As I write this, it's Memorial Day weekend, and Nora is sick again. She has an unerring knack for it; at the first whiff that we all (especially the day-care workers) have Monday off, down she goes with an ear infection or a sinus infection or something. This time, it's an ear infection, with bouts of midnight vomiting on top of it. We cancelled a play date and are hunkering down inside while it's brilliantly sunny and gorgeous out; by Monday, she should feel just well enough to be really stir-crazy and, well, toddler-y. I have a feeling funny this one is going to give new meaning to the phrase "long weekend."

I hate seeing her not feel well, of course. There's nothing like having your child plaintively ask, "Nora go doctor? Feel better?" to drive home the point that she's not at her best. Still, I have to say there are a few bonuses for Mama in there, like how this morning she just wanted to sit in my lap, cuddle, and rock for fifteen minutes at a time or so.

That kind of snuggling is rare indeed with a kid who will be two in just a month. She's a full-fledged, running-around toddler these days. In fact, one of her favorite expressions is "Run awaaaaay!", shouted while, yes, running away. (We aren't sure who's been showing her Monty Python movies while we weren't looking. I suspect my brother.) She always runs back, but, running? Away? She's really, really not a baby anymore. (The habit of referring to her as one dies hard at our house, though.)

That's not to say she doesn't regress a bit sometimes. We went to visit a friend who just had a baby, her second, and Nora was fascinated by breastfeeding, which she probably hadn't seen since she did it herself, something of which she clearly has no memory. She was weaned—really, weaned herself—just before she hit a year old, so the days of nursing are long past, and at first she looked at me and looked at the baby as if to ask what that crazy baby was doing. I explained that she was eating, that that was how mamas feed little babies, and for days thereafter I got the repeated question: "Baby eat Mama?" Yes, yes, the baby was eating and the mama was feeding her. And then she'd look at my chest and make a lunge for my shirt buttons, and I would have to fend her off. That ship has really, truly sailed.

Sometimes, though, I'm nostalgic not just for the nursing (though never, never, never for the nursing bras), but of course for the world of babydom: the big eyes, the chubby cheeks, the way you plunk a baby down on a blanket and she just…stays there, cooing, instead of running away and grabbing something out of the garbage can or decorating the hardwood floor with green crayon. That perfect baby age of four or five months—when you've got a bit of a routine, and the baby is interactive and adorable—seems like heaven, though I know there must be something I'm forgetting. The exhaustion of getting up every night, maybe.

As I think I've mentioned in this space before, I'd kind of dreaded having a toddler. I'm a fan of reason, the inevitability of if/then statements