I was all ready to write this post today, with the above title, about how I have truly loved every stage of Nora’s life more than the one before it…except for this one. Except for this complicated state of affairs we are currently navigating that is 13 months.

Perhaps I should begin with the obvious, that Nora is an amazingly well-behaved child with a naturally easygoing nature, and I really can’t complain. I should also begin with the things that I love about this age. The new words, like how Nora all of a sudden knows that a cow says “moo” (except, for her, more like “mmmmmm”) and how she will point to a picture of a cat and say “caaa!” How she repeatedly asks “wassa? wassa? wassa?” when she wants us to define any object and how she is obsessed with pumpkins. In the past couple months she has really grasped the idea of a hug and, more recently, the idea of a kiss. She is adorably affectionate, laying her head on our chests when she is sleepy or needs reassurance.

Now, the other things.

There are the molars poking their way through her gums. There is the new willfulness, resulting in occasional tantrums when she is stopped from doing something she very much wants to do - climbing up the stairs for the 400th time that day, for instance. And there are the naps.

Oh my God is she really going to talk about naps again?

I really am.

Since having Nora, my grandmother has mentioned to me - many, many times - that “there is a point where babies stop taking a morning nap and start just taking an afternoon nap, and it can be confusing for both of you,” and I was always like, “I’m sure,” but didn’t really get why she mentioned it all the time. But you guessed it! I get it NOW!

Nora, always a good two-naps-a-day napper with the exception of a few rough patches, doesn’t know what to do at this point. Neither do I. I know it’s a phase that will pass, and that I’ll barely remember, but some days it’s all I think about. She’s tired in the morning but doesn’t want to nap, or she’s tired in the morning and does nap, but then doesn’t want to nap in the afternoon and is a wreck by dinner. Or she wants to nap and even points to her crib but ten minutes later I hear her throwing a party up there. Or she only wants to nap in the car. Or a combination of them all.

Put it all together and Nora can be a bit cranky at times. Like this morning, when she was tired, but I didn’t want to put her down yet for fear that she wouldn’t sleep the rest of the day, and she wanted me to give her some of my oatmeal - because she can’t stand it if we’re eating something and she isn’t - and she was attached to my leg making these high-pitched dolphin noises and acting like the world was going to end, for real. And I was like, “13 months!!!”

So I was all set to write this post about how I didn’t love this age, but then I was sitting on the couch with Nora this afternoon, and she saw her animal book and pointed to the cow on the cover about ten times, asking “wassa?” and I told her it was a cow, and she went “mmmmmm” and then she rubbed her eyes and threw her arms around me and nestled her head into my neck, and I realized that I did, in fact, love it. So much that my heart almost exploded.

J is standing in our living room in his pajama pants and a t-shirt right now, watching the World Series Game 1 - a game, by the way, that I adamantly told him I would not watch with him, because I knew he was going to be obnoxious.

I told him, “No thanks, that sounds like a terrible night and I have a Dan Brown novel to read. I’ll be upstairs.”

But lo and behold, the game’s been on a couple hours and I’m still down here, sort of watching. J hasn’t been all that obnoxious, despite the fact that I informed him I would (obviously) be supporting the Phillies. Which, in this instance, is as easy as not getting excited when the Yankees do anything remarkable. The worst he’s done is tried to show me where he was sitting when he went to the Yankees/Angels game Sunday night, repeatedly pointing to the screen and saying, loudly, “Cara! Look! Look! Look! That’s where we were sitting.”

I’m not sure of the exact reasoning behind this, but I’m pretty sure my being a Red Sox fan allows me to ignore such behavior.

In any case I wanted to write a post in public support of the Not Yankees Phillies. My new favorite team. That I know nothing about. Except how much they are going to rock the World Series.

A few weekends ago J and I traveled to Massachusetts to meet up with some good friends and check out the Big E, which is, for those of you who’ve never been, like a state fair on steroids. I used to think the fried food selection at the North Carolina fair was astounding, but they had nothing on the these guys.

Anyway, because J is a total opportunist when it comes to his hobbies, he decided that we should make an event of the trip and visit the Massachusetts and Connecticut highpoints the next day (you can read more about the highpointing business here).

