“You know what would be awesome? If Nora walked in here with bagels and hot coffee and was like, ‘Hey guys, I made you breakfast. Thanks for taking such good care of me.’”

“She will someday. When she’s 24. And she’s home from medical school.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Or she’s back from the artists’ colony. Or out on bail.”

“So many choices.”

“What do you think Nora will be?”

“Good question.”

“I was just reading in National Geographic about plans to colonize Mars. Do you know how long it’s gonna take? To make Mars livable? It’s a thousand year plan.”

“So I guess she won’t be living on Mars.”

“No. Probably not.”

Oh my God, I know. I’ve been sucking at this blog, and I don’t even like using the word “suck” guys (have I told you I’m prudish in some ways or what?), that is how much I mean it.

The problem is that I do not know how to organize my life anymore. That sounds bad, I realize, like I’m flying around with a sheaf of papers trailing out behind me and my hair wild and I’m wearing a burlap sack or something. But actually, I’m busy and I really like it. I’m working on a few projects, which is terrific, but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of allotting time for each aspect of my working life. Or in the case of this blog, my favorite hobby.

We’ve also been busy in other ways, including a wonderful trip over Presidents Day weekend to New York City and thereabouts with some good friends, during which my passenger-side mirror was ripped from my car, and hanging by a few wires when we found it the next morning, and the oh-so-dutiful boys duct-taped it back on so it wouldn’t go flapping around when we were on the highway. Oh, wait, did I mention that in addition to being really busy, I have also been very classy lately?

I’ll post a few pictures later on because I think a visual will help you out on that one.

Seriously, though, it’s all been so much fun, and even when it’s stressful I don’t mind because it’s stressful in a good way, if that makes sense. J was saying this weekend that while this winter has been bitterly cold, it doesn’t seem as long and dreary as last year’s. This winter has flown by, he remarked. I know what he means. Last winter our life as a family was new and charming and exciting, but I remember at times feeling as though my primary goal in life was to explain to my husband - every second of every day - how hard it was to stay at home with a baby. I couldn’t stress it enough.

I don’t ever feel that way anymore - not ever - for many reasons. The moms I’ve become friends with, and the activities Nora and I have become involved in and the fact that, now, I consider an afternoon at home a welcome respite instead of something that makes me feel lonely. Also, work. I think that feeling satisfied and whole as a mother takes a lot, including the above, but for me the biggest one has been work. Or, I should clarify, work beyond being a mother.

So frantic, yes, but I love the thought that when we look back on this time we will look back on a whirlwind of activities and landmarks and changes. Chasing a near-running toddler and Starsong the purple pony. Professional deadlines and frustrations and successes, and obsessively watching “The Wire” at home. Throwing all our stuff in our bag for a weekend trip and then not having time to unpack it again before the next one. Reading “Goodnight Moon” five hundred times a night and snow days and finally working out regularly. Packing up my computer and taking Nora over to her grandparents so I can get some writing done. Putting on our coats for the millionth time, and waiting for spring.

Nora’s been sick in the middle of the night the past couple of nights (a saint, as always, not even waking us up) so today, a today that was meant to be spent working while she was in daycare, has turned into a sick day, “sick” being the new theme of caramcduna.com.

I know I haven’t been writing much lately, the reason being that I’ve had a lot of work to do. While this is GREAT (!) I don’t want to neglect this blog, since this blog is a venue for my favorite kind of writing, so I thought I’d take a few moments while Nora’s up babbling “baby, baby, baby” in her crib - I thought she was gonna take a long forgotten morning nap, I swear - and say hello.

As far as today goes, I’m hoping to have fun playing with my new Things program, although that seems like a kind of geekiness I’m not ready to embrace, brewing some more coffee in the French press, which is a lovely thing when you’re drinking for one, and maybe watching the episode of “The Wire” that J watched last night when I gave in to exhaustion and went to sleep. I do not like it one bit when he’s seen an episode that I haven’t.

And, of course, playing with my Nora, who, despite the unexplained throwing up all over herself and her mattress, is happy. I experienced a few moments of disappointment this morning when I realized that I was not, as I thought, going to go to the gym and then out somewhere to work on my laptop, but instead, was going to spend the day at home avoiding other children and reading “The Train Station” featuring Elmo eight or nine hundred times. But when Nora climbed up in my lap a little while ago and chose - surprise, surprise - that very book, then settled in against my chest, I am telling you, I felt very lucky that everything got turned upside down. And puked on.

Since I’ve been with J I’ve had food poisoning two times, the first due to a bad oyster or two and, very unfortunately, not that far into our relationship. J, like a champ, slept on my couch that night while I proceeded to throw up 13 times. THIRTEEN TIMES. I’m not really sure how it was possible, puking 13 times, how my body could have possibly sustained such trauma, but that’s what happened, I’m telling you the truth.

