It's weird to watch someone become a person a little bit at a time, day by day. She came to us a stranger in her own body. She could think and feel, cry and poop. The rest was a blank slate. She'd stare right through you, seemingly unable to tell people from lamp posts, all but blind and totally startled and amazed by the world around her.

She made eye contact with me first, maybe recognizing in my eyes something that reminded her of herself, maybe fascinated by their wet shiny appearance. I had her strapped to my chest in the Moby wrap and she kept craning her neck backwards. Afraid her little melon-head would pop off, I kept trying to force her back into the wrap but she would have none of it. Eventually I realized that she was leaning back to correctly focus on my face. I let her head rest in my hand and her face lit up. She stared right into my eyes with her little lips pursed and her eyebrows raised in surprised recognition. "Oh! My mom!" she seemed to say. I won't forget that moment.

Dan and I are not good at Netflix. We put a bunch of stuff in our queue and forget about it until we’re ready to watch a movie. Then we open up the red envelope and find that we’ve gotten some lame, stupid movie that neither of us admits to actually adding to our queue. When I’m stressed or anxious, we always end up with something scary or action-packed. When we’re feeling romantic, we end up with a kids’ movie. We cannot plan it right to save our lives.

In the last month we’ve sent back several movies without ever watching them. I even pulled one movie out of the envelope at the mailbox, took one look at it, put it back in the mailbox and lifted the little red flag. So, when Little House on the Prairie, Season One arrived a couple of weeks ago, I almost did the same thing. I loved the show as a kid, almost to the point of obsession, talking like Laura, dressing like Laura (my mom made me the complete outfit, bonnet and all), pretending in all ways that I WAS Laura Ingalls Wilder.

For the last two years we’ve adopted the tradition of sacrificing our sugary goods to earn the good graces and fabulous gifts of the Halloween Witch. She flies through the night sky two days after Halloween, collecting all treats that have not yet been consumed by the children of the land to add to her sticky, sugary, tooth-destroying stash. In return for these leftover treats, she leaves a toy for each child who gives up his or her candy completely.

Our dentist told us that it was much better for the kids’ teeth to eat a bunch of candy every day for a short period of time than to eat a little bit every day for weeks or months. The idea of fighting with them for weeks about when and how much candy they could eat was absolutely agonizing to me. So we told the kids to just eat whatever they wanted as fast as they could and let the sugar-high chaos ensue. In the end, we turned to the Halloween Witch for help when we realized that we absolutely could not handle what our children became each year as they barreled their way through a seemingly unending candy gorge-fest.

I shop at the grocery store, so I have lots of time to contemplate what my life would be like if I were a celebrity mom. I’ve decided I’m against it, and I will tell you why.

1. I would not like to claim the world record for "Celebrity Mom Hiding a Baby Bump for the Longest Time Ever Without Producing a Baby." It seems that every issue of OK! or US Weekly shows a picture of some celebrity on the cover either “hiding” or “showing off” her baby bump. If she’s holding something in front of her abdomen, she’s “hiding.” If she’s walking like a normal person, she’s “showing off.”

Laylee’s always making plans. She wants to build things or have Santa or Dad build them. When she describes these plans to me, they usually involve building a house similar to our own only smaller and just for her. Depending on her mood she’ll either want the house outside in the backyard to serve as a clubhouse, over her bed to ensure she never need sleep again at bedtime, out front so she can sell her baked goods out the front window, or in the family room in front of the TV.

When I recently told her to put the “house” on her wishlist, she said, “OH Mom! This isn’t a wish. It’s a Dream Come True.” Do you wanna know what would be my Dream Come True? My Dream Come True would be for everyone in my house to stop being sick all of the all the time. My Dream Come True would be for us all to never be exposed to germs again or mutate in some way that we are impervious to them.