The very first day Milo Oliver Diamond rode in a car he was two days old. I sat in the back of the Honda Pilot next to his car seat, as first-time moms are wont to do, and stroked his fat little cheeks as we made the methodically slow drive (as first-time dads are wont to do) from St. Joseph’s Hospital in Towson to our rowhouse in Canton.

Milo hated the car for the first two years of his life. He would cry so much that I would frequently pull over and inspect him from head to toe just to make sure he wasn’t hurt. Then I started driving with one hand on the wheel and one arm contorted behind me, touching the top of his head. That seemed to appease him.

Fast-forward 17 years and now I’m the one crying in the car. I’m just kidding (kind of), but seemingly overnight that baby has grown up to be taller than me—a smart, handsome, strongly opinionated teenager with stellar grades and a girlfriend. And he wants to drive my car.

How did we get here?

The first thing you do when you have a new driver in the family is slap on one of those magnetic stickers. The one affixed to our Toyota minivan is bright yellow and announces: STUDENT DRIVER. PLEASE BE PATIENT.

In Maryland, a learner’s permitted driver must complete a minimum of 60 hours of driving practice, so we squeeze in drives as often as we can—even at 7 a.m., when so many parents do the same early morning dance with their kids. Milo drives to school, with me in the passenger seat. When he pulls up, it’s like a fire drill as we get out of the car—I’m usually in some sort of half-dressed mom get-up (pajama pants, sweatshirt, oversized sunnies, slip-on shoes)—and I slide into the driver’s seat for the ride back home to scoop up our middle school twin boys. Milo grabs his backpack out of the back seat and grumbles goodbye, following his sister toward the school’s front door. Why did I just let that half-awake human drive my $45,000 minivan?

You never say your kid’s name more than when you’re teaching them to drive. There’s the chill, “nice job Milo” you imagine you’ll be uttering after a relaxing spin around the neighborhood as you both emerge from the car smiling and laughing and bonding over this life passage. And then there is reality: “Milo, Milo Miloooooooo. Milo! Mi-lo. MILO OLIVER DIAMOND!” At this point, I’m angry. He’s angry. And okay, I’m a little angry at myself.

Yeah, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I mean, I wish I could say that I magically exuded a sense of Zen while teaching my son to drive. I don’t have a lot of anxiety, but I can get exasperated when I’m frustrated or stressed and that seems to increase tenfold when I’m in the passenger seat. And Milo, like most teenagers, is a confident narcissist. As his abilities have grown, his willingness to accept constructive criticism has decreased. He takes to driving tips like Julia Child might take to a critique of her beef bourguignon. But I’m paying for the ingredients, Julia.

As stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan once said, “Parenting is hard the entire time. The task changes though. When you have a baby, you’re like, ‘This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I would do anything for this baby.’ And when you have a teenager, you’re like, ‘This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I don’t want to go to jail for murder.’”

I decided to reach out to a professional to help me get a grip on my emotions.

“It’s such a time of mixed feelings,” says Jason Parcover, assistant vice president of student well-being at Loyola University Maryland and the father of three. “My youngest just got his license a couple of months ago—so this is near and dear to me.”

Talking to Parcover is so calming I almost ask if he can teach Milo to drive. He sympathizes with the “it’s complicated” feelings I have.

“There’s so much to celebrate and feel happy about, but we also worry and stress about our kid’s safety,” says Parcover. “And there’s a little bit of loss sprinkled in there.”

But everything we’ve taught them to this point is to help them get launched into the world, he reminds me. A driver’s license is just one more way to help them grow.

HE TAKES TO DRIVING TIPS LIKE JULIA CHILD MIGHT TAKE TO A CRITIQUE OF HER BEEF BOURGUIGNON.

Driving is a topic of conversation in all my social circles—not just because, much to our collective surprise, we’re all old enough to have kids behind the wheel…but because, okay, I’m constantly bringing it up. One friend told me that back when she was learning to drive her mom would gasp. Constantly. Didn’t matter if she was changing lanes. Gasp. Stopping at a light. Gasp. Or turning down a street. Gasp

Another friend would have her kids practice by driving through a local cemetery. No live people, no traffic, no lights. It was the only place she felt like she wasn’t going to die if she drove with them. (Yes, she sees the irony.)

Back in my learning-to-drive days, my own mom was a frequent grabber of the “oh shit” grab handle and famous for hitting the phantom brake pedal on the passenger side that she seemed to think would somehow slow the car down if she really believed.

Aaron Henkin, a senior producer at Johns Hopkins’ Berman Bioethics Institute’s iDeas Lab, told me he goes into a catatonic state when he drives with his kid. Kind of a paralyzing immobility. When I relay that story to Milo, he says, “You’re whatever the opposite of catatonic is.” (He doesn’t mean it as a compliment.) He thinks I’m hysterical, with a side of helicopter parenting thrown in.

He’s not wrong.

Baby books mark all those important milestones—first word, first steps, first food, but what about the milestones that suck the breath out of your body and make it hard for you to function? The first time they drive at night, the first time they drive in the rain, the first time they drive with a friend, the first time they drive by themselves, the first time they drive on the highway. We once celebrated milestones with a camcorder and a Skype with the grandparents. Now we monitor them with Life360, a family location app.

For Milo’s sake, I initiated the rule that if both my husband and I were in the car and Milo was driving, only the person sitting next to him in the passenger seat could offer feedback. No backseat driving. But I soon realized my husband wasn’t watching Milo as carefully as I would when I was in the front. (Whether that’s the reality or not is not up for debate.) So, I botched the very rule that I implemented. I’m vocal. And nervous. There are so many scenarios that play in my head. Most important is for Milo not to die. Then for someone else not to die. Then for my car not to die and then for someone else’s car not to die. That is my all-consuming thought process.

“So, death, murder, and destruction,” my friend Hailey teases me. Yup, while also appearing positive and upbeat: “You are doing great, Milo!”

I know I may seem a little ridiculous. But the fear is rooted in actual stats, and I’m acutely aware that it’s the most dangerous thing he’s done to date. According to the Federal Highway Administration, over 8.3 million drivers in the United States are between the ages of 16 and 19. They make up approximately 3.7 percent of all drivers in the country. In that sense, Milo is no different than the millions of other teens who are learning to drive. But it feels different because he’s mine.

What’s more, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reports that drivers between the ages of 16 and 17 are more likely to be involved in car accidents than drivers from any other age group. Additionally, teen drivers cause more injuries and deaths than other drivers, including injuries to themselves. Deep breath.

On the other hand, there is something poignant and powerful about this stage. At a time when Milo seems to be pulling away from us with his own identity, his own friends, college visits—him needing me as his driver feels like all I have left. It’s time together when he forces me to listen to his music and I force him to tell me about his day. Soon he won’t need me anymore.

And when I see him in the car, window down, music on—I get it. Because sometimes when I’m driving, I can still remember the thrill of being 16 and knowing that you could literally drive anywhere. (I never did—but I could have.) I’m not sure there’s any other thing where you can experience that sort of freedom at this age. It’s the opposite of being a driver in your 40s, when all I do is drive other people (my children) places. It feels like the reverse of freedom.

But how do you let your most prized possession just go? How do you trust the other drivers on the roads—the ones I see running lights and passing on the shoulders, aggressively tailgating, and staring at their phones while driving?

In the end, you just have to. I keep picturing one of those giant Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons—and releasing one of the tethers. And one day, if we’re lucky, most of those tethers will be freed and he’ll be an excellent independent adult. But right now, I’m exhausted and a little sad, as I still try to hold onto that little human who once needed my hand on his head to tolerate riding in the car.

I’M NOT SURE THERE’S ANY OTHER THING WHERE YOU CAN EXPERIENCE THAT SORT OF FREEDOM AT THIS AGE.

When I decided to write this essay, I would scribble notes while Milo drove. (As Nora Ephron famously said, “Everything is copy.”) I tended to get a little melodramatic, writing things like, “This is Dante’s Inferno—and his descent through the nine circles of hell will eventually take us to the center, where Satan himself resides.” Then I decided driving with a teen is more like a 12-step recovery plan—and you finally have to land on acceptance.

So little by little, I’m learning to let go. Now I find myself asking if one of his friends can drive him home after practice or to his social justice seminar when his three siblings need to be somewhere at the exact time he needs a ride. Necessity is the mother of invention—or finally realizing how nice it would be to have another driver in the family. (Yes, I’m ignoring how much my insurance bill is going up.)

He still makes rookie mistakes. Pulling into the driveway the other day and forgetting to put the car in “park” or driving too close to the shoulder and almost taking off my mirror. But I realize it’s impossible to teach intuition. I’m a good driver—I learned to drive in a Taurus station wagon we called Big Bertha—because my dad was a great teacher but also because I’ve been driving for over 30 years. We also learned back when there were no cell phones, no smart cars. My first car was a Honda Civic stick shift with a CD player and after-market sunroof.

As time goes by, I’ve seen Milo’s confidence building, but I still remember those early days when we sat at a stop sign for a good five minutes waiting for what Milo deemed the perfect time to cross one lane of traffic and turn onto another. “I’m not rushing you, Milo, but at some point, you have to trust yourself to go,” I told him. And he did. He’s come far—we both have.

The other day we were in the car with Milo behind the wheel. I was in my usual co-pilot seat, and Willa, my 15-year-old, was behind Milo. Milo was playing music that I don’t hate, and I actually felt—yes, relaxed. I think I let out an audible sigh.

Suddenly, a sweet voice piped up from the backseat. “Mom, you know I can start driving soon.”

Through four kids and thirteen years of being a parent, I’ve had my fair share of stitches, strep tests, and broken bones, but I never thought “well visit during a pandemic” would be something I’d check off my “Ways My Kids Are Giving Me Gray Hair” list. (And just a side note for everyone out there: Myself and my pediatrician’s office would never put my kids or any kids in harm’s way.)

For those that don’t know, a well visit is a yearly check-in with our pediatrician where we discuss school and sleep habits, plot their growth on a chart, and administer vaccines as needed. For my own sanity, I schedule my kids on separate days, so everyone can have their own uninterrupted time.

When I made these appointments several months ago, I was more worried about them missing class than COVID-19. Last week, when I brought my 13-year-old in for his appointment (March 5), it was business as usual. We were still having soccer practice, playdates, and normal grocery store runs. We chatted about middle school, summer plans, and the fact that now, at age 13, I was asked kindly by my son to wait in the hall during his exam.

