I feel like if she wears this, we will be treated better everywhere we go.

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.

Ok guys, I’m just going to go ahead and admit it, I’m a bad napper. Real bad. Despite the fact that my parents are both pretty practiced at the art of napping - my father more of an extended afternoon napper, and my mother the queen of the twenty minute power nap - I’m no good at it myself.

The problem is that when I lie down to take a nap I start analyzing the hell out of everything. What I want to do is successfully take a power nap, because that’s the only kind of nap that’s an ok idea, in my opinion. The reason I think that way is because, let’s say I take a long nap, a one, two or - Jesus - three hour nap? Well, I wake up from the nap and I want to kill everybody. Not kidding.

I don’t know if other people feel this way. Do you? Like you want to kill everybody when you get up from your long nap? That you wake from your deep slumber to discover that, DAMNIT, it is the same day, but it feels like a different day, HELP ME I feel so weird that I could punch someone right in the face? Does that happen to you guys?

I’ve taken some naps like that when I’ve been short on sleep from the night before, and every time I take one of those naps I swear I’ll never take one again. That I will only power nap. But, like I said, when I try to power nap, I start thinking, and I start worrying that my power nap will turn into a long, kill-everybody nap, and then I figure, “Screw it, this isn’t a good idea.”

Anyway, last week I took one of these long naps. I was really tired and Nora was asleep. I just got right under the covers and it felt so comfy and cool, and I thought - deluding myself - this is no big deal, I will just sleep for a little while.

Cut to two hours later. Nora’s crying and I awake suddenly and, literally, can barely move because the sleep I’d just experienced was so deep and extreme and awesome - except not all that awesome because I suddenly realize I have to get up and care for a child and I could not hate the world more. World, I hate you.

I was in such sad shape that I actually went in to Nora’s room, got down on the floor and lay there for a few minutes as she looked at me quizzically through the bars of her crib. I told her, “Mommy just needs a few minutes, Nora.” I think she got it, or she saw the insanity in my eyes or whatever.

I finally managed to get her up and get both of us downstairs where I sat there in my zombie-like state while she played with her toys. All I could think was that I needed some iced tea. I know, that’s a really weird thought. Especially because I don’t drink iced tea all that often. But that was the only way. I needed a cold glass of iced tea - not coffee - or I was going to die. Or at the very least have a truly horrible afternoon.

Because this was such an urgent need, I summoned the strength to boil the water and steep the tea, and when it was cool enough I poured it into my big glass pitcher. I added lemon and lots of mint from my mint plant and after letting it sit in the refrigerator for a little while, I filled a glass with ice and poured myself some.

That iced tea was everything I thought it would be. I did it. I made mint iced tea with my mint plant and not only way it delicious, but it saved my life.

I know that in my last post I complained about a certain neediness inherent in our day to day life at the present, but I want to point out that just as many moments, if not more, are like the below, and for that, I am very grateful. As a mother, there are a litany of things I am grateful for…things I didn’t really think about so much prior to having children. I am grateful for coloring. I am grateful for grapes.

I wrote about the song playing in the background - “I Got Two Dogs” by John Lithgow - on the Motherland blog. We’ve listened to the CD (it’s a book, too) about 87 times today. In the most shocking development of my life over the past 20 months, I am not sick of it yet.

Please note how Nora - contrary to the usual state of affairs as of late - does not pay any attention to me, yet seems to have the end of the song memorized, down to the second, so that she can make the appropriate demand the instant it’s over.

That’s right, part two. All these weeks later.

After we went to the beach, Nora and I drove to Chapel Hill where we spent a week. J had to fly back up to New Haven to work, but he came back and joined us that next weekend for a friend’s wedding. I’d been sort of dreading this Chapel Hill trip. I know that sounds crazy, but let me explain. I loved living there for all those years that we did. We had great friends there, and great weather, and really great carport parties. And, you know, we left because J got a post doc at Yale, not because we were sick and tired of living the easy life down south. I cried like crazy while driving down 15-501 after we’d packed up the moving van and headed out. An especially emotional time as it directly followed the Cardboard Incident of 2007.

So why was I dreading this extra week of vacation, when I would see a bunch of old friends and rejoice in visiting my old stomping grounds? Precisely because we loved it there so much. I was honestly worried that going back would set off an intense nostalgia binge and I’d return from the trip horribly depressed about the fact that we don’t live in North Carolina anymore. I was so afraid of this feeling that I was actually nervous about going to Chapel Hill.

