1. It's 7:00 in the morning, and I'm nursing Gram. I try to remember how many times he woke up during the night, how many times he ate, but it all just blurs together. My head aches, though, which tells me that we were up a lot. I watch him nurse, his eyes still closed, his cheeks and lips clenching and relaxing, his eyebrows moving. I try to memorize this month-old face: the angles of his nose, the uncertain color of his wispy newborn hair, the fullness in his cheeks that wasn't there two weeks ago. I fall asleep again.

2. Fifteen minutes later, Juniper is calling for me. Even though these days Jim is just as likely to go to her in the morning, she still always calls for me. I transfer Gram to Jim's chest and creep out of the room, hoping the two of them will both keep sleeping. Juniper starts chattering the second I enter her room, telling me that it's morning because the sun is up and the moon is gone, and did I know that Easter is this weekend and that this month is March? I carry her to the kitchen for breakfast; she wants oatmeal. I eat my raisin bran next to her, and for a half an hour, our breakfast routine is exactly the same as it was two months ago, when minutes later I had to rush out of the house to get to work. She asks me questions, just the two of us, and I try to answer them while sneaking glances at the newspaper headlines.

3. Hours later, Gram is still in his car seat, crying on the living room floor. We've just returned from the one big excursion we managed during the day: haircuts in Hamtramck. Jim is downstairs working on a crib he's building. I go to Gram in the living room, and while I'm getting Gram the dog finds the small box of easter cookies on the table and pries it open with his nose. I yell at the dog, and Jim runs upstairs in a panic. He yells at the dog, and the dog cowers and pees all over the floor. Gram is still crying. Juniper starts screaming, not because we're yelling, but because the cookies are gone. I pick her up in my arms, throw Jim a look over the heads of our two hysterical children, and head upstairs. Without a word, I know that he'll clean up the puddle on our dining room floor.

4. After dinner, I sit down in the rocking chair to nurse Gram. Juniper wriggles her way onto my lap, kissing her brother and gently caressing his head. "I love my little cutie brother," she says to herself. She says this spontaneously all day long. She asks me to read her a book, I tell her I will, only if she can turn the pages since my hands are full. She snuggles into my side, and before she wanders up to her bedroom for bed, I read her a book, and she carefully turns the pages at the right time, one by one.