Fast-forward one week. My 9-year-old twins had their appointment yesterday morning (March 12). As we rolled up, I noticed a medical professional standing outside the door to the office. We were asked the reason for our visit (sick or well) and whether we had been in contact with anyone with COVID-19 or traveled out of the country recently. Once we answered all the questions (well, no, no), we were allowed into the building. And just as an added safety message, there was a note taped at the other end of the building that said, “If you think you may have been exposed to COVID-19, do not enter. Return to your car and call us.”

Again the appointment was normal. Two crazy boys acting silly while answering questions about their eating habits and friends, and fits of laughter during the exam. “I think schools are going to close soon,” I said to my doctor. She agreed. (A few hours later, Governor Hogan would indeed announce school closure from March 16th-27th.) She said not to be worried and just reminded the boys about the importance of hand washing.

And then, just this morning, I returned with my 11-year-old. This time the door was locked. An employee unlocked it when she saw us and asked the same questions: the reason for our visit and whether we had been in contact with anyone with COVID-19 or traveled out of the country recently. We entered into an eerily quiet waiting room and went to check in with our doctor. (The normal weekday walk-ins for simple stuff such as strep or pink eye had been indefinitely suspended, which was probably why it was so empty.)

There are always non-stop phone calls at a pediatrician’s office as parents call to inquire whether they should bring their child in for a fever or cough or runny nose, but today seemed like a dramatic increase. It sounded like a lot of worried parents being comforted. But I also heard phrases like “We’re taking our cue from the CDC recommendations.” And while our pediatrician is calming and professional—we’ve been seeing her for more than a decade, and selecting her as our doctor was one of the best parenting decisions I ever made—I definitely felt a shift in the office. Like knowing there is a tidal wave coming and your only course of action is telling people “try not to drown.”

Our appointment was great. We talked puberty (ack!) and school activities, the pollen count, and what a lovely lady my preteen is becoming. But I also inquired about outside activities during these two weeks of social distancing and visiting grandparents and staying busy. (She said, without hesitation, yes to hikes and running around. No to playground equipment.) When the medical assistant came back with my daughter’s three shots, she apologized for the wait. “We had another meeting.” That is no problem, I assured her, knowing how crazy it must be to fluctuate between frontline Coronavirus updates and administering a standard HPV vaccine. She applied the last Band-Aid to Willa’s arm, smiled, and wished us well as she slipped out of the room.

Last week, I took my daughter shopping for a dress for her upcoming bridal shower. While I waited for her to come out of the dressing room and model top contenders, I flashed back to my own shower, over 40 years ago. I wore a denim jumpsuit, chunky-heeled shoes, and an attitude.

To me, a shower was sexist—it made me feel like the “little woman” eager to share recipes and stain removal tips. I resented the expectation that household duties were mine. I craved respect for my business acumen, not my brisket. I envied the men, probably at a bar slamming shots and betting on football—no vacuum cleaners nor dish towels for them.

Nevertheless, I did not want to hurt anyone’s feelings. The shower organizers spent time, energy, and money to plan this for me. So, I pasted a smile on my face, swept aside resentment, and entered a living room brimming with chattering women and aromas of yellow roses and white tulips.

After a proper period of schmoozing and indulging—mini tuna fish and egg salad sandwiches, blintz souffles, and champagne punch—I was ushered into a blue velvet arm chair. A ruffled, white umbrella dangled above my head. The guests arranged folding wooden chairs into a half circle around me.

An aunt handed me a present from the mountain of gifts adorned in silver and white wrapping papers and ribbons. “Here, open this one and hand me the bow.” She affixed the bow to a white paper plate, as I finessed a round object out of its square box.

“Oh, a crock pot! How great!” I said.

The aunt lit up, “You can put your brisket and potatoes in here before you go to work. When you get home, voila, dinner is ready.”

I thought, “lucky me.”

A cousin on my fiancée’s side, pen in hand, was writing something on a legal pad. I asked, “What are you doing?” Snickers from the crowd. Then, a “you’ll see.”

I opened a set of knives, a paper towel holder, and a can opener. When I got to a matzah ball soup pot, I said, “Oh, this is great—it’s so big.” The guests erupted into laughter. More giggles and scribbles when I opened a set of sheets, “I love these, they’re so soft, I’m tired of stiff ones.”

It took me almost two hours to unwrap and fuss over each present. I could have finished in 20 minutes, but I was admonished, “Please try and open the gifts gently, so you don’t tear the beautiful paper.” I guess someone wanted to reuse it.

By now, the paper plate was covered with bows and ribbons, two ribbons dangling, ties for the homemade hat. A gaggle of guests shouted, “Put it on. Put it on.” I should have been a good sport and gone along with their request—but I wasn’t.

The ladies refilled their punch glasses, it was time for the big reveal. The recording secretary, legal pad in hand, announced, “Now let’s hear what Laura will say on her wedding night.” Then, starting with, “It’s so big,” she read aloud my comments about the gifts. I laughed along with the group, keeping my thoughts to myself. “When will this be over? Don’t they know that my fiancée and I already live together?”

Now, four decades later, I want to slap my younger self. I had assumed that success in business required that I distance myself from stereotypical female activities. I was so driven to climb that corporate ladder, that I stepped over traditions that would later bring love, safety, comfort, and belonging.

I didn’t yet know that sitting around the family dinner table and asking “how was your day?” would serve to ground me. And throwing a brisket and potatoes into that crock pot would facilitate those dinners. Briskets and business are not mutually exclusive. I didn’t understand how a clean and organized home would give me a sense of control in a world where I had so little. I also didn’t realize that household chores are not the innate purview of either partner. Like everything else in marriage, they are negotiable.

But my biggest miscalculation was the role that women would play in my life. I tried so hard to fit in what was then considered a “man’s world” that I overlooked the power of women. It turned out that the women in my life nurtured, supported, and loved me. They let me process, not just problem solve. They were not afraid to get dirty with emotions, share vulnerabilities, nor shed pretenses of perfection.

Some of the women who loved and supported me the most are hosting my daughter’s bridal shower. The room will not be overflowing with guests, just a small group of Jackie’s closet friends and relatives. I’m hoping that they skip the ribbon hat and refrain from predicting her wedding night articulations. I know they will embrace and help Jackie prepare for this next stage of life.

My daughter’s generation knows not to diminish the camaraderie of women nor overvalue the approval of men. They also recognize that as women, whatever path we chose, we are more alike than different. And regardless of our differences, we stand strong for one another.

A few weekends ago, I was having a bad morning. Edie hadn’t slept well and Lou was whining for canned whipped cream for breakfast. I was trying to cook unwanted scrambled eggs while Edie simultaneously demanded to be held while wiggling to get down. The house was a mess, the cats kept jumping on the counter, Lou was standing on the tops of my feet to get my attention, and I could feel myself coming undone. Intuiting my subtle behavior (I was a borderline monster), Rob neutralized the situation with an episode of Paw Patrol and suggested I take two hours to go do something for myself.

It turns out his acknowledgement was enough. Suddenly, having the choice to leave or stay opened me up to readjust my mood, and that slight adjustment was enough to buoy me back to homeostasis. I felt grateful to have a partner who recognized the need to take a beat, and that made me want to hang back and finish making eggs for him while our children picked Cheerios from between the sofa cushions. In the end, I stayed and enjoyed a slow morning with my family. But it got me thinking about all the amazing things we parents can do for ourselves in two hours. It’s the perfect amount of time to get out of the house and do something alone without carrying the guilt of leaving your spouse a man down.

Here are a few places where you can spend an hour of your time (with travel time and a stop for coffee built in) and restore your peace or body or sanity or whatever else those barnacles have taken from you.

Intuitive Wellness: I seriously almost didn’t include this one because its such a special, perfect place and I’m selfish and didn’t want to share. But who am I to deny the achy, stressed people of Baltimore their 60 minutes of holistic, healing, heavenly massage? Book an appointment at this Roland Park sanctuary and win the battle Legos have waged on your feet.

Movement Lab: Have you ever taken a sound bath? Or hung upside down like a beautiful bat? Or jumped so hard on a trampoline that not peeing yourself a little feels like a miracle of physiology? Movement Lab offers really diverse classes in an incredibly inclusive, accessible environment. I walked into my first anti-gravity (!) class thinking I’d be carried out by paramedics, and by the end I was trying to catch glimpses of myself in the mirror because I needed to see how cool I looked hanging upside down. (I actually looked pretty terrible but I was still wildly impressed.)

The Ivy Bookshop: Get a coffee, take yourself to The Ivy, and strike up a conversation with their staff. Let someone who knows and loves books guide you around until you find the perfect one. Remember that the internet is convenient but the algorithms telling you what to buy haven’t actually read the book. Use the remainder of the hour to read in your car with the heat on.

Lake Montebello: Do a lap or two. Parking is easy, the path is flat, and the lake is pretty. Get out and move your body while listening to a podcast (might I suggest Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend?). I’m also really interested in getting into roller blading, so maybe you could buy a pair and do that, and I can decide if you look cool enough for me to invest in the sport as well.

B.Willow: This is one of Lou’s favorite places so I feel a little bad going without him, but whatever. It’s a very calming space (they just opened a new Canton location, which I’m assuming is equally tranquil) and it’s so nice to wander around, choose a plant, dig in soil, and bring something beautiful into your home.

A bar: I have the great fortune of living within walking distance of several lovely food and beverage establishments, and have no shame in taking myself to a bar stool and enjoying a drink like a damn adult. Order something pretentious like a craft beer in a special glass or a cocktail featuring a mostly irrelevant garnishes. Pull out the book you picked up from The Ivy during your last jaunt, and pretend to read while spying on all the 23-year-olds complaining about how tired they are. Refrain from commenting because getting into bar fights is not what this restorative two hours is all about.

For those who are parents and those who have been parented, the American Visionary Art Museum’s newest exhibition, Parenting: An Art Without a Manual offers a meditation on the role of role models, parental figures, and family—in all their shapes and sizes. From the warm and fuzzy to the nightmarish and traumatizing, the show is a contemplative, visual collection of stories on a theme, and it will most likely expand your definition of parenting.

It opens on Saturday and remains on view through September 1, 2019, in the nationally recognized museum in Federal Hill, with special events planned throughout its duration, including a free summit on March 24 that will bring together world-renowned speakers.

“Each year, we pick one grand theme that has always bedeviled or inspired humanity,” says Rebecca Hoffberger, the founding director of AVAM and co-curator of the show with Anna Gulyavskaya. “We’re all parenting, whether we choose to have children or not.”