At this point, with a few years of marriage under our belts, a child and two sometimes-disgusting dogs, it’s not like we haven’t dealt with a bunch of stuff, so when I started feeling sick a couple weeks ago on Saturday night I wasn’t so much worried about the fact that J would have to witness such catastrophe; I was glad he’d be there to take care of me.

I was sick throughout the night until there was nothing more to expel and I became so dehydrated I couldn’t swallow. Even a sip of water wouldn’t stay down, I finally realized, so I lay there in bed, shaking and moaning, dreaming about tall glasses of ice-cold ginger ale I knew I couldn’t handle.

The diagnosis was a bad stomach bug, clearly. Nora had been sick a couple days earlier, although hers was an extremely mild version of what I was experiencing, thankfully. She had been through it in the course of a morning.

Somehow my nighttime adventures had not woken J and Nora. We just had our upstairs bathroom redone and beyond loving the way it looks and functions with a passion bordering on idol worship, I was beyond grateful that the project had been completed that week. Because I wouldn’t have made it all the way to the basement, first of all, where our other bathroom is located, but also because the new tile on the floor, replacing the old Southern Pine, cooled my writhing body and assured me that the horror would pass.

I mean, yeah, maybe I’m being a little bit dramatic, but only a little.

We all got up the next morning, me feeling wrecked, Nora feeling just fine and J feeling “a little weird.” I started in on him immediately, my sympathy nonexistent, asking him if he thought he had the same thing as me, because if he did, we could not care for our child. That’s what I said. That we could not physically “care for our child,” and we needed to figure something out right that minute. I was in panic mode. I could barely stand up without feeling light headed. I’d always wondered what happens when both parents get sick and are at home with the baby. Just deal with it? Call the cops?

Luckily, J’s parents live nearby and are always more than helpful when we need someone to watch Nora. I suggested that maybe we call them, since we might both be down for the count, but J wanted to wait and see. This is when I lost it and from my perch on the couch, in my sweats, covered in a blanket, taking minuscule sips of ice water, I told him that he’d better, for the love of God, decide right then and there whether or not he was sick.

Anyway, we’re sitting there together watching Nora play and trying to determine our level of parental skills and illness when I realized she had a poopy diaper. J was feeling sicker by the moment and I was developing a martyr/look-what-will-happen-if-you-don’t-call-your-parents complex so I took Nora up to her room, where I proceeded to start the changing process, which was unfortunately interrupted midway through by a very distinct feeling that I was going to pass out. I called out for J, who came rushing upstairs and took over where I’d left off, but only seconds in he proclaimed that was going to puke, leaving Nora on the changing table with her diaper askew. So I got up from the bench in her room where I was sitting with my head in between my knees, because, hey, you can’t leave kids on the changing table like that. They’ll fall off.

Somehow we managed to keep her alive for the next hour or so while we ascertained that, yes, J was sick with the same thing I had and, yes, we should call his parents, who, like absolute superstars, came over to our house to get Nora, and also brought us ginger ale, which I could successfully ingest by that point.

The two of us sat there alone all day, complaining about how absolutely terrible we felt, watching hours of television and, eventually, getting pretty bored. We got on the Internet and chatted with friends who made us laugh. We browsed Facebook. We read blogs.

And somehow, I know it sounds crazy, I think our sick day recharged us a little. No work, no baby, no errands, no productivity of any kind. Not because we were being lazy, but because we couldn’t do anything at all, and therefore felt no guilt for laying low and accomplishing nothing. Plus, we took care of each other, if “taking care of each other” on that particular day meant telling the other person not to worry, because “you are not going to die.”

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not anxious to lie down on the bathroom tiles again anytime soon with the world spinning and my stomach churning (although I really do love that new bathroom) but as far as the sickest of sick days go, that one was…kind of nice.

Just so you can get yourselves prepared (not to mention excited) my next post is going to be about all the puking that went on around here this weekend. Now that I’ve emerged from the darkness, so to speak, I’m just about prepared to tell our story. You know, our story about the stomach flu.

By the way, I’m really pumped for warmer seasons, did I mention? When everyone in the world isn’t getting sick every other second. And I don’t have to navigate miniature icebergs to make it to my front door, not that doing so isn’t a thrilling part of my day.

Untitled from Cara McDonough on Vimeo.

The annoying age, as I like to call it - the age where Nora became less of a happy-go-lucky infant and more of a demanding little Napoleon-type figure - is over, or, at least, has morphed into something entirely manageable and often funny. Approaching 15-months-old, Nora does something new, it seems, every minute of every day. I know every parent says the same of their child, but I believe it now, as I see it.

She remains eagerly inquisitive, asking us what everything is, however mundane, like the bushes we pass on our walk down to the water, or the characters in whatever book we’re reading before bedtime, so that I’ll sometimes hear J’s voice from the guest room (where we relax with Nora before she goes to sleep) saying something like, “That’s a teddy bear, that’s a teddy bear, that’s a teddy bear, that’s a ball, that’s a teddy bear, the ball again, that’s a mouse.”

