Shannon Phillips

We got to see my baby nephew Luke in Portland last weekend—he was the sweetest little thing, with his small kitten cries and his little scrunchy fists. As ill fate would have it, though, I started to develop a cough on the drive up, so I heroically refrained from holding the baby, lest I pass on my germs. It was so hard!

I did get to chat with Masie about just how taxing it is to be the primary caregiver to a newborn. This is one of those things that “everybody knows,” so it’s hard to have a conversation about it except with people who are actually currently engaged in the process—because if you’re not severely sleep-deprived then you tend to forget just how debilitating it can be. There’s a relief in talking with somebody who really knows how difficult (as well as how rewarding) babies can be.

Although my baby? He’s not a newborn any more. In fact, compared to his cousin, Sol is great big hulking bruiser. Here he is enjoying the “science playground” at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry:

The other kids enjoyed it a lot too, but they were too busy zipping around for me to get good photos.

Now we are home and trying to settle back into our daily routines, although everyone still has a cough and I’ve got a mild case of pink-eye on top of that. Coming down sick over vacation is so annoying, and yet I suspect it’s not accidental: in college I used to always get sick whenever I went home for break. It was right after finals, so I’d always been stressing out and not getting much sleep in the weeks before. I think under those circumstances the body holds up as well as it can, and then as soon as you feel like you can rest and relax, you break down. I dunno. It’s my theory.