As is usual with AVAM shows, Parenting is both visually and intellectually satisfying, with some of the most well-researched and thoughtful text you’re likely to see at an art exhibit. Statistics and the latest findings—on childhood trauma, parent-child attachment, grandparents becoming full-time parents because of the effects of the opioid epidemic, images of the developing brain, and more—as well as quotes witty and wise are posted throughout the gallery spaces to complement the visual art.

Bobby Adams’ powerful installation Models and Critics, for example, depicts his family—mother, father, and two children, one of whom is a young Bobby—on a couch. Their mannequin bodies are topped off with flat pieces of cardboard that display black-and-white photographs of their faces. Adams explains during a preview of the exhibition that his mother is in her nightgown, reading a book to his brother, while his father is dressed in nice clothes, having probably just gotten home from an evening of “womanizing,” and is yelling at Bobby, leather belt in hand. “My father always said I was stupid and called me a bastard,” he says in an emotional retelling of his childhood story to a crowd of journalists and exhibiting artists.

In another room, a long wall is dotted with several life-sized cutouts of a small child—each one with the same face but a different outfit. The work—Fifty Girls in Food Sack Dresses, by Linda St. John—explores the future of parenting and “designer babies,” while posing questions about what parenting will look like as people’s lifespans increase and families grow to include several generations.

And what would an AVAM show be without postcard images from Frank Warren, of Post Secret fame, or a piece by Baltimore’s beloved mosaic artist Loring Cornish, or the large spiritual work of Alex Grey? All of the above find their place in this show, alongside artists who have never been exhibited at AVAM until now.

Baltimore’s Chris Wilson makes his AVAM debut with a large abstract painting titled Momma’s Boy. Through it, he tells the story of his mother, who took her own life after struggling with drug and alcohol abuse, used as a coping mechanism to survive a horrific trauma. “In this painting, my brother and I attend Mom’s funeral,” he writes in the description of the piece. “I remain in the back because I am afraid to see my mother deceased. It was the hardest I’ve ever cried, so white tears are all over the canvas.”

Additional pieces explore surrogate parents, the father-daughter bond, children living in refugee and diaspora situations, and what it feels like to be an orphan.

A compelling sculpture by Allen David Christian called Piano Family: Adagio, Amarosa, and Bucky depicts three figures made of piano parts and is enhanced by a quote installed above it, from Michael Levine: “Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.”

Hi! Hello! Come in, friend with whom I spent 57 percent of my 20s, but now just text Mary Kate and Ashley GIFs back and forth with while we wait for our schedules to align. It’s so good to see you and really nice of you to agree to come to our filthy home for a drink instead of a restaurant or bar so that I didn’t have to hire and pay for a sitter. I left work early and spent 45 minutes cleaning in preparation of your arrival but I will lie to your face and tell you I just got home because it’s still incredibly messy. Here, let me put your belongings on this coat rack so that our cats don’t make a nest out of your jacket.

Please sit! But not there—that’s where Lou peed yesterday and it’s been satisfactorily cleaned for the purposes of our immediate family’s safety, but not yours. Guests can sit over here on this uncomfortable Ikea bistro chair which is high off the ground and made of fake wood and easily wiped down. Would you like a cocktail? Have some cheddar bunnies and watch me impressively make a Negroni for you while my beautiful children quietly play underfoot. Send word to the outside that I Have It All Together.

Actually wait. Our refrigerator has been broken for six weeks and Best Buy hasn’t been able to fit our new one up the stairs despite my husband sawing a portion of the stairwell away and these cocktails need ice. Please sit with my darling babies while I run downstairs for frozen water. Home ownership!

Here’s the ice. And there’s Lou’s butt. He doesn’t like to wear underwear at home, just please finish making these drinks while I convince my 2-year-old to put clothes on. Also, and I hate to bother you while you’re already doing me a favor, but did you happen to see Edie while I was briefly out of the room? Eleven months, walks furiously, looks like a Cabbage Patch Doll? Oh she’s climbing the stairs? Okay well please return to your safe area and sip your drink while I figure out how she escaped the gate again.

So anyway, how are you? How is your relationship/career/family? Please tell me because I miss you and really care but okay hold on because I just realized it’s 6 p.m. and my kids haven’t had dinner yet. I’ll turn on The Magic School Bus and, while I’m waiting for the water to boil for the mac and cheese, you can catch me up on your life. I am nodding and laughing and agreeing that I, too, can’t believe your sister/husband/coworker did that and Lou! You peed in the potty! Here is your jelly bean reward, please go grab the potty so we can clean it out before your sister gets to it except she’s already dumped it onto her legs and is playing in a puddle of urine.

You’re probably right—cleaning fresh pee off a baby in our kitchen sink isn’t super hygienic but I’ve fallen asleep with Lou breathing post-vomit breath into my face so I think we’re past formalities. May I offer you a glass of wine and the rest of this luke warm mac and cheese? I was going to eat it while standing over the pee sink later, but you’re the guest so you can have first dibs. Oh you’re going to dinner after this? Like on a date? Please tell me more about your decision to not have kids and what that lifestyle looks like because I know that three years ago we didn’t have kids but I can’t be more specific than that because I don’t remember. Your reservation is for EIGHT THIRTY on a WEEKNIGHT? That is wild, man.

Thank you so much for coming over and trying to take Lou seriously while he stood really close to you in only a hat, shirt, and shoes and told you about an air conditioner he saw from the car last week. He’s right, it was gray and could have been off or on. I’m pretty sure that in two years, when my kids are 3 and 5, I will be 15-20 percent more present in conversations that occur when they are around so please just keep being supportive and cool and willing to dive into the crazy with me—it means a lot. And here’s your jacket, I don’t know how the cat’s got it, but I took the liberty of putting a lint roller in your bag.

The end of summer used to come with some crushing disappointments (so long, beach waves). But for those of us with children in the house, it feels like a good time to breathe a sigh of relief because back to school season is before us (so long, kids). The glory of back to school means you don’t have to balance as much when it comes to work and parenting, or shell out hundreds of dollars for camps, or worry with just how the heck to keep your rambunctious mess-makers occupied all day, every day. My, how you’ve aged.

No matter what the beginning of the school year means for you—more time to work or more time for keeping up with the day to day tasks of running a family home—it’s totally okay to relish the start of school. Maybe even celebrate it a little. Here are things you should definitely do to embrace the kids being back in school:

Grab a drink by the water at Boathouse Canton.
If there were ever a reason to sit by the water with a drink in your hand until you tip over (just kidding!), back to school week is it. Boathouse in Canton is much loved for its beautiful views, outdoor patio, tasty bites, and solid drink choices, making it the perfect place to celebrate, whether noon or night. While the restaurant is open year round, the smaller, down-to-earth dock bar is only open through October. So, if you’re planning to hit up a happy hour, complete with live music, fruity crushes, and beautiful outdoor weather, back to school season is the perfect time of year. Sans kids, of course.

Try a new workout at The Movement Lab.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or a couple of wild children, more than likely), you’ve probably heard about the amazing workout classes happening at The Movement Lab in Remington. With so many options like kickboxing, jazz dance, various kinds of yoga, and antigravity suspension classes, it will be tough to pick just one. No worries, though: You can utilize the $99 Fall Reset Special for new students and try them all.

Get some work done at Zeke’s.
The much-loved coffee joint, which expanded to a larger spot on Harford Road in Hamilton last year, is still the home of Baltimore’s best cup of joe. Go for the coffee, stay for the pastries and laptop-friendly atmosphere. And while you’re at it, take home a refillable cold brew growler. Whether you just need a quick coffee, a place to hang out, a spot to schedule a meeting, or to spend the day typing away, Zeke’s has everything you need for all those not-so-lonesome, kid-free school days.

Enjoy a cut and a color at Tease Salon.
The start of a new school year means new clothes, shoes, and hair cuts for the kids. But what about for you? If you haven’t gotten your tresses chopped by the amazing hair-artists at Tease Salon on York Road in Cockeysville yet, now is the perfect time to book your first appointment. Owner Jenny Newberger is a master stylist, who will make your hair do all the right things. But the artists at the shop don’t shy away from funky cuts and all kinds of color, either. So, if you want some red hot streaks to start the school year off right, don’t be afraid to ask.

Meet a friend at The Handlebar Cafe.
Baltimoreans love their bikes. But they also love a great local spot to grab a bite with a pal, complete with quality brews, The Handlebar Cafe in Fells Point, with it’s cool, bike-savvy vibe, has it all. With a built-in bike shop, a badass bar, and a delicious menu filled with tons of healthy options and a dozen wood-fired pizza options to choose from, there’s something for everyone (and no training wheels necessary).

Embrace self-care with Zeel.
If you’ve been telling yourself you’re going to finally get that massage you’ve been dreaming of for months, wait no more. Zeel, a new massage-on-demand app that caters to the Baltimore area, lets you book an at-home massage with just a couple of swipes. The price, including tip, is quite reasonable and you can even book a same day massage, so it truly is “on-demand.” You massuer will bring their own table and when you’re massage is done, they’ll be out the door in minutes. We can think of no better way to ring in the new school year.

I am a worrier. A serious, anxious, sky-is-falling, doomsday scenario level worrier. Worrying is probably an important, biological emotion for parents to help save small children from themselves, but being a worrier in 2018 is pretty brutal. If you have an internet connection and access to social media or a news site (and I know you do, because this column only runs online), you run the risk of reading horrible, seemingly impossible stories about ways kids can get hurt.

Because of the World Wide Web, I know things that can’t be unlearned, like that toddlers can crawl into front-loading washing machines, close the door, and get stuck inside. Or that babies can fall head first into the toilet and not be able to pull themselves out. Or that button batteries are shiny harbingers of death, and the only way to combat them if swallowed is to feed spoonfuls of honey to your child while you race them to the hospital—but in your haste don’t forget that babies under 12 months can’t have honey because of botulism, so just don’t ever, ever let your eyes wander away from your kid.

It’s exhausting.

The mild irony to all of this is that I was not nearly as worried with my first kid. Lou is a pretty low-key guy, and as a young toddler he didn’t get into much trouble. We had a two-month spat of Lou falling directly onto the same spot on his forehead multiple times (resulting in a little divot he still has to this day), but otherwise we slapped a few plastic locks on particularly dangerous cabinets in the house and moved on.

Our daughter, however, is a nut. She’s fully walking at ten months, into everything, and has more energy than her three other family members combined. She’s illuminated household dangers we never considered during Lou’s babyhood. Our gas fireplace is filled with small rocks about the size of a toddler’s windpipe and we didn’t notice this until last week when she started pulling them out. I threw a blanket over them, making a mental note to remove it in December, but Edie outsmarted my complex solution by dragging the blanket out and returning to her rock gathering.

