What can I say today except that Freya’s on the upswing from being sick which is just like being sick in that she wants to be rocked to sleep and fed only turkey and goldfish crackers, but her fever seems to have broken. So, hip! She threw a temper tantrum last night around three am, complete with flailing and tears and trying to pull me out of a chair—which I took to mean that it’s time to put an abrupt end to the indulgent period of her malaise. Which I was very convicted about up until seven am when she awoke like a black cloud over Miami, all red cheeks and snorting nose. As such, she’s watching more Dora this morning (what can I say? The girl loves an adventure even when she’s couch-bound).

Ah, the good old days when she did her chores like a good little Cinder-Freya:

 (washing peanut butter dishes, back when we were healthy)

In an effort to feel some modicum of control over this sweaty spiral of an ear infection I decided to sew Freya a dress. I unboxed my fabric and scrounged up a pattern book and went to work cutting and basting and serging until I completed a little navy number with dragonflies on it. So cute! I thought. What a good sewer am I! And then I summoned Freya and tugged it over her head. And tugged and tugged. And twisted her this way and that and guess what? I had made the neckhole too small, like waaaay too small. And because I went ahead and lined it (thinking ahead!) there was no way to make it bigger without recutting the whole thing. Which in non-sewing speak is just called, “making a whole new dress.” So, failure on all fronts.

You wouldn’t think a girl’s clothes would be that hard to make, but this outfit below would probably take me half a year at the rate I’m going:

I have this vision of setting a goal each week which will involve me undertaking some new skills such as carpentry and sewing clothes that fit things without a cotton head, but then some new zippo-zappo hits us and suddenly there’s fabric strewn about the upstairs, pins on the dining room table, tissues stuck down the lip of my pants, and I’m staying up until three am rocking the babe and eating pretzels. And I only have one child. My mother is of the opinion that these are the hard years. The years where someone always has a fever and you spend your minutes being coughed upon or sneezed upon or else whisking up bowls of porridge while Sesame Street thrums in the background. This must be true, at least one some level, yes, okay, sure.

I guess I thought parenthood would be like riding an hay cart through the woods—bumpy at times, but mostly monotonous and charming. Instead I’ve found that it’s a lot more akin to sledding blind down a steep hill where someone’s always hollering from the sidelines, “to the right! to the left!” in an effort to help you avoid flinging yourself headlong into a tree. Does the ride ever slow down, veteran parents? It feels like we’re always rocketing from one cold-cough-flu to the next sore throat-teething-night terrors with such speed that a routine only ever feels as good as, “well, for the last few days…”

A practice of peaceful pauses, this is what I need, if for no other reason than I might have figured out beforehand that a two-year-old’s head wouldn’t fit through a ten-centimeter hole ((I mean seriously, self, the only reason an infant’s head fits through a ten-centimeter *ahem* hole *ahem* is because it (the head) is basically made of play-doh)). Tomorrow, I suppose, we’ll be back to everything being “very super duper fun” and the rest of the usual rigamarole. Weeks speeding into months speeding into seasons. The two-year-old always on the move.

(Proof)

Years and years of this they say? One minute rocking a sweaty head, an ear pressed to your heart, the next building so-tall towers and chopping wooden carrots? At least now we can double-team her. But what happens when there are more of them (the children)? How will I find time to make my too-small dresses then?

Best, Kendra