I don’t like highpointing. That’s right, I SAID IT. I don’t like it in the same way I don’t like the birdwatching stuff, because I’m not really one for accruing specific goals that can be added to some kind of life list. But I do love the situations that both activities entail. You’re outside, you run into interesting people and you usually get some exercise. Plus, you get to check out new places and often, I force J into stopping for coffee after we’re done, and that’s always nice.

So I said, “Let’s do it!” We found a totally adorable, affordable place to stay in the Berkshires that night and headed to Mt. Greylock, Massachusetts highpoint, the next day. You can drive up Mt. Greylock. Up at the peak there’s a lodge, a few trails and lots of helpful rangers. Gorgeous views everywhere, and lots of tourists.

The Connecticut highpoint is different. Way different. I think the Connecticut highpoint is exactly the kind of thing these highpointers get off on. Difficult to find. Difficult to climb. Known by a select few. Annoying.

The highest peak in Connecticut is on Mt. Frissell. But it’s not located at the top of Mt. Frissell, because the top of the mountain is actually in Massachusetts. So you have to stumble around until you find this tiny little marker indicating that you are, in fact, the highest you can be while still in Connecticut, before passing over the state line. It’s ridiculous. This site, called “Peakbagger,” which, frankly, sounds dirty to me, provides some information: Mount Frissell-South Slope.

The second highpointing excursion was going to be totally different from that morning’s trip. I could tell the second we pulled onto the bumpy gravel road we were to follow for, like, three or four miles. No people anywhere. Just murderers and bears.

Yeah, you know how I feel about abandoned woodsy areas and murderers and bears. Only black bears in Connecticut, you say? The wildlife is an integral part of the outdoors experience? I don’t care. It’s still way different than spotting a deer or squirrel.

My ex-boyfriend once said he thought I had the opposite of claustrophobia because I am afraid of wide open spaces and the lack of people, rather than being in crowded, tight spaces. It’s true; give me a semi-bad neighborhood in a city any day over a lonely forest glen.

I didn’t want to be labeled a coward, however, and the truth of the matter is I do like hiking. I also adore being outdoors. I love the fresh air associated with unadorned nature, pure and simple, and sometimes that means leaving the crowds behind. I can deal with that. Sort of.

Also, I shouldn’t complain because J had the baby strapped to his chest the entire time, but this hike was hard. There are certainly more difficult trails out there, but I wouldn’t call myself an experienced hiker and I was really working for the majority of our uphill climb. At times we were basically on our hands and knees, pulling our way up large rocks. We’d passed a couple of other hikers on our way in, but since then we’d seen nobody and I was starting to wonder exactly how quickly I could pull out my Blackberry and dial 911 in the case that we were attacked.

I was cranky, to say the least. I’d been up for this, but climbing and climbing and CLIMBING in order to find some remote metal marker on the state line just to say we did it? Are you serious? Also, our directions were confusing and the trip was psychologically, as well as physically, exhausting. We had to hike to the top of one smaller mountain, then hike back down a bit before beginning to scale Mt. Frissell. J kept saying we were “almost there,” which I found frustrating because how can you possibly know when you’re “almost” on some southern slope of a mountain at the state line, especially when you’re never been there before and especially when all landmarks listed are things like “pile of rocks” or “especially large tree”?

My body was tense, I was scared and all I could think about was how we kept going deeper into the wilderness and in order to get back to our car we had to do it all over again.

Just when I was really starting to hate life, we heard voices. A couple was approaching us from the opposite direction, hopping down the rock face, having already completed their upward climb. Other people! I enthusiastically greeted them. Seeing other people on a hike always helps remind me that, in terms of my fears, I’m being an idiot. People hike in the woods! And not only do they survive, they have a good time.

The couple asked us how we were doing with the baby in the Baby Bjorn, and J gave them a quick rundown, telling them that hiking with the baby was really very easy. They said they were interested because they were expecting their first.

This healthy, athletic, not-afraid-of-bears-in-the-least woman about my age, she was totally pregnant. I stood there, sweating and resentful and totally not helping out with Nora, and I thought a good long while about how I needed to seriously stop it. Where was worrying about bears and murderers going to get me anyway? It was a beautiful day! I was with my family, somewhere on a mountain near the Massachusetts/Connecticut state border, for Christ’s sake, and if my husband wanted to find that obscure marker, then we were going to find it.