Now, more than before, she’ll try and repeat what we say every once in while, adding new words to her catalog.

But no word, it seems, approaches the exquisiteness of “num num,” which applies to any and all food and drink that Nora loves so dearly. The intonation varies - the sight of a banana always results in a “num num” followed by a high pitch squeal, a sippy cup of milk yields a quiet, loving “num num,” and when we passed the cupcake display at the coffee shop the other day, Nora screamed “NUM NUM NUM NUM NUM NUM,” gesticulating wildly at the baked goods as though we starve her at home. As though those cupcakes would save the world from climate change and poverty and sickness if she could only eat them, please GOD CUPCAKES.

She loves food, and while she recently has begun rejecting things without reason, as I’ve heard toddlers often do (why garbanzo beans but not corn? why an English Muffin but not pasta?) her passion is real and the worst - and I’m talking the worst - thing a person can do to her at this stage is give her food and then take it away. Which…I sometimes have to do because, despite the fact that she’s learning, she still, at times, stuffs her mouth so completely that I worry she’s going to choke. Like, she’ll be taking nice bites of her waffle and then I’ll look away for a second only to look back and see that she’s put an entire half of a waffle in her mouth. Could she handle it? Probably, but since her not handling it means a call to emergency services, i don’t chance it. So at that point I have to take the waffle, or whatever, away, and then the world ends. I mean, this is her most sincere crying. Not when she falls. Not when she doesn’t know where one of her parents are. Not when I wake her up from a nap, because I really think we need to get out of the house and have a latte. But when I take her food away.

It’s worse when she’s tired, as everything is with children. Just this morning, I was on the phone with our pediatrician’s office trying to schedule Nora’s booster H1N1 shot, when I felt a little tug on my pants leg and looked down to find Nora muttering “num num” and looking up at me like she was about to, possibly, lose it. So I went into the kitchen and poured her a little bowl of Kashi Heart to Heart Warm Cinnamon Oat Cereal. It’s so good, you guys, this Kashi cereal. It’s, just like the label says, warm and cinnamony and just a little sweet and perfect for the harsh New Haven winter.

So anyway, I get back to my call and when I check in on Nora, who is eating her snack over by the ottoman, I realize she’s put like 20 pieces of Kashi Heart to Heart Warm Cinnamon Oat Cereal in her mouth, and while she can usually chow down on any kind of cereal like a champ, this raises my danger instincts. Especially because even though she seems like she’s got enough to handle, she’s putting more in there, one after the other, no stopping for air. So I reach down and I take away the bowl and tell her to “eat what you have,” a phrase she either doesn’t understand or sees no need to understand, and the minute I do this, she begins crying - a desperate wail, and tears spring to her eyes and roll down her cheeks and - this part kills me - she begins frantically doing the sign for “more,” which I’d taught her when she was a tiny little thing and never realized she’d caught on until recently.

This might sound weird, and maybe it’s simply the fact that I’m a more experienced mother than I used to be, but when she gets like this, all tired and dramatic and wanting nothing more than a simple snack, I find her really endearing. I mean, I find her adorable all the time, and I never want her to cry, of course, but as she grows more and more independent, these ridiculous tantrums, somehow, pull at my heartstrings in a good way. My sweet little girl wants that Kashi cereal so, so bad.

Perhaps these moments are better than they used to be because I now know exactly what to do. Because I don’t panic. Because it’s been months since I’ve felt the urge to call J at work and tell him I was having a hard day.

In this case, I hung up the phone, poured Nora a cup of milk, sat her in my lap while she drank it and took her upstairs for a nap. She looked at me as though to say, “finally.” I think she fell asleep before her head hit the mattress.

As I mentioned, I came down with something after Thanksgiving - a short-lived but intense cold. I got over the fatigue and aches and other pains quickly but, since then, have gotten a real bitch of a little sinus headache every day, about midday. A total pressure buildup right in the middle of my face that is only alleviated by pressing my fingers down hard in the space between my eyes, which, by the way, isn’t practical.

I took an Allegra a few days ago and it totally did the trick but also kept me up all night as I have grown really sensitive to medication, like, it does what it’s supposed to do and then some (I miss you, Excedrin). So I’m thinking about alternatives and, wouldn’t you know, someone in this household has a gross little habit that he likes to call “using the neti.”

I’m not as opposed to using a neti pot as I used to be. I mean, while I’m all in favor of modern medicine, I think preventing various conditions is a nice alternative, especially when it’s done naturally.

Still, regularly sticking a teapot up my nostril seems extreme. And…I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what’s going to come out, a feeling complicated by the fact that I can’t run and hide in the bed under the comforter after whatever happens happens, because Nora, she needs constant looking after, it turns out.

So I’m taking slow steps towards engaging in this sick act and have a feeling that the headaches will eventually wear me down to the point where I’m willing to do just about anything to get rid of them, even if I have to make myself a cocktail first and do some meditation breathing.