffee and she could have a snack, thus keeping ourselves occupied until nap time. When we got there I picked out a cup of fruit for her - the kind that’s in sealed plastic - and because she doesn’t understand modern commerce or patience, she was like, “Mommy open?” in this sweet little voice, that proceeded to rise 8 trillion decibels over the next 30 seconds while I paid for everything. As we waited for the coffee I decided there was no harm in letting her hold the fruit cup - maybe it would calm her down a little - but what she did was very loudly proclaim “MOMMY OPEN,” and when I said, “Hold on a minute,” she started running across the Starbucks with the fruit cup, until she stopped dead center of the people reading and studying and being generally civil, and she chucked it with all her brute baby force onto the floor. Then looked at me like, “See?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Especially when I realized that this one particularly studious looking guy staring at his laptop, who I was all worried about disturbing, was playing a computer game. The workout, the look on my child’s complacent little face. I felt like I was breathing normally again. It gets stressful, true. But it all gets better.

When I got home I put Nora down for her roughly half-hour bout of screaming, “MOMMY HOLD YOU,” before she passed out. I sat at my desk, answering emails and preparing to write blog entries and I typed a letter begging my husband and parents for something they couldn’t do, just to get a little bit of sympathy on the matter. “She’s doing it again,” I wrote. “Make it stop.”

My mother, who knows all, replied, “You have to be strong.” Exactly, I thought. The trips and the transitions will go just fine. You have to be strong. What a simple mantra. And before I knew it I’d finished writing down everything that was worrying me, realized it was no big deal and Nora had fallen fast asleep.

It’s been a while since I wrote an update on Nora at a specific age, but for the past few weeks doing just that is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I’ve been thinking, too, about the post I wrote on her thirteenth month, and how that month - contrary to all the others - wasn’t my absolute favorite month of her life so far.

Because, as I’ve mentioned, people tell me, regarding children, that “it gets so much better” and I can never believe it when they tell me that. Instead I think, “No! Sixteen months! Have you checked out my baby’s vocabulary? Have you heard her giggle?” or “There is nothing in this world better than my 18 month old child and if it were scientifically possible I’d freeze her this way forever!”

The point being that when Nora is going through a stage that I don’t particularly care for it is pretty striking. And I hate to say it but right now is one of those times.

Nora, my ever-confident, I-don’t-need-my-mother-to-help-me, outgoing child, is going through a clingy stage, which manifests itself in several ways. 1) There is the crying that occurs when we take her to daycare or any other location where we are clearly going to “abandon” her, despite the fact that she has been going to said locations for years. Ok fine, one year and eight months. 2) There is the gripping of my legs as I am trying to make dinner or empty the dishwasher or, you know, just be a free standing human being. 3) There is the general neediness…needing us to play with her or help her or get her something or feed her something and so on and so on, while before she would entertain herself for hours.

Now I know - I totally know - that this is a stage and even as I type I recognize that she is already working through it. The other day we went for a walk and she wanted to hug perfect strangers, and drop off at daycare this week was decidedly less dramatic. I am comforted by the fact that my confident daughter will return, stronger than ever, and that no stage will ever trump her true personality.

But it’s been difficult for me. Clinginess - both in its emotional and physical forms - is difficult for me, even in other adults. Say we’re walking down the street and you go to throw your arm around me in an an impulsive hug born out of some burst of affection, and then you proceed to hang on to me because you think that’s really cute. Well, I might like that. Or, if I’m not in the mood, I might punch you. Kidding, I wouldn’t punch you! Probably!

Anyway, there’s nothing really profound about these observations, just that this stage - which I know is common and brief - has been a little bit of a struggle for me, and for Nora, too, as she navigates all these new feelings and ideas and concepts. The fact that Mommy and Dada can be somewhere that she is not. The fact that - wait a second - they could be paying more attention to her at any given moment.

But, of course, there is an upside.

With the new concepts come so many new words. Words, and more words! Putting words together in new ways, and making tiny sentences that make total sense when taken literally, but not so much grammatically. Nora has learned about possession (”Nowa’s breakfast,” “Nowa’s hair,” “Nowa’s paper”) and about compassion, putting her dolls and toys to bed (”night night”) and giving J and I - and others - kisses when we greet her upon coming home. Then there are the countless other pieces of information she’s collected. Things we sometimes have no idea how she learned. Like that boats are heavy, and how she always knows, before we’ve even gotten there, that we’re almost home.

I know that all parents feel this way, but we are constantly amazed. She counts like this: “two, seven, nine, twelve, thirteen” and she knows that C-A-K-E spells cake and, HOLY CHRIST, she really wants some cake.

I could go on about her skills forever, honestly I could, but I don’t think there’s a great need for any parent to type up every single detail about their child. If we all did it, the World Wide Web would explode.

I’d rather point out what’s become, I’m sure, a tired refrain for me, but nonetheless true, and that happens to be that just when I think things aren’t going so well, it turns out that I’m way off.

This idea played out perfectly the other day when Nora and I had a free afternoon and I was trying to figure out what to do with her to avoid the clinging-to-the-leg type scenario that I’d declared I would die of if it happened one more time. I know, shut up about it already, but when you’re home with a child and you’re trying to get some stuff done and it’s not working because she is making it physically impossible by executing a monkey-grip on your calf, I don’t know, it’s really hard. And lonely. And boring. And the worst part is that when you tell someone how hard and lonely and boring that very mundane and domestic situation is, you end up sounding pretty lame, even if the rest of your day was fun.

So we had this free afternoon and I made the horrible mistake of saying something to Nora about how maybe we’d go get some ammi, which is what she calls ice cream. I was just thinking out loud which, by the way, you can’t do with a twenty-month-old who knows every single word in the world, it seems, or at least all the ones that are important to her, and especially the ones that she has made up herself, but that you have started using as though it is totally normal.

I thought - and hoped - she’d forget about the ammi comment because I wasn’t sure I wanted to deal with that particular obsession, but when we got in the car to go somewhere - anywhere, I hadn’t decided yet - she started chanting, quietly but persistently, “ammi, ammi, ammi, ammi, ammi.” I was torn. What I really wanted to do was go get some coffee. I felt exhausted and like I couldn’t possibly deal with the rest of the day without it, and hey, I didn’t need to cave to my toddler’s desires. She’s not in charge.

Yet something about her joyful declaration moved me, I guess, and I suddenly realized that I’d like nothing more than to sit at the local ice cream shop with my daughter, talking about Abby Cadabby or how many fingers she has. That I’d be privileged to do just that. So we drove into town under menacing-looking clouds and were inside placing our order just as it began to pour. They had coffee ice cream. And that’s how a bad afternoon turned into the best.