We chatted for a bit, and before getting on their way, the woman said, “It’s great to see you guys out here. It’s good to know that you don’t have to stop doing all the things you love once you have a baby.”

“You can do everything you used to do!” I exclaimed without a moment of hesitation.

I didn’t say it to try to impress them. That’s something I truly believe and I meant it, one hundred percent. So on we hiked until, after searching around in the brush, J found what he was looking for and we were - officially - standing on the highest point in the state.

After such a grueling uphill trip, my legs were weak and I fell a bunch of times on the way down. But we didn’t see any bears.

More importantly, I didn’t even stop to look.

Please excuse the changes to the site while I try and get a new header up.

The problem with this task is that I am very excited about it, but I don’t have the talent necessary to actually make it happen. So I have to rely on J, who is great at this sort of thing. See. I even have to call it “this sort of thing,” that’s how ignorant I am. What is it, anyway, this skill set? Graphics? Adobe Illustrator? Drawing? Computer drawing? Is that what it’s called? “Computer drawing?”

It’s kind of like when you decide you want a haircut, and you decide it must happen this very instant. Except that in that case I’d go to someone and pay them to do the job, and they really couldn’t say no. Also, if I didn’t like the finished product, I’d probably slink off and complain about it to somebody else. Whereas with my husband, if he designs something for me and I don’t find it perfect, I say something like, “No. No no no no no. Not that. Let’s do something else. No.”

Also, there’s the fact that doing computer drawing for me is not all J does with his life. So, like, I’m not sure how pumped he is when he gets home from work, and I’m all, “How was your day?” and he goes, “Well, my cells in the petri dish overgrew on the phosphase C model, and the Western blot I did to ascertain infection levels in the lipid wall SYSE-G looked good, but I need to check out possible contamination in my cox-A gene pool, so what I’m thinking is -” and I’m like, “Right, totally, but how about that blog header?”

Looking at old pictures, couldn’t help myself.

This weekend we went hiking in Massachusetts and Connecticut, an experience I’ll write about in full later, but the short version is that it was beautiful and fun, and the fresh air and views were so worth scaling rocks on my hands and knees while semi-worrying about being attacked by vicious wildlife.

J carried Nora in the Baby Bjorn the whole way up and back on this pretty challenging hike we did, and he didn’t complain about it once. In fact, he not only carried her nearly 20-pounds up steep inclines, but he’d often reach out his hand and help me during the rougher parts. When I remarked on his expertise, he simply replied, “I have good footing.”

I, friends, do not have good footing. I fell approximately five times while on this hike, and I don’t mean that I tripped and caught myself before faceplanting; I’m not talking about “close ones.” I mean that I fell down - hard - because I’m clumsy. I know everyone likes to talk about how clumsy they are, but trust me, I’m the real deal. I don’t need to sit here and try and convince you guys, there are people who can vouch for this.

It’s no fun to fall down. It’s embarrassing and it hurts. So I was tempted, upon, oh, fall number two or three, to just remain there, dirt-covered and frowning, and refuse to go any further.

But I couldn’t keep up the negativity. And that’s because my husband and my daughter were standing there, happy as hell and distinctly upright, clapping for me. Impossible to resist in their joyful love of the outdoors. So I’d laugh at them and their ridiculous wide smiles, and soldier forward.

There are a lot of qualities I admire in my husband, like his attention to detail, his curiosity, his coffee-making skills and his eternal optimism. This weekend I discovered another in his ability to climb mountains gracefully. No, really, it’s small but important. I fall, he does not - one more truth that I believe makes us a good match.

Happy anniversary, my sure-footed husband, and here’s to many more years.

Ok, first of all, I was too tired to watch “The Hills” last night. It wasn’t that I was totally asleep, I just couldn’t focus enough to even change the channel. Depressing.

Anyway, I want to say something here, and I want to assure you it’s going to be followed up by a very joyful and uplifting post (with pictures) that I will work on a little later.

I want to talk about the whole being a mother thing again, particularly being a stay-at-home mother. And how…it’s hard. I know. I totally know, I already talked about that. But I want to assure you guys that I’m not bringing it up to complain and get sympathy.

The reason I bring it up is because I distinctly remember saying to someone once, “What do stay-at-home moms do, anyway? Shop all day?”