We also weren’t aware that the heavy, bulky stool in our kitchen might be a danger until she used it to pull herself to standing (at six months) and cracked her cheekbone as she and the stool fell in tandem. It’s very subtle, but you might notice the shiner in the picture below. As her doctor was leaving the exam we heard him say to the nurses, “Did you see the black eye on that kid?”

This child has forced my abstract fears into actionable items. We’ve done the obvious things like remove as many tiny toys as we can find and install a fenced-in area for the times we have to do things like cook meals or pour a fortifying glass of wine, but there’s more work to be done. Here’s a small list of items that will help protect your kid and ease your weary hearts, at least until the next story breaks about how baby-proofing will turn your child into a serial killer or guarantee low ACT scores.

Corner protectors
Protect your furniture and your kid’s eyeballs. We’ve stuck these on every right angle in the house and they’ve already downgraded multiple injuries from “Hospital Trip” to “Here’s A Popsicle You’re Fine”.

Toilet Paper Roll
Not only is this an easily obtained toy for babies, it’s also a free metric of toy safety. If your kid is playing with something that can fit inside of a roll, take it away because it means they can choke on it.

Portable Play Yard
As previously mentioned, sometimes you need a moment to yourself. The Summer Infant play yard is super light weight and can be pulled out or closed and shoved back into the corner in seconds.

Masking tape
This one isn’t super safety-related, but it’s another weird household item trick so I’m including it. Take a piece and roll it sticky side out, then stick it to your kid’s foot. If you’re lucky, they’ll find themselves in a fully-immersive ten minute crash course on how adhesives and chubby fingers interact, and you can tidy up or solve world hunger or do whatever it was you did before you had kids.

Play Mat
Ikea has a reasonably-priced version (and this fancy mat promises to not poison your child with unpronounceable chemical horrors if you care about that kind of thing). Play mats are squishy but firm and perfect for babies who are learning to crawl and walk. If your home has wood or tile floors, you might also consider interlocking foam tiles.

Door jams
Save tiny fingers from tiny splints.

OutSmart Locks
What I appreciate about these is the decoy button specifically designed to make your kid think they have a shot in hell at breaking into the cabinet and going to town on your Tide Pod stash. Take that, babies.

With rising childcare costs, plenty of moms and dads are making the switch to a work-at-home lifestyle. But it’s not just a financial decision—working from home means earning a paycheck and being able to be present for your kids at the same time, and pulling double-duty is not without its challenges. Ask any parent who’s ever tried to meet a deadline while rocking a fussy baby or calming a demanding toddler and they’ll tell you: Being a work-at-home-parent is not all fun and games. You can’t just sit home all day, unless you plan on heavily utilizing your Netflix subscription to turn on Wild Kratts while making a new snack plate every time a 22-minute episode comes to an end. You have to get out.

We’re still crying that Play Cafe shut its doors, since it was an ideal spot for both wee ones and our work ethic. But there are still some great spots in town to hit up when you’re all out of snack ideas, patience, and low-maintenance crafts. If you need to steal an hour, check out some of these spots that will help you keep your job and your sanity.

Red Canoe
The much-loved Hamilton coffee shop and kid’s bookstore has so much to offer its patrons. From Zeke’s Coffee and delicious breakfast sandwiches to cozy nooks around every corner, it’s easy to settle in with your laptop and your giant, free-refill mug for an entire day. If you’re coming with kids, don’t expect any angry glares, either. There are toys, books, and games in the back to cater to little ones, tons of space and couches to move around, and even a fenced-in area outback for squirmy bodies.

Batch Bake Shop
Just a hop and a skip up Harford Road is the new delicious and adorable Batch Bake Shop. It might not be littered with toys and games, but it’s got the goodies, that’s for sure. Plop your kid at one of the convenient low tables that are perfect for playing or coloring, or distract them with a sweet treat so you can get down to business.

The Cube
This new spot, located on York Road next to the Lily Pad, is not a coffee shop, but a co-working space for parents to utilize. It’s a small office for parent’s to use kids play in the supervised play space. There are various monthly packages parents can buy, based on their individual needs. But a place to drop the kids and work undistracted… where do I sign?

Local YMCAs
You know how the song goes. But while it might be fun to play at the YMCA, it’s also fun to work there. The Baltimore area has multiple YMCA locations complete with Stay n’ Play areas for kids to hang out in and free WiFi for the adults. Kids can stay for 90 minutes, which you can use to work or workout, or both. The bottom line is: the kids are occupied. If you’re signing up for a family membership (which you need to do in order to utilize childcare), the $91 a month is totally worth it. Just think of it as earning it back every time you use it as your work space.

R. House
If you’ve ever been to R. House in Remington, you’ll notice that while there’s not exactly a kid’s play area. But one seems to have formed on its own. There are always kids jumping over the box seats lining the windows and tons of playmates no matter what time of day. The food hall is not lacking on space which makes it a kid-friendly spot to grab a coffee and an hour of work time.

The Evergreen Cafe
This Roland Park hang is one of the coziest coffee shops in town, which both studying college students and work-at-home folks frequent. And while they have delicious breakfast and lunch options and plenty of working space where you can post up, they are also pretty kid-friendly. There are comfy couches in the front where kids can relax, color or play games. Plus, there’s always chatter and soft tunes playing. With that kind of easy-going vibe, you won’t feel like your kids are burning the place down if they make a bit of noise. So grab them a gelato or a fresh-baked pastry, and get to work.

“EDIE,” I hear my husband roar from our bedroom. “GO. TO. SLEEP. PLEASE.”

I jump up from my sofa nest, grab a clean bottle from the sink, and shovel in three scoops of formula. Sprinting up the stairs, I make a point to avoid the especially creaky spots so as not to disturb our son, and then realize that perhaps his sister’s wailing is a bit louder than my footsteps.

In our room, my husband is still in bed with pillows over his head, clearly honoring our pact to try “crying it out” for a few nights. I take that as a cue to hold off on adding water to the bottle and crawl in next to him. We lay, not speaking, for 10 minutes. Edie eventually starts sucking on her fingers and her shrieks turn to whimpers, which turn to hilarious baby snores. Newly aware that sheets make noise if a human moves on them, I quietly kick Rob to see if he’s awake and am not surprised to find that he was able to drift off. My wired, tired brain makes the decision to sneak back downstairs and I fall asleep two hours later while my 43rd viewing of Arrested Development blares from the TV.

This is sleep training a baby. Or perhaps, more accurately, this is the undoing of two adults.

We took pains early on to create a good sleep environment for Edie. Our son was colicky and the first two months were rough, but he evened out into a decent sleeper. Not taking into account that human beings are actually quite different from one another, we assumed Edie would be exactly the same. To prepare, we drained our savings and hired a night nanny who would help us survive colic and get us through early infancy. Edie, however, never had colic and slept beautifully during the nights that dear, wonderful Miranda was in charge. Congratulating our foresight and willingness to forgo decent food in the name of sleep, we sent our fairy godmother on her way to help other, more desperate families.

We have not slept a full night since.

We call Edie the Party Sunshine Girl: I’d never seen a human smile with their whole body until she came along. She is happy and has tons of energy and always needs to be in the mix and it’s this formula that makes her situation a Möbius strip of wonder—she doesn’t sleep because she wants to hang out but how does she have energy to hang out if she doesn’t sleep? What dark baby magic fuels her?

I can tell you that her parents are low on fuel. We’ve read lots of books and scoured parent forums and asked friends, but nothing has really worked. On our best nights, she wakes up in the middle of the night to eat and then is up for the day at 5:30. On our harder nights, there is a lot of yell-whispering and passive aggressive sighing while Rob and I dissolve into the worst versions of ourselves. One night I slammed the door to our room, but it’s a pocket door so it bounced back open and woke everyone up. On the bad nights, we can’t even be awful very well.

Though I’m confident we’ll eventually find the right sleep advice (or that Edie will turn 18 and go terrorize her college roommate), right now we’re in the weeds. We have really fulfilling, happy moments as a family that are book-ended by one of us falling asleep on the sofa in the middle of making dinner, or having a fight because the other needs to catch up on work once the kids go to bed.

The hardest part about sleep deprivation is the relationship deprivation—right now our existences rely solely on someone we barely have time to connect with. But, we’ve been careful not to wish this time away. In the moments when the fog clears and we can speak with some clarity about our life right now, the good soars above the bad. Our kids are magic and being a parent is so much more incredible than I imagined.

But, oh, how we’d like to get some damn sleep, Edith.

My son Lou is standing next to me with no pants on and a finger in each nostril. “I can watch Magic School Bus?” he asks, as the snot drips down his finger onto his wrist.

“I don’t know, baby. We watched Magic School Bus a lot yesterday and—”

“Mama.” He steps closer to me and I silently applaud myself for not recoiling from the snot, which is now twisting around his forearm. “I can watch Magic School Bus.”

I realize he has already put the remote within my reach (When? How?) and I obey my orders. Lin-Manuel Miranda starts singing the theme song and Lou walks away and plays with his blocks, the television blinking and making noise at just me. As I marvel at his twisted mind, my daughter Edie begins to squawk from her rocker, indicating that the weird, 20-minute nap she takes every weekday morning has ended. She stares me down, wordlessly telling me to stop typing my work email and get the hell up and make her a bottle.

I make her second breakfast and realize I forgot to make Lou’s school lunch the night before. He notices me pull his lunchbox down and begins telling me that he is not going to school today and he needs a cookie. Edie cries and Lou runs to her telling me, “EDIE NEEDS MILK MAMA,” as if I wasn’t holding her prepared bottle while he argued with me about the lunch he requires for school, to which he won’t be going.

Lunch packed and baby fed, I wriggle Lou into his uniform and carefully stuff Edie into her Tauntaun suit and fold her into the carrier strapped to my chest. Lou loads his bookbag with toys and I quietly remove each one as we make our way to the door.

The half block walk to school takes seven minutes. As I leave Lou on his school’s playground, he stands at the wooden fence and kisses me through each rail.

Our nanny arrives and I leave the house. I debate listening to How Did This Get Made or WYPR on my run/walk to work. I opt for the former, despite the latter’s morning show being kind of important for my job. I reason that, because it was one of my favorite movies as a kid, I can’t not listen to the HDTGM crew dive deep into the inappropriateness of Rodney Dangerfield’s Ladybugs.

I get to work.

At work, I do my work.

