5:00am: “Meeeeelk! Meeeeelk!” Toddler screams to nurse. My body says no. 

8:30am: Husband asks what I want for breakfast. I don’t know. I’m newly pregnant. I’m nauseous. 

9:00am: Find a toddler bed for sale on NextDoor. "I need to get him out of my bed & off my boob," I think. 

9:30am: We sit down for breakfast: special bread - sourdough with whole cloves of roasted garlic & rosemary - from a bakery an hour north. Scrambled eggs. I feel a slight aversion to this food but need sustenance to breastfeed a toddler & grow a new human. 

10:30am: We tend the garden. Toddler wants the gardening shears. He settles for splashing in a baby pool full of leaves. Fall is encroaching on late summer. Husband stakes the tomatoes, branches heavy with reddish green fruit. The only reason anything survives in our garden is because the water is on a timer. That’s life right now. “Let’s make caprese today,” we decide. I collect the dried brown seeds of the calendula. Each flower gives dozens of seeds. For a moment, life feels abundant. I envision all the blank spots of our yard overflowing with these yellow & orange sunshine bursts. They buoyed me all through the winter. 

1:00am: "Meeeeelk! Meeeeelk!" Toddler has fallen off his bike into the wood chips. One wood chip is stuck in the side of his face.

12:15pm: I go to “slow flow” yoga. I can hardly move even though it’s taught at a snail’s pace. 

1:30pm: "Meeeeelk! Meeeeelk!"

2:00pm: Toddler watches “Kiki’s Delivery Service” while I begin a webinar about “gentle weaning.” There are 16 hours of video and a 75 page PDF. I begin to think I will just disappear for a week and let toddler & husband figure it out. Hawaii is calling.

4:00pm: We set up the new toddler bed beside the sunny picture window in our room. Toddler thinks it is a great trampoline.

5:00pm: We eat caprese salad with our backyard tomatoes & basil, and local buffalo mozzarella.

5:30pm: We sit down to an easy pasta dinner. I can barely choke a few bites down. Being pregnant becomes real for the first time. “I’m overwhelmed and scared,” I tell my husband, looking at our toddler and wondering HOW we will do it with two. He puts his arm around me and says, “Everything is going to be ok. It will be great.” He is not convincing. 

6:30pm: I take a bath with toddler and it is my favorite part of the day. We are present, giggling. He looks at me the way he did when he was born into the water almost two years ago. 

7:30pm: Husband takes toddler out on a stroller walk. When they return, toddler is asleep. In one hand, he holds a stuffed cat that looks like my dad’s real one, in the other, a hand-knitted Totoro. I feel deep love for my family.

8:00pm: Silence. Bed. 

11:00pm: A voice from the stroller in the other room: “Mama? Mamaaaa! Meeelk!”

Katie Russell has been an archaeologist, editor, designer, writer, and environmental scientist. Right now, she's mama to her toddler Rowan. Her family calls Fairfax, California home.