So that’s why I have to bring it up again. To squelch any chance that anyone I know will ever say anything as asinine as that.

Let me tell you about my morning.

Nora had a cold last week, not a bad one but we stayed home from most of our activities to avoid getting other kids sick. So I was anxious to return to the regular schedule. While she’s still got a runny nose, I think due to a bad case of teething, Nora is currently feeling great and the fall weather up here is perfect for outings.

We go to Toddler Tunes most Wednesdays, where a very nice man sings cute songs and all the moms and babies sing and dance along. Nora loves it, but so do I, because I get to see my friends and get out of the house. But also, it’s just part of our schedule now, the rough schedule that helps keep me from going crazy and gives just the right amount of structure to our week.

Nora’s gone through stages with her sleeping schedule, as all babies do, but I must say we really lucky. We have a GREAT sleeper. She sleeps like a champ at night, and except for a few rough patches, has taken two two-hour naps a day like clockwork. She barely ever cries in general, and almost never cries when we put her down for bed.

Unfortunately, I would have to put this week, so far, in the “rough patches” category.

The three times I tried to put her down for a nap this morning, Nora let me know my actions were not appropriate with excessive wailing. And snot. Snot and tears wiped all over her face and then embracing me around my neck with a death grip when I’d go in to see if maybe, just maybe, the planned nap wasn’t exactly working out. Which, you know, it wasn’t.

This is what my exhausted-but-not-willing-to-sleep child and I did instead. Nora played with toys on the floor while I tried to write a couple emails. Nora played with various bottles and cups in the bathroom while I ran - lightning speed - downstairs with a full laundry basket of dirty clothes, my hope that by getting it on the first floor and closer to the washing machine, I’d get it done that day. Nora played with the bag of to-be-recycled newspaper while I did the dishes, interrupted frequently by her mad dashes to the dog food bowls, where she likes to fully immerse her arms in their drinking water and splash around. Nora pulled all the books off the bookshelf, and I let her, because this resulted in my successfully writing a few emails. I had to pee, Nora came with, rushing over to partake in the flushing of the toilet when I was done and then attempting to put her hands in the toilet water (another favorite pastime). I’ve learned to flush and put the top down in one fell swoop, thus deterring her. More snot. Wiping of Nora’s face as she screamed. I ate a granola bar in secret behind a pillow while she played, so she wouldn’t see said granola bar and demand it. I called my parents, and just as they answered saw that my now very sleepy child had fallen from where she’d been standing at her toy basket onto the floor. I pick her up, and she presses all the keys on the phone. I then took her upstairs for a diaper change, while talking to my mother. Nora hates diaper changes so I have novel distractions at the ready. A CD case. A tube of diaper cream. We make it through. Back downstairs, and I let her pull more books off the shelves while I get the diaper bag ready. She goes for the dog bowls again. She is QUICK. I save her in time, buckle her into the car then run back into the house to retrieve the stroller…and the wipes, I forgot the wipes. Ok, we are good to go. I pull out of the driveway and onto the road, I am so looking forward to a morning out of the house, talking to adults. I look back and she is asleep. We have been in the car all of three seconds, and Nora has fallen fast asleep. I drive down Townsend Avenue, weighing my options. We can go and I can wake up this cranky child when we get there. We can stick to the plan.

Or, I can admit that I have no control. I can admit that Nora’s rest is more important, turn around and come home, which is what I did, then carried my warm, sleeping child up to her bedroom, where she is now taking a much needed nap.

I will have to admit that, try as I may to avoid it, when my husband comes home from work and tells me about interactions with coworkers and the bacteria he looked at under the microscope, my offering to the discussion will revolve more around how I found a baby booger in my hair. Then maybe I will pour myself a glass of wine and think about how much I deserve it, which is, I must also admit, a very good feeling.

Although, following a rather intense day of hiking, I forgot to write yesterday, today marks the end of my writing every day for three weeks. This exercise was an extremely positive experience, as it made me feel accomplished on days I felt I’d done nothing else productive. Of course, I am aware that taking care of a child is perhaps the most important job one can do, but I mean outside the realm of motherhood.

