I’m pretty sure that these weeks of solo parenting are turning me into Calvin’s Dad. I have an awesome, inquisitive, sweet, and energetic child. I am lucky.

And…she is driving me up a wall right now. There is an ill Pine Siskin in our yard which we have been nursing (as best we can) with fresh water and Nyger and Sunflower chips. Since noon, we have had at least 200 conversations on how illness spreads, whether she will die, whether the cat will get her, and how much we hate the cats that might get her. I’m rooting for that poor little bird, but my goodness, I want her to get better and fly away, like, NOW.

Today, I have explained “prehistoric,” why lobsters look like scorpions, and why people called sabertoothed tigers sabertoothed tigers. We have discussed that while dead bodies do smell bad, by the time they turn to fossils they don’t smell bad.

Oh, we just covered Chernobyl and nuclear weapons. And the names of dog breeds that save people from drowning.

I get this kid, I do: I was this kid. It’s like food. She has to know. She has to know ALL THE THINGS.

But then there is my sanity.

And as for my sanity: well. She’s a delightful kid, really. But I have no down time. I put a little matching table next to my desk in my office, and she colors or writes or cuts paper or punches holes or draws while I’m working, but the questions still come fast and furious.

The silver lining is that in not having energy to actually write, I’ve been given artificial distance from my project and have very detailed rewrite plans now. I’m very happy about that (no sarcasm) but ache, long, yearn to write. (Sorry for the hyperbole, but I’m actually not being hyperbolic.) I would write when she sleeps, but I am usually far too gone myself by that point.

She’s starting Highland dance lessons tomorrow. I can’t wait: I am hoping this means she burns so much energy that she falls right in bed after dinner twice a week. (A woman can dream.) I’m looking into gymnastics. I bought tennis racquets for the two of us, and as soon as the weather is even slightly better, plan on taking her every afternoon I can, since we have courts at a park just a few blocks away.

And I just can’t wait until April, when M’s travel madness ends. Can’t. Wait.