S-I-S-T-E-R

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.

Ernest: I am starting to resent you

Back when I was meeting with the life coach, he had me write up a list of goals that he told me to put up in my home office space, so I would always be reminded of the things I wanted to accomplish. He suggested I put professional goals as well as more fun, casual goals, to make the list less daunting. I liked this idea and so I did what he said. So, just now, while working on a piece of writing I just can't seem to get finished, I leaned back in my chair, glanced up and saw the list - black marker on a white index card - and was drawn to the first item:

Finish "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

And then I got all dejected. Because what exactly has happened to my mind that I can't complete the simple task of reading a famous, classic work of literature?

Fact is fact, though. And it doesn't look like I'm going to be finishing the book anytime soon.

I know that the point of the list isn't to make me feel bad. It's to make me feel inspired. So I might have to take it down and replace the goals with more realistic ones like, "write your own book" or "bake something."

But just to be fair to myself, I'd like to take a moment right now to remind everybody of that summer where I read "War and Peace." For fun, guys. Just for fun.