My husband calls on his ride home and offers to pick me up. It’s raining and I’m tired, so I say yes. We walk inside and Edie beams at us and Lou comes running, talking over himself to tell us about his day. He mentions one girl in particular over and over and we try to be cool because it sounds like he has his first little crush.

The house is in such disrepair that I cant even think of a clever simile. We divide and conquer: Rob feeds Edith and fields questions from Lou, I pour wine for us both and start reassembling what was once our living room. I notice something brown next to Edie’s foot and brace myself for poop. It is, mercifully, leftover “breakfast cookie” (our term for waffle) and Lou pops it in his mouth. Someone gets dinner on the table; I think it’s me. And maybe “on the table” is misleading because that makes it sound like the coffee table and kitchen sink we’re eating over are actually our dining room table, which is currently covered in some laundry and a tool kit and a few cats.

I take Lou up to bed because he can play my husband like a fiddle. Mama bedtime consists of teeth brushing, two books, kisses, and lights out. Dada bedtime includes all of that plus a forty five minute bubble bath, four extra books, 30 minutes of rocking chair time, multiple glasses of water, songs, and promises of puppies and ice cream. Dada bedtime often includes caving and bringing Lou into our bed.

While Rob puts Edie to bed (she is six months and has not yet learned the art of manipulation), I fire off some more emails and finish cleaning up. It is 8:45 p.m. and Rob and I spend five minutes deciding if we should watch last week’s SNL or just go to bed. We turn on SNL and I wake up at 1:35 on the sofa. I turn off the TV (I think I made it to “Weekend Update”) and crawl into bed. I think about how busy and lucky we are. In my 20’s, I would have hated that my days are sort of monotonous and not at all my own. In my 30’s, it amazes me how much I love the routine, even when it means that there isn’t a lot of time left to be grownups.

We’ve had two kids for six months. I’ve never been happier or more drained or busier or more excited to go home.

To my beautiful boy:

Your world is about to be rocked. In less than two months, your sister will arrive and your only child status will vanish, and I won’t pretend it will be easy. You will have spent 22 months as the absolute center of our universe, and starting sometime in mid-September you will spend the rest of your life sharing that space. 

I don’t know how much you comprehend what is about to happen. Thanks to the Spanish your incredible nanny has taught you, one of your first words was “hermana.” Most mornings you pull my shirt up and offer hermana a kiss. Some mornings you offer her a spoonful of your yogurt and the ease with which you are willing to share makes heart feel like it has wings. Occasionally (and always in public), you’ll walk over to me and pull my dress up so everyone else can see your sister. Because my bump is enormous and I don’t always see you coming, I’d say about a quarter of the city has seen my underwear now, so thank you for that.

Your attention to my bump makes me think you have some idea of what’s to come, but you’re so little that we can’t really explain it. And even if you were older, I wouldn’t know how to tell you the million small ways things are about to change. Because a lot of our friends don’t have kids yet, you’re used to having the undivided attention of almost every adult you meet. I don’t think you’ve ever been denied a story when you grab book and back into the lap of whoever is sitting closest to you. 

We spent so many hours pouring over your 100 First Trucks picture book that while you can’t say your own name, you correctly identify and pronounce police cars, bulldozers, and tractors. Every week (and entirely unsolicited), you present your nails to be clipped like a well-trained poodle, and once the task is complete to your satisfaction you choose a temporary tattoo as a reward for your manicure. (Don’t worry—they’re made from vegetable-based dye and rarely feature naked ladies.) At night your dada gives you long, bubbly baths and then all three of us read books together, and, while you fall asleep in your crib, I rub your cheeks and hair and tell you all about the day we just had.

This fairytale, my friend, is about to change.

It took nearly two years to conceive you—and another 41 weeks after that to meet you—so, when you finally arrived, we were ready. You had been our shared, constant thought for so long that your arrival felt like we’d picked up a dear friend from the airport. (The world’s most painful, horrifying airport, but you can appreciate the metaphor.) Your sister, however, was standing impatiently in the wings, tapping her tiny toe, waiting for us to be ready for her. It still took some help from science, but her conception took exactly one month and my pregnancy has flown by. Because we were expecting another battle with fertility, I’m not sure your dad or I fully believe our luck yet, but here we are just a few weeks from meeting our baby girl.

I want to tell you that I’m so sorry that we’re shaking things up. We’ve got a good thing going, us three, and now some chick who is in the process of ruining my belly button is about to burst onto the scene. I’m sorry for the growing pains we’re all going to feel adjusting to being a family of four, and I’m sorry that you didn’t get a say in this decision. 

But, my love, I also want to tell you you’re welcome. I think once the shock wears off and we’re in a groove, you’re going to be so happy. You will have someone to talk to in the back seat of the car; someone to read your Spot books to; someone to roll your eyes with when you figure out how embarrassing your dad and mom are. You and your sister will challenge each other, fight each other, make each other laugh, and love each other and you’ll both be better people for it. I’m so excited and proud to watch you become a big brother, and I hope very much that you treat your sister with at least as much dignity and respect as you treat our cats.

I love you more than I’ll ever know how to show, Mama

(And Dada. I’m assuming he feels similarly.)

I would like to offer the following unsolicited advice to new parents: go out to dinner.

Your tiny baby is about to become a big toddler and your dining options will soon shrink to eating room temperature Annie’s mac and cheese over the sink while your husband hoses your child off in the shower.

While your baby is a tiny and immobile little loaf, the dining world is yours for the taking. We’d pack Lou and his arsenal of infant essentials into his stroller and post up at various neighborhood spots. We’d order wine and congratulate ourselves on being unafraid to venture into the world with our child, delighted in our ability to expose Lou—who was definitely asleep and wouldn’t have cared even if he were awake—to things like French food and the beautiful architecture of the newly opened Elephant. The first year of Lou’s life allowed our social lives to carry on fairly uninterrupted. If he got fussy, we’d walk him around outside or just head home, but overall he was happy to be in the mix.

And then, right after his first birthday, Lou started walking. We cheered him on as he threw his tummy out and stumbled forward, grinning ear to ear. We bought him his first pair of shoes and opened his world from our living room to outside. Freed from the oppressive shackles of his stroller, he was suddenly in charge (to an extent) of where he went and what was worth stopping to investigate: cracks in the sidewalk, dogs, people, excrement of dogs, a leaf, a missing glove. His little urban world was full of curiosities and his mission was to give each one exactly nine seconds of his undivided attention before moving on to the next discovery.

Proud as we were of all of this, his newfound sentience has put a major damper on our previous frivolity. He was happy to play with a book or toy in his high chair before, but now it’s no longer fair to ask that of him. He’s a ball of energy and needs to observe and touch and point to everything he sees, so our evenings are now spent playing with his toys or blowing off steam in the park. We still love him and everything, but oh how I miss meeting my husband and baby for an after-work glass of something.

So, brand new parents, here is an expansion of my advice from someone on the other side.

Go early. Some will argue that babies don’t belong in any restaurant at any time, but I disagree. Taking your baby to meet a friend for happy hour is a lot different than showing up for a late seating at Charleston. Happy hours are bustling and full of post-work energy. It’s the perfect time to fly under the radar with a wee one. We had a pretty good track record at City Café, Paulie Gee’s, and Barcoina.

Weekend lunches are also a fantastic way to get out of the house and eat a meal you didn’t pay an Uber driver to deliver. In our experience, places like Captain Larry’s, Little Havana, and Rocket to Venus were casual enough to make us feel like we weren’t ruining high tea, and offered excellent background noise, which simultaneously soothes infants and softens any cries they might feel like sharing.

Be flexible. Sometimes you’ll get to enjoy an entire meal and make eye contact with your dining partner and have actual conversation about non-baby things. And sometimes you’ll show up, order a glass of wine, and leave cash crumpled on an unopened menu as you head right back out the door to deal with a blowout. If your expectations are fluid (a kinder way of saying “lowered,” no?) it’s a lot easier to roll with the punches.

Be unafraid. I have no empirical data to back this up, but it seemed like the more relaxed we were about taking Lou out of the house, the more successful our outings became. A well-prepped diaper bag and an exit strategy are your two greatest weapons when venturing out into the world with a baby—arm yourself with these tools and let the rest go.

Love live the food hall. Lou has traversed almost every inch of the Mount Vernon Marketplace, and had logged some decent mileage at R. House and Cross Street Market. The setting in a market is casual, busy, and loud- an environment your toddler can work with. Be mindful, of course, of other diners, but these wide open, confined spaces are perfect for taking turns running laps while your partner enjoys a second of peace and perhaps a beer.

Be kind to yourself. Even if you have a relatively easy baby, your life is totally turned upside-down right now. It’s okay to want to reclaim something from your pre-baby days, and swinging by your favorite restaurant for a bit is a pretty reasonable way to feel like a grownup again. Make plans, show up, and if it’s not in the cards that night, try again another time.

Read the room. You don’t need to make any enemies. Think back to your pre-baby life and determine if your baby’s behavior would have annoyed you then. If so, it’s probably time to pack up and ship out. We’ve found that most people are cool with a momentary cry or excited shriek, but we don’t push it beyond that.

Being a parent in 2016 is incredible in many ways, but perhaps outshining them all is the access to smartphones. If my kid is sick, I can book a doctor’s appointment, add it to my calendar, text my husband to update him, and have medicine delivered to my door in an hour all while playing soothing music (which in Lou’s case is still, impossibly, “Hotline Bling”). The ability for one device to do all those things is amazing, but it is simply an embarrassment of riches that that same device can also take unlimited, professional-grade photos of my son.

I am in no way a trained photographer. I am simply a lady with a baby, an iPhone, and just enough free time to really dig deep into the vanity of documenting a child made partially in my likeness. Below are a few of my thoughts on the matter of photographing your kid. With the holidays approaching and cards to print and mail to family, frenemies, and coworkers, I thought it might be worth sharing some unsolicited advice.

Perspective

At a happy hour with a buddy of mine, we discovered our sons might not share the friendship we’ve enjoyed for over 20 years. Through tears of laughter, I got a shot of both their reactions to really seeing each other for the first time, and they’re among my favorite from Lou’s first year. Until these shots, I hadn’t considered capturing what Lou was reacting to, but now I make it a practice to include multiple vantage points—especially since most of the time it just means turning around.

Opportunity

The outtakes can be the best stuff. Each morning that Lou turned a month older, I’d photograph him in the same spot—a common practice, I know, but an effective one. This was taken at six months, when his life was dominated by learning to sit up and pointing his index finger. This picture tells you which skill he still needed to work on. As long as they’re safe and happy, snap a few more pictures once your intended shot is a bust. This image feels so incredibly Lou, and it made me step back from my Dina Lohan brand of crazy-mom photography and instead focus on capturing his silliness.

