By far, the highlight of the day came when I was sitting on the living room floor, and Emma turned to me from across the room. I held out my arms, and she grinned, then came running. She flung herself at me, arms going immediately around my neck, and then I’m pretty sure I heard her use a phrase for the first time.

She mumbled it into my neck in her sweet, little voice, and as soon as the words registered, I started to laugh.

I got to hear my daughter say ‘love you’ for the first time on Mother’s Day - but she added another word, too, making it a gift of laughter, and not just an overwhelmingly sentimental moment.

“Love you, dada.”

2. I need to update my glove look.

3. I look good in my wedding pictures. Like a different person.

4. Indiana is inferior to Michigan. Or any other state, for that fact.

5. I need to smile more.

6. Wow, what big hands I have.

7. Tea will cure all my problems.

8. Judging from my office, I’m not much of a housekeeper.

This is just a sampling. It’s obvious why I have the deep and abiding affection for this place that I do.

Me, in bright, cheerful voice: “Hey, Em! What are you doing? Are you reading a book?”

Emma: “Cow!”

“Are you reading a book about a cow?”

“No!”

“Okay … well, Mommy has to go now. I’ll talk to you later. I love you!”

(In the background, John: “Tell Mommy ‘I love you’!”)

Emma: “Snowman!”

Back at you, babe.

“Argh!” he muttered, eyes still closed. “You just hit me in the face with your warlock!”

And he was doing so well, right up until that last word.

I had a list, and I was sticking to it. Of course, the displays are designed to catch your eye, and as I snagged some lunchmeat, I noticed a new item nearby: prepackaged salads. Perfect, I thought. We’ve been trying to move back toward reasonably healthy eating, and a salad would certainly assuage some of the guilt about the frozen pizza already in the cart. Turkey chef for John; chicken club for me.

I have to say that I was feeling slightly proud of myself at this point. Healthy food! No prep time! (As a sidenote, it’s not that I mind cooking. Far from it. But I’d much rather spend a half hour playing with Emma than being a kitchen wench, these days.)

John was equally excited. “These’ll be great!” he enthused as we unloaded the groceries.

So he preheated the oven for the pizza, and we chatted about our respective days. (”Goat - ugh!” “Diapers - ugh!”) Then the pizza was done, and John pulled the salads out of the fridge.

“These look really good,” he said again, peeling the plastic top off the container and removing the packets that held the toppings. I saw a strange look cross his face and then noticed his lips twitching.

“Kerry,” he said, obviously trying not to laugh. “There’s … no lettuce.”

“What do you mean, there’s no lettuce?” I crossed the room and peered into the container. Bacon bits. Dressing. Cubed chicken. Shredded cheese. And … no lettuce.

John examined the lid and failed miserably to hide his resulting smirk. Pointing, he indicated the (small and nearly illegible) logo, which featured the following text wrapped around a head of lettuce: Just Add Lettuce!

“Okay, so I didn’t see that,” I said irritably.

Apparently, my time-saving ways need to allow a few seconds for details.

A package from Amazon.com - the next-best thing to being there. I ordered her several different books, from biography to romance.

Last night, I asked her what she was reading, and she said she was enjoying Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

“Good!” I enthused, pleased to have made a good choice for her. “Is that the only one you’ve read?”

“No,” she said hesitantly. “Before that, I read The Raven Prince.” She paused, and I waited to hear that she hadn’t liked it, but she made a revelation of a different nature.

“It was smutty,” she informed me in a hushed whisper, and I burst into hysterical laughter. I began to apologize, saying that I hadn’t been trying to send her erotica, but she went on.

“I still read it, though.”

I just bet she did.

Which led me to the discovery, when I was rushing around this morning, that I have too many black socks. A few seconds of digging produced a black sock, and then shortly after that, I found another. Mismatch. Try again. I dug out another sock, which matched neither of the two I was already holding. I repeated the process until I held five different socks in my hand, and then I could only wonder at my ineptitude. I wasn’t looking for them in the dark, after all.