My next, and immediate challenge, is cleaning up this house after a weekend away in Massachusetts. Upon arriving home last night, tired and sore, we dumped everything on the living room floor. A less exciting challenge, perhaps, but I am strangely looking forward to it, especially as I am feeling wildly unencumbered with Nora at J’s parents’ house. So, you know, clean up the house, not watch “Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami.”

Guys, I didn’t plan very well concerning the whole write every day for three weeks thing this afternoon.We met some friends at the Big E, which is, for those of you who haven’t heard of it, a fair of extreme proportions. The number of alpacas we saw was enough to blow a person’s mind alone.

Then there was the food. We all went with the attitude that when you’re at a huge fair with cows and pigs and rides and Brett Michaels playing, well, damnit, forget trying to be healthy. Also, I’m pretty sure the most healthy thing I saw for sale was apple pie with cheddar cheese on top, because it wasn’t fried.

Nora tried a few things, I’m not going to lie, and guess what? Cheese fries taste better than Cheerios. I know because of the maniacal look my baby got in her eyes when I told her one bite was enough. It clearly wasn’t enough OH MY GOD NOT ENOUGH.

The point of all this is that we’re on the road and by the time I sit at a computer to write a blog post I’m obviously going to be ready to pass out. Followed by a 3 million mile run tomorrow. To work off, like, a quarter of the calories.

As I was saying, I’m busy September 22, 2010 because I’m going to see Pavement.

Ok. Background.

Please forgive me if I’ve told this rather un-climatic story before, either on this blog, or when we were hanging out and I was telling you about the more ridiculous moments in my young life, when, not only did I think I was really awesome, but you wanna know what? Maybe I was really awesome.

We were at this party. I don’t remember what year this was, but it was some point during my time at Boston University, and I’m guessing - due to the nature of the conversation I am about to relate - that we were in Allston or Brighton, student-heavy residential areas a little west of the main campus, where the bars were plentiful and the housing less expensive. It’s where the cool kids lived and partied and then went out for breakfast in an post-drunk-or-maybe-a-little-still-drunk stupor.

Anyway, I was at this party and let’s just imagine, for the sake of visualization, that I was wearing some corduroys I’d bought at the thrift store. And I’m getting a beer or something in the kitchen and I overheard some people talking about Pavement. Well, wouldn’t you know, I was a Pavement fan! I don’t know who’d gotten me into them…the always influential Matt Barbee and his mixed tapes, or maybe my brother, but no matter, I was a fan, and if there was one thing I knew as sure as I loved college parties was that it was really, really radical to a) know who Pavement was and b) be a fan.

I mean, it’s not like Pavement is some super-unknown band; they’re really well known in the world of indie rock, in fact. But for a young twenty-something, making her way at a large and diverse university, knowing about Pavement was, at certain parties, a good way of singling out the other music lovers. And then what you’d do is talk about the albums.

So I get in on the conversation and I’m talking to this girl who’s leaning against the door and is all “You like Pavement?” and I’m like “Yeah,” and we’re sort of drunk and life IS RADICAL. And she’s all, “Well, you know what their best album is, right? It’s ‘Wowee Zowee.’”

Now, people, everyone says that “Wowee Zowee” is the best Pavement album and I don’t know why. It’s full of short, weird little songs and I think the reason people say it’s their favorite is because liking Pavement isn’t unique enough and they want to try and be a little edgier. That’s just what I think, I can’t help it.

I countered that my favorite album was “Slanted and Enchanted,” which actually isn’t true anymore, but at the time, you know what? I wasn’t gonna follow all the “Wowee Zowee” lemmings. The two of us really got into it then, talking about the specifics of certain songs in sort of deranged, youthful analysis that I’m not even capable of anymore. Others joined the conversation and I semi-abandoned the people I’d come with. I’d become the cool girl who came to the party who loved Pavement, when I could have been a just another guest. A minor event, yes, but in the history of my musical past, a very nice memory.

So when my friend Jennifer called me the other day to announce that Pavement (the band sadly disbanded several years ago) was getting together for a reunion tour, and then found out that a few tickets would be going on sale early, there was simply no question, we had to get them. So we went online while on the phone to each other, like over excited seventh graders (if the Internet had existed in the way it does now when we were 13) and waited until the appointed hour and we got those tickets. Because it’s Pavement, and my love has never waned. I hope they play “Summer Babe.” And I know it will rock.