Reflection

Babies love their reflections. Mirrors are intoxicating to a young mind, but kind of terrible for picture taking, especially since there is a 100-percent chance I’ll be captured in the reflection looking crazy and covered in cat hair. Instead, keep an eye out for all the other remarkable places in which they find their reflection. Lou had recently learned to pull himself to standing when he was seduced by the glow of the dessert case at Marie Louise Bistro one night. We let him gaze in, and because it was way past his bedtime, I was able to get a shot flooded with light against a nice pool of darkness. The best shots I’ve taken of this kid are when he’s naturally drawn to something, even (or especially) when it’s his own face.

Pets

Since he came home from the hospital, Lou has loved and been loved by our cat Richard. They snuggle together, they chase each other around, and they often drink out of the same water bowl because I’m learning to pick my battles. I’ve probably taken 300 pictures of these buddies and this the only one that’s any good because they share a sixth sense that alerts them that I’m reaching for my phone. But, I’m not a quitter and I purchased more space in my Cloud, so after a few months of unusable flashes of white fur and baby rolls, I finally got this shot.

Simplicity

The best spot for Lou’s high chair happened to be against a dark wall in our living room, and it’s turned out to be a fantastic backdrop for pictures. If there’s a spot in your living or dining room that you particularly like—or even just a solid-colored wall—try moving your baby’s eating situation there. Babies are like drunk college students when they eat: the goal is to shovel it in quickly and without the irksome realities of polite society. And as parents, it’s our job to photograph the hell out of their messes and then pretend to be strict about better manners. Taking these pictures against a solid backdrop highlights your kid and has the added bonus of leaving out the clutter in the space behind you.

Negative Space

For the purposes of this post, let’s assume “negative space” means “any space without babies in it.” My initial instinct when photographing Lou was to get in close and document every curve of his sweet little face, but as he’s gotten older, I’ve pulled back the frame. Creating a sense of place gives you more reference points down the line because it’s hard to tell where the picture was taken if it’s entirely filled with baby face, cute as it might be.

Hey Mama!

Hello! You’re a lovely person who Russian-dolled herself for nine months and lived to tell the tale of human extraction, so get in the damn pictures with that baby. It’s really easy to forget to jump in the shot (and being sleep deprived and discovering pureed pear in your hair isn’t the most glamorous you’ve ever been), but your kid will one day look for your face in his arsenal of baby pictures and you should be in them. Sneaking a glass of wine during an unforeseen nap or conducting a feed on the ground of a parking lot won’t be the biggest moments in your lives, but there’s a sweetness in capturing the little stuff.

In the gray chill of January, my husband and I planned a vacation. Our baby was approaching three months, and I was in the unhinged purgatory of eagerly awaiting my return to work, and sobbing as I wondered how Lou or I would survive apart. Close friends of ours had floated a trip to Italy by us at seemingly the exact right time. We were in new parent bliss, but July was so impossibly far away and Italy sounded so warm, so we said yes. The flights were booked late one Saturday morning as we sipped coffee and glanced anxiously at our sleeping infant, hoping he hadn’t caught wind of this transgression.

Four-hundred million cubic feet of snow fell and then melted, spring arrived and promised summer, and suddenly it was July and we were at Whole Foods and Target stocking up on supplies to last Lou the entire nine days we’d be away. My guilt and worry grew as we got closer to the departure. Lou, of course, came down with a fever the day before we left, and we watched his temperature rise and fall with fear and short-lived relief.

After an emotional farewell, our flight was delayed two hours. Once we finally boarded, I received a call from our friends watching Lou that his fever (a respectable 100.1 when we left) spiked to 105.1, but that the doctor said this was all part of the virus going around and it would break by morning. We stared at each other, crazed, while I blathered on that we needed to get off the plane and Rob pointed out that perhaps the highly educated doctor we’ve thus far trusted implicitly could be right, and, by the way, one of Lou’s current caretakers happens to be an EMT. We took off, and I spent the next eight hours tormenting myself with worst-case scenarios.

We landed to a message that the fever had significantly decreased, and that Lou was sleepy but fine. Fears calmed, we hopped in our rental and took off for the coast.

Italy, like most beautiful places north of the equator, is pretty busy in July, so our two-and-a-half-hour drive to Sorrento turned into nearly five. We sat in a backup in a mile-long tunnel, wound our way through throngs of drunk Italians partying in the streets, and by the time we were two miles out, we realized a street festival was blocking the only way up to our house. We rerouted with phones that had no International data plans yet (and a combined five-percent battery) and our car became wedged in an alley as we tried in vain to reach the street that would get us to our house. That street was named—I’m not kidding—after our son’s birthday. Tired, worried, and stuck, we were taunted by Via 4 Novembre as we un-wedged our rental from centuries-old architecture and went the wrong way up a one-way street to the house. Touché, Lou.

The place where we stayed was built 700 years ago, and so naturally someone decided to install an elevator in it. At the prompting of my dear friend Freya, we loaded our luggage into the elevator and, as I eyed the warning sign, she closed the door and assured me that she had used it a few times already. Between the third and fourth floors, the elevator shuttered to a stop.

When I wasn’t quietly panicking about oxygen, I spent the next 30 minutes grappling with the universe’s response to us leaving our child. I inhaled soupy air and thought about how well-deserved this was. Once I was released from this floating torture device and I’d downed a bottle of wine to calm my nerves, we’d just have to turn around and drive back to the airport.

Right before the air hit the CO2 tipping point, I finally saw a third pair of shoes through the quarter centimeter eye-level slot between the elevator’s steel door and the floor. After 10 minutes and some Italian shouting, I was giving my friend a boost as the men above lifted her out. I, however, needed zero help, as adrenaline and the consuming fear of being sliced in half gave me the power of flight. I catapulted out, hugged my husband, and proceeded to drink half the bottle of wine I promised myself. (But not before slamming the top of my head into the tiny door frame that lead to the roof deck. Twice.)

Upon my release, we FaceTimed with Lou and discovered he said his first actual, intentional word in our brief absence. It was caught on video, for which we are eternally grateful, but while I was getting in touch with my inner claustrophobic in an elevator 4,500 miles from Baltimore, we missed this huge milestone.

Despite our trepidation, morning brought clarity and we decided to stay. We’d been punished enough. And while the rest of the trip was lovely and without incident, I allowed the guilt to cast a small shadow over nearly everything we did. An hour or two would go by without internal self-flagellation and I’d tell Rob how awful I felt for not feeling awful. He’d either kindly tell me to get over it, or fish his phone out of his pocket and play Lou videos. I was equally grateful for both responses.

My husband and I are social, love to travel, and having a baby didn’t rewire those parts of us—so why did I need to make myself feel badly? When I allowed it, it felt so good to act like a grownup again. One night in Rome we got dressed up and sipped cocktails in the courtyard of a fabulous hotel and I felt like I had super powers. Rob and I were having actual conversations with each other—with eye contact and everything!—instead of staring at the baby and speaking to each other as him (which is a very strange thing that I believe all parents do).

The further we get from the trip, I can see that it was invigorating and energizing and made the very best parts of our marriage shine. We came home exhausted and happy and missing our routine and our baby. When I look at the amazing fallout of being alone for a bit, I feel foolish for letting the guilt in so much. Lou had a ball and (I was told with slight apprehension) didn’t seem to miss us in the slightest, that little extrovert.

My baby deserves happy parents, and if that means taking a break once a year, then maybe that’s not such a big deal. But next time, I’ll just take the stairs.

One afternoon this past May, my friend Mark and I chatted and sipped coffee in a panoramic window seat at Atwater’s in Belvedere Square.

Outside, in signature if-you-don’t-like-the-weather-wait-five-minutes Baltimore style, the skies seesawed wildly between blazingly sunny and threateningly stormy. On our table, along with the salt, pepper, organic sugar, and Splenda, rested two child car seats, propped side by side, in which a pair of 10-month-old twin boys slept peacefully.

After a while, I noticed that more than a few people entering and leaving the restaurant glanced at us with warmth, bemusement, curiosity, or a mixture of all three. More intimately, our twentysomething waitress treated us with what seemed like a winking understanding.

As Mark and I remarked upon this what-the-heck phenomenon, its likely catalyst finally hit me: “They think we’re gay granddads,” I told him, at which we both chuckled.

The strangers’ apparent perception was understandable: We were two going-gray guys (we’re both 63) minding slumbering infants midweek at 4 p.m. Add to that the fact that Netflix had just streamed its much-ballyhooed show Grace and Frankie, starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as not-so-chummy women of a certain age whose law-partner husbands (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) announce that they’re leaving them to marry to each other. Here we sat, a seemingly real-life manifestation of the Sheen/Waterston characters.

“I became a first-time father at 61, an age when many men dote on their grandkids.”

But Mark and I are neither gay nor granddads, although his daughter certainly is old enough to be a mom. The babies are my sons Tex and Miner, now 17 months old and zipping around like pixelated penguins, yammering to each other in a distinctive twinspeak, and conducting long-term research into parental sleep deprivation.

To my astonishment, I became a first-time father at 61, an age when many men downsize their households, regularly check their 401k accounts, and, yes, dote on their grandkids.

Two years before Tex and Miner floated down the Patapsco in a wicker basket, I was equally astonished to find myself becoming a first-time husband, married to my girlfriend of several years, Betsy Boyd.

After four-plus decades as a serial boyfriend with few responsibilities outside of my editor/writer job, I finally overcame my skittishness regarding matrimony, persuaded by my undiluted love for Betsy and hers for me. Ditto having a kid, which she indicated from the start was on her wish list. Marriage and parenthood, it turns out, have been the most rewarding—and the best—decisions I’ve ever made.

Still, both commitments, particularly dad-dom, came bundled in my most daunting challenges to date—and those challenges started right away.

Even before the daily multiple diaper changings, feedings, and interventions to prevent the twins from killing themselves (or killing each other), Tex and Miner Boyd (at my insistence, they took Betsy’s surname) required an enormous amount of work, almost all of it on Betsy’s part. That’s because they were conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF) with the aid of a sperm donor, made necessary after a urologist informed us that my sperm had been zapped into “immaturity” by radiation treatments for cancer 10 years earlier. Two IVF procedures (the first failed), plus four earlier unsuccessful attempts at intrauterine insemination, took an emotional and physical toll on Betsy.