I made a quick resolution to tackle the pile of laundry over the weekend, and then I solved the sock dilemma.

I snagged a pair of John’s.

Anyway. My observation skills are not at their peak during my morning commute, but there is one fact that never fails to slip my mind. I do, in fact, live in Indiana. There is an amusement park here whose advertising slogan is “There’s more than corn in Indiana.” I certainly hope so, because a roller coaster made of corn husks … yeah.

Apart from any minor incidents of road rage, I usually don’t take much notice of the cars around me, beyond what it takes to keep my car from touching theirs. But today, I was stopped behind a truck whose owner had chosen a vanity plate that some of my friends would say is both typical of the Midwest and descriptive of it. I have to say, license plates like this one don’t help me refute that argument.

“SOO WEE,” it read.

Still happy this morning, too, as I pulled a new sweater out of the closet to remove its tags. I held the sleeve up and glanced at the tag as I clipped it.

“Made with 15% care.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no poster child for work ethic, but I also don’t advertise my lack of industriousness to my clients. In my head, I was already ranting about the decline of modern society, composing a tirade about the fact that not only does no one care about customer service, but we also don’t care who knows it. If you’re lazy and you know it, clap your hands (and proclaim it on a tag).

I was on a roll now, remembering each and every time I’d thanked a cashier and not heard “You’re welcome” in response. (Never mind the fast-food employee who ordered me to “Be good, now!” with a big wink.) I was considering an indignant letter to the company, demanding a swift return to the customer service we used to take for granted.

And then I looked again. Oh. Oh.

“Made with 15% cashmere.”

Cancel the letter-writing campaign. I really like cashmere.

Interpret that as my resolution to enjoy life more, if you will, but honestly, you’d be putting more thought into it than I did. Really. I just like dessert.

Today’s step in the right direction: peanut butter pie.

“You can’t,” came the sleepy reply, and I just knew this was going to be good.

“I can’t? Why not?”

[with authority] “Because she’s not a feedable character.”

“Don’t stick your tongue in my mouth without telling me!” he said, and I looked at him strangely, promising to ask permission the next time, and turned to walk out of the garage. Then he spoke again.

“That’s what my dad would always do to me.”

I froze in my tracks, paused for a beat, and doubled over laughing. With regard to my in-laws, while casting no aspersions on my beloved husband - that explains everything.

“Wow, look at how big that bird is! What is that?”

[confidently] “It’s a penguin.”

[extended pause, followed by hysterical laughter]

“A pigeon. I meant to say a pigeon.”

Oh, the lessons I’ve learned.

Today’s has to be a dubious favorite. I was downstairs, pumping, in the bathroom with the lovely timed lights that like to go off midway through a pumping session.

(This is not a story about the lights going off while I have plastic cups attached to my breasts. My simple solution to that problem: Pumping by the light of my iPod.)

Right, so I was finishing up, and I went, as always, to tweak a few last drops. Apparently, I was a bit vigorous, which somewhat changed the trajectory, so that when the drop came out, instead of sliding down into the bottle, it flew into the air, landing on my cheek.

There happens to be a mirror in the little cube where I pump, so I know exactly what my face looked like when this happened. A little horrified, a lot surprised, and definitely amused.

When you’ve been up to your elbows in baby poo, a little breast milk barely registers.

Of course, I didn’t quite manage eight hours. More like five, and then I checked on her once an hour until she woke up. I couldn’t keep myself from creeping into her room, just to make sure her chest was still rising and falling. And it was.

She’s sweet when she sleeps - one fist finds its way into her mouth, and the other arm is usually flung out to the side, so she can touch the mirror. Every so often, she sighs, as if it’s impossibly rough to be a baby who is loved this much. And sometimes the briefest of smiles flickers across her face, and I don’t know whether she’s thinking of silly songs we sing to her or her next feeding, but I know she’s happy, and that’s enough.