Well, as you might guess, once I got to town and settled in with our wonderful friends Mike and Jess, who’d so kindly offered to host us for the week, all my concerns melted into thin air. I loved being back and I loved taking Nora to my favorite spots, and introducing her to all the people I used to know. She met people I used to work with. We had drinks with people I used to drink with and, amazingly, having a toddler along seemed totally natural. Every day was sunny. Nora met my friend Karla and her triplets. We were having the best time. GOD CHAPEL HILL IS AWESOME, I thought. And we are totally moving back. WE ARE MOVING BACK!

So I started telling everybody about how we were moving back although that statement had no basis in reality. Whatever, ha ha, it’s happening, I thought. It’s not like I was going insane or anything, I just loved being back in Chapel Hill, which strangely felt like more like home than New Haven. And I sincerely thought about how great it would be to live there again, with our friends and the quality grocery stores, forever and ever.

Believe me, after such a good time, I steeled myself against the return to Connecticut, fearing an even worse reentry period than I’d predicted. From sun-drenched fields and friendly banter with strangers to the land of 9 trillion Dunkin’ Donuts and neverending winter? Come on! That’s terrible!

We drove home, stopping quickly overnight in D.C. to split up the trip. When we got back I began unpacking and getting things in order after what seemed like months - not a couple weeks - away. I kind of enjoyed re-settling into our little house and talking about warmer weather plans, like starting our garden. But I figured once I got over the excitement of being back home and not living out of a suitcase, the sad times would set in. I’d cry just like I did on 15-501.

It never happened.

I loved being home again - home - and spending time with family and friends and going on playdates. I loved driving over the Q bridge in my less-than-awesome Hyundai Elantra. Going to breakfast at the diner. Starting the tomato plants. Walking along the water. Cleaning off the patio. Participating in my Mommy Bootcamps. Planting grass. Going to the Starbucks with the really nice baristas. Chatting with my neighbors. Returning to our Italian class. I swear to you, going back to Chapel Hill made me feel more at home in Connecticut than I have since we moved here. I don’t know why and I don’t really care.

The feeling is so good. Maybe we will move back to Chapel Hill one day, but I now realize that my life’s happiness doesn’t depend on where we end up. The point is that I didn’t need to worry, I was much more settled than I thought I was here in the very happening city of New Haven. And furthermore, Dunkin’ Donuts? I love that place.

Which shall be defined here for purposes of reference in future blog posts. I feel a bunch of J stories coming on…

“Justin knowledge” is information that my husband imparts to me - or anyone - that is based on some theory he has developed out of thin air. He will tell you that the theory is, in fact, a hypothesis, based on pertinent facts and observations, but I don’t know. And he presents the knowledge as though it is fact.

Here’s an example, one of the first pieces of Justin knowledge that I realized might not be actual knowledge:

“You can’t put Vietri (a type of Italian pottery and tableware that I am fond-of-bordering-on-obsessed-with) in the dishwasher!”

But, as I finally thought to check the Website and confirm this bit of strongly-worded advice, I realized that, happily, you so fucking can.

Yesterday he told me that the mailmen and women who work Saturdays aren’t assigned that shift, but ask for it in order to pick up a little extra cash. Reminding me that I really needed to address this subject on the blog.

I’m struggling to think of some more examples right now (there are a lot) but if anyone would like to share an incident in the comments section, I’d love it.

It’s been a while, and I have much to report, but I was just outside in the front yard, digging and thinking for the first time this season and I wanted to pause and reflect on the beautiful things that grow in our garden. If that sentence right there didn’t cause you to vomit all over yourself, I entreat you to read on, just for a second.

I’ve mentioned this before, but plants seem to like us. Killing plants, I realize, is something everyone faux-shamefully boasts of, no one willing to live up to a potential green thumb. But J and I, despite our sometimes haphazard existence, our many forgetful moments and the fact that, for the love of God we CANNOT seem to be on time to anything (anywhere, ever), can keep plants alive. We’re far from experts - far, far - but we have many good intentions for our lawn (front and back) and this year I think we’re going to make a lot of things happen. Like make grass grow. And birds descend. And possibly we’ll see some cucumbers that are bigger than my thumb sprout up right before our eyes, an exercise that didn’t go so well last year (although we had tons of proper-looking tomatoes).

Anyway, I didn’t get enough sleep last night and earlier I totally succumbed to an hour and a half of “SVU” when I should have been working (Jennifer, how do we combat the at-home thing?) but clumsily planting a few daylily bulbs that we found all big and healthy in a forgotten plastic flower pot made this begrudging Sunday suddenly seem very worthwhile. As in: spring in New Haven? Yeah, I am so down with that.

“What if our house was up in flames right now? And Mina was out front with a smug look on her face.”

“Yeah. With a leather motorcycle jacket on. And a bottle of a tequila in her hand.”

“Laughing.”

“Wasted. All that’s what you get for having the baby.”