Not surprisingly, however, the twins have provided a profoundly positive payoff. (They’re fraternal twins, by the way, who barely look brotherly these days: Tex, the scampish, blue-eyed, long-locked pop star; Miner, the sheepish, brown-eyed, fuzzy-headed boy-next-door.)

First discernible word from both: “Dada,” which, as you might imagine, gave me a thrill, regardless of whether they meant me or the convention-flouting early-20th-century art and literary movement.

“The available resources fail to address men who held out until their 60s to become parents.”

Admittedly, I continue to adjust to my new role, frequently all over the place emotionally: delighted, resentful, proud, and depressed, sometimes all within the span of an hour. Raising children, in this case a same-age double whammy, is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and available resources, either people I know or go-to guides, fail to address the peculiar situation of men who held out until their 60s to become first-time parents. (Famously, Steve Martin did so in 2012 at 67; regrettably, he doesn’t accept my calls.)

Caregiving comes somewhat naturally to me, I’ve learned, when you consider my six-plus years attending to the needs of my mother—dementia-addled, physically debilitated, and yet relentlessly wonderful—and 40 years rescuing and raising stray cats, including feeding them, obsessively scooping/cleaning their litter boxes, ferrying them to the vet, and petting them affectionately.

In fact, my cat-guy DNA took over during the first several months of Tex’s and Miner’s lives—their inert “blob phase” (a spot-on descriptor introduced to me by my friend Jim, a real gay granddad)—when I treated them as if they were kittens. It often irritated me that after the boys had been fed, changed out of poopy diapers, and adoringly rocked and stroked, they didn’t just curl up and nap for five hours, allowing me to get on with some undisturbed reading, listening to music, writing, or whatever else appealed to me at the moment. Why all the seemingly irrational crying? Couldn’t they see that I was busy?

Given that Betsy works two part-time jobs (teaching at the University of Baltimore and serving as an editor at Style magazine), I have spent a lot of time alone with the twins—a stay-at-home, seldom-leave-the-premises, wearing-my-pajamas-all-day dad performing various quotidian baby-related tasks in a zombified state, the result of the Beastie Boyds’ aforementioned parental sleep-deprivation study.

They usually wake up hungry several times nightly, at which point Betsy and I divide and conquer: She nurses Miner, while I coax Tex to take a bottle. While I’ve never slept well, I’ve slept even less well in recent times, frequently leaving me a wreck the next day.

“‘You’ll be a great father,’ Betsy used to tell me during her pre-twin pep talks. We’ll see.”

As a result, a kind of Fog of Fatherhood enveloped me for almost a year after Tex’s and Miner’s births, disconnecting me, an avid news consumer, from the outside world. It took me months to understand the magnitude of ISIS and Ferguson. And for the first time since I turned 18, I missed voting, dumbfounded the day after the November 2014 election to learn that the Republicans had secured Maryland’s governorship.

This past summer, around the time the boys evolved from commando-style crawling to drunken waddling, that fog began to lift, thanks, in part, to the take-charge nanny we hired five hours a day twice each week, freeing me to gradually reacquaint myself with the world.

That baby step away from the twins, oddly, has allowed me to appreciate them—I’ve always loved them—more than before.

Increasingly, I find it kind of cute, as opposed to kind of annoying, when each boy grabs one of my pant legs and shakes it vigorously while I’m tending to household chores; when they gleefully empty their toy chest item by item after I’ve carefully put away those same toys; and when they ceremoniously dump a meal, prepared by their mom or me, on the floor beside their highchairs.

We regularly listen to music together—not simpering kids tunes, but 45s r.p.m.s blasting from my vintage jukebox, with the boys clinging to its chrome grille as they rock out in tandem to, say, Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tristessa,” Uncle Tupelo’s “Gun,” or Superchunk’s “The Breadman.” (We’re in the midst of an early-’90s bender.)

“You’ll be a great father,” Betsy used to tell me during her pre-twins pep talks. We’ll see. Right now, I’m as much a work in progress as the babies.

I definitely will be an old father. No one needs to point out that I will be on the cusp of 80 when the boys graduate from high school. And let’s be frank: I will probably not still walk among the living if one or both of them marries and has kids of his own, especially if they wait until they’re 60-plus as I did.

Already, I’m a happy father. So maybe I should just embrace this mistaken-for-grandpa experience and enjoy it. At least Tex and Miner know I’m their dad.

In an office adorned with brightly-colored athletic jerseys on every wall, Kevin Crutchfield—director of LifeBridge Health’s Comprehensive Sports Concussion Program—practices neurology as if it’s a stand-up act. During this morning’s concussion clinic, Crutchfield reaches into his doctor’s bag (“my toy bag,” he calls it) to produce a small oregano-filled canister to test a patient’s sense of smell, then guides another patient to walk heel-to-toe toward what he calls his “time-out” corner, and holds yet another young man hostage to ensure that—despite headaches caused by a series of football- and ice-hockey-related collisions—the patient hasn’t lost his ability to laugh at Crutchfield’s never-ending arsenal of corny jokes.

“This is what I call my numbskull treatment,” says the neurologist as he numbs the teenager’s skull before injecting him with an occipital nerve block to alleviate severe headaches. (The patient alternately winces in pain and smiles.)

Laughing matters aside, Crutchfield, who learned the tricks of his trade during a residency at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, approaches his role with missionary zeal as he spreads the gospel of concussions to patients (including Ravens and Orioles players), parents, athletic directors, and anyone else within earshot. His message is loud and clear: Concussions are a medical issue to be reckoned with, and, if not treated correctly (ideally, within 48 hours in Crutchfield’s book), can cause devastating problems, both long- and short-term, to the brain.

Within the past four years or so, concussions, commonly found in high-contact sports, have become a topic of increasing concern and controversy as stories of the injury’s aftermath—early dementia, depression, visual processing, and even death—come to light. Although researchers have studied the issue for decades, about four years ago, “the NFL admitted they had a problem,” says Crutchfield, a former soccer player himself at St. Mary’s College. “They stopped sweeping it under the rug.” Landmark congressional hearings in 2009 led to more stringent rules in the NFL, preventing players from returning to practice or a game if significant signs of a concussion were shown.

These days, the spotlight shines on the playing fields of youth sports—from the lacrosse rec leagues at Brooklandville’s Meadowood Regional Park to the football field at Dulaney High School—amplifying the need to tend to these injuries seriously and urgently at every level. What happened in the NFL, says Andrew Tucker, Ravens’ head team physician and medical director of sports medicine at MedStar Union Memorial Hospital, has “focused our attention even more so on concussions and on the importance of taking very conservative care not only in the football league, but in youth sports where people start their careers.”

Fourteen-year-old Coral Dittmar, who attends George Fox Middle School in Pasadena, was playing club field hockey when an out-of-control ball socked her straight in the temple.

“It completely knocked her off her feet,” recalls Coral’s mom, Ginny. “She had a huge bump that looked like a horn sticking out of the top of her head.”

After being evaluated at a local emergency room, Coral was sent on her way. “We were told it was just a bad contusion,” says Ginny. “They said because she hadn’t lost consciousness or vomited, it wasn’t a concussion.” But a year and a half after the initial accident in October 2010, Coral still suffered from balance and memory issues. After a referral to Crutchfield’s clinic, Ginny learned that her daughter had, in fact, suffered a concussion. “I thought that if it was a concussion, it would have been something they’d pick up that day,” says Ginny. “I never expected she’d still be suffering.”

In part, because there is no standardization of concussion care, Coral is one of many kids who didn’t even know that they had a concussion until much later.

“We are still fighting the mentality of, ‘Oh you dinged yourself,’” says Bill Ashton, sports medicine manager at LifeBridge Health. “We like to say, ‘It’s not just a sprain, it’s your brain.’ Kids need to understand you need your brain for everything. It’s not like treating a pulled muscle or a broken arm.”

Part of the issue, experts say, is that concussions can be tricky to diagnose. “Brain injury is what we call the silent epidemic,” says Bryan Pugh, executive director of the Brain Injury Association of Maryland. “You look typical, but the eggs are scrambled.”

Though there’s still a long way to go, the hope is that Maryland’s new youth concussion law (House Bill 858) signed on May 19, 2011, to protect student athletes from the dangers of concussions, will finally raise long-overdue awareness. (Maryland is the 18th state in the country to introduce such a law.) Now, when a concussion is suspected, the law mandates that a student be removed “from practice or play and returned only after clearance by an appropriately licensed health-care professional.”

And although the law is new, it has already had a dramatic impact on the way in which concussions are handled.

“In the olden days, it was no exercise for a week and then it was okay to go back into the game,” says Paul Bernstorf director of athletics at St. Paul’s School for Boys. “The severity of the injury didn’t matter. Now, it’s a gradual re-entry to play.” (Interestingly, private schools are exempt from the law as it is written, but most schools have their own protocol to protect students.)

While some studies suggest that concussions among student athletes are on the rise, it is hard to say whether sports have become more competitive or whether, with growing awareness, the reporting rates are simply higher. Crutchfield has his own theory. “Athletes are bigger, and they are faster these days, so the force of impact is greater. . . . It’s like running into a train.”

When Crutchfield joined Sinai in 2008, he recognized a need to grow a comprehensive clinic that specifically addressed the multifaceted issues surrounding sports concussions. By fall 2009, he helped expand the mild brain-injury program of Sinai’s Berman Brain & Spine Institute and initiated the development of the Comprehensive Sports Concussion Program, the first integrated interdisciplinary mild brain-injury program on the East Coast.

Eighteen-year-old Kyler Barrett, a recent graduate of Marriotts Ridge High School in Howard County, is among the clinic’s many patient athletes. Barrett was first injured in the fall of 2009, during a high-school football game. “He never came out of the game,” recalls his mother, Robin. “We don’t know when it happened. He said he felt a little ‘off,’ but he thought he was hungry.” Two days later, Kyler was diagnosed with a “mild concussion” at a local hospital. And though the symptoms have ebbed and flowed, nearly three years (and 10 doctors) later, Barrett is still suffering. Under Crutchfield’s care, he will possibly undergo surgery to alleviate his crippling headaches.

“I know people who have had concussions and they talk about headaches,” says Barrett. “But I wish that all I had was the headaches. I’ve had violent mood swings, depressions, sleep issues. Over time you learn to cope with it.”

With cases this severe, some parents are re-evaluating their decision to let their children play contact sports at all.

Betsy Berner’s daughter Naomi, a multisport athlete at Park School, has sustained two concussions (although one was the result of a fluky accident off the field.). Now, Betsy struggles with whether or not to let Naomi play.

“I guess you have to weigh the risk of injury against the very real benefits like leadership, teamwork, increased strength, and agility that are derived from playing team sports,” Betsy says. “I don’t know what the answer is.”

But Michael Dvorkin, an orthopedic surgeon whose son, Garrett, plays football at Gilman, puts his faith in the coaches and educators at that school.

“Gilman School considers its athletes’ health and well-being their first priority,” he says. “As a parent, this eases my mind and I have complete trust in the program.”

Crutchfield says that when a child gets concussed, parents often have one of two extreme reactions: Either they remove the child from the field of play entirely or they rush him back too soon.

“I would hope that every parent is more concerned with their child’s brain as opposed to a sport,” he says, noting that as awareness has increased, parents have become more cautious.

But he feels that if the concussion is treated properly—that is, as an emergency and within the first 48 hours—the risks of permanent brain damage are greatly decreased.

Too much delay in treatment (or the wrong kind of treatment) as was the case with Kyler Barrett, can result in no resolution of symptoms or lead to surgery, says Crutchfield. “If I can [immediately] guide the brain down the proper path of recovery, it’s so much easier than six months or a year later,” he notes.

Thirteen-year-old Grace, the daughter of WBAL-TV anchor Lisa Robinson, was one of the lucky ones. She was referred to Crutchfield’s clinic within 48 hours of a collision during basketball practice at The Bryn Mawr School where she was captain of her middle-school team.

“The other player’s head hit me right on the side of my face,” recalls Grace, who had also suffered a concussion the previous year. “I was hurt so badly, I couldn’t see straight, and my coach had to help me walk to the trainer’s office.”

Although Grace was back at school the next day, Robinson recalls getting a phone call at the station. “They said, ‘You have to come get Grace. She just doesn’t seem herself.’”

In Crutchfield’s office the next day, it became clear that Grace had, in fact, suffered a concussion. “He did the balance test with me, and my balance was awful,” says Grace. “He referred me to do the Wii Fit every day as therapy.”

Within several months, Grace was able to return to sports and feel more like her old self. Though happy to be symptom-free, she was less happy about saying a final farewell to the clinic. “On our last appointment she turned to me and said, ‘You mean I don’t get to go anymore?’” says Robinson, laughing at the memory.

Kid-friendly is exactly what Crutchfield is aiming for as he establishes his clinic as the go-to place for young athletes. “The message to kids when they walk through the doors is that this is their clinic,” he says.

And if it’s up to Grace, who has become something of an expert on the matter, the concussed will keep coming to Crutchfield.

“Every time she sees someone who appears to have a concussion,” says Robinson, “she gives out Dr. Crutchfield’s number.” Adds Grace, “I’ve given the balance test right there on the court.”

There we were—the hubby and me—in the sonogram room at our obstetrician’s office waiting to see that little eight-week-old blob that would be our baby in 32 short weeks. The tech kept looking at the screen and moving the wand around my goopy belly. Finally, she uttered the words you never want to hear—especially from your sonographer—”How are you with surprises?”

Let’s take a pregnant pause for a little bit of background. Not too long ago, my husband Ron and I, happily married for six years, were the parents of two kids under the age of four, one big dog, and living in a cozy row house in the city. We had talked about maybe one day, down the road, possibly (if the stars aligned and we won the lottery), having a third baby. But weeks earlier, an anniversary trip to the Four Seasons in Washington, D.C., plus a forgotten birth control pill, had resulted in a missed period. Four days, a few glasses of wine, and a whole lot of denial later, I took a pregnancy test. Then I waited another eight hours to tell my husband.

For the next few weeks we let it sink in—yes, we were going to have another baby and we would make it work.

And then the bombshell. The tech turned the screen to face us and pointed out two little embryos. “Twins.” As in, not one more baby but two. As in, not a family of five but six. As in, our SUV wasn’t even going to cut it anymore.

My husband looked lovingly at me and then—never one to mince words—turned back to the tech and said, “Are you shitting me?” She was not. I went to the bathroom and stared into the mirror—my face a mix of elation and sheer terror.

The staff at the obstetric office was ecstatic. “We love twins around here,” one of the nurses told me. “What a miracle!” said another. Ron and I exchanged another look. Glad they were so excited about it.

The car ride home was a mix of hysterical laughter and blame. And then we didn’t speak about it for a few weeks.

Ron and I moved from D.C. into a two-bedroom row home in Canton in 2004, the fall after we got married. We figured we’d enjoy life as a childless couple for a while in an exciting new city. So much for our best laid plans. A little over a year later—the week I started my job as lifestyle editor of Baltimore magazine, coincidentally—I found out I was pregnant.

Our second bedroom, at the time an office/guest room, was promptly converted to a nursery, and Milo arrived in October 2006. In January 2009, Willa joined the family. When she was six months old, we moved Milo into a toddler bed, she got the crib, and the room sharing began. No big deal. Sure, our family room had slowly lost the good (i.e., hazardous) objects—no more glass coffee table with deathtrap edges, trinkets, and a big bowl of matchbooks—and we had to buy things like outlet covers and gates for our stairs. And yes, our rooms were taken over with their stuff—bins of toys, a baby swing, a high chair, and a playmat. Still, manageable.

But four kids in a two-bedroom row house sounded like the makings of a reality show. (My working titles? Janelle & Ron Lose Their Minds. Or Diamonds in the Rough. Not as catchy as Jon & Kate Plus Eight—but hopefully a happier ending.)

“Who has four kids anymore?” Ron kept asking me. I would mention a friend of a friend. “They have three kids,” he retorted. Right.

It got better once we told family, although we did it in a sneaky way. We put Willa in a “Big Sister” T-shirt at the beach and waited to see who noticed.

“Wait, what is Willa wearing?” my sister finally asked.

“A baby?” squealed my aunt.

Actually, two.

We sent out an e-mail to friends in mid-August: Well, we have some news. We are expecting a baby this winter. And another one. Yes, TWINS. Yes, we’re still in shock-and-awe mode. Yes, we realize we need a minivan. Yes, we are aware we’ll never eat out again. We just started our second trimester. We saw both babes last week—and two good heartbeats. Holy crap.

The responses flooded in with lots of exclamation points and all caps. Friends without kids would squeal, “TWINS!!!!!!! WOWOWOW. So cool.” Friends with kids would say, “Oh, wow. Are you okay?” We became an urban legend: Trying for one more baby? First, let me tell you about my friend Janelle. . . .

The weeks started to fly by. Soon it was fall. My belly was growing. At 20 weeks, Baby A and Baby B became two boys. I felt great. I’ve always had easy pregnancies. This one was only slightly different. I was hungry constantly the first trimester, felt great the second trimester, and started to expand greatly the third. We saw the boys every four weeks via sonogram to make sure they were growing at the same rate (they were) and that my body was happy (it was). During one of the appointments, the boys were head to head—already plotting against us. I was constantly being kicked and punched by eight limbs. We put our house on the market, with no success (if anyone is interested in a well-loved two bedroom in Canton, call me), and made lists of what we needed.

At what ended up being my last doctor’s appointment before I delivered, I was measuring roughly 16 weeks “bigger” than what I actually was. Sleeping became a chore—between my girth and heartburn, I was up constantly. My last pregnant week, I had my spring fashion photoshoot for the magazine. I had circled that date in my calendar, telling myself I just wanted to make it to that shoot. And I did. The following Saturday morning, my husband went into work and I was home with the kids. Around 8:30, I started getting some pain in my lower belly. I sat in my glider with my two-year-old on my lap (well, what was left of it), and slowly rocked. I knew what was happening, but was in denial. Was I ready? It was January 22—one day short of 36 weeks.

Just before 2 p.m., Zeke Gray entered the world weighing a respectable 5 pounds, 14 ounces. And a minute later, his little brother Gideon Levi, two ounces lighter. They were healthy and perfect. Zeke looked just like his brother Milo had—a shock of black hair, little almond shaped eyes, and a look that said he wasn’t entirely happy with the situation. Gideon looked like Willa—a sweet face, a decent amount of hair, happy and content.

It’s been eight weeks since we became a family of six. We’ve all had several good cries. I’m exhausted—it’s hard to remember what sleeping more than a three-hour block feels like. I can now feed two babies at once, burp two babies at once, hold two babies at once, and apparently type while nursing and simultaneously rocking the other baby with my foot.

We’re in what can best be described as survival mode. We say yes to anyone who offers us anything—food, a sleepover for Milo, taking over carpools, holding babies, dog sitting. At times, I’ve been almost overwhelmed by all the generosity.

My big kids have adjusted amazingly. Milo likes to hold his brothers (briefly) and promises them his toys because “when they are bigger, I’ll be in college.” My daughter is now surrounded by three brothers (poor girl will probably never be able to date). She likes to show them her princess dresses. “Look, baby, look,” she’ll say, spinning. She thinks of them as her own personal dolls, pointing to one baby and saying, “Mommy, I want to hold that.” And she thinks they are both named Gideon.

Going out of the house with twins is hilarious. We’re like some sort of novelty act. You would think people would be used to twins (they’re not that rare), but no matter where we go—the supermarket, the mall, the park—they flock to our stretch-limo sized stroller. And so many questions. Are they twins? (Umm, yes.) Fraternal or identical? (Most definitely fraternal.) And are they from fertility treatments? (Not that it’s your business, but no.)

People keep calling me a super mom. But truthfully, I’m not sure what the alternative would be. To fall apart? Never leave the house? This is our new normal. It helps that I already had kids. I already knew how to feed a baby, change a diaper—it’s just learning to do it two at a time. Now it’s about the small victories—showering, surviving a night by myself with all four kids, making the house look like a minor bomb hasn’t gone off.

The babies now have little personalities. Zeke is the loudest baby I’ve ever encountered. He sleeps loud, eats loud, breathes loud. It’s like he has a microphone attached to his onesie. He has the most beautiful smile—already flashing it liberally at Mommy and Daddy—and his Great Grandma Stella’s gorgeous lips. Gideon is our well-mannered runt. Slightly smaller than his brother, he only cries when hungry or wet. He likes to mimic some of the noises his brother makes and has a beautiful face including fat little cheeks.

The other night, everyone was asleep. Milo and Willa in their room, Gideon in our room, Zeke and my husband on the couch. I should have crawled into bed to get some sleep before their 1 a.m. feeding, but instead I watched TV and ate a bowl of ice cream, relishing the quiet. It’ll be years before I have more than a few minutes of peace—so I may have to schedule some. Along with my husband’s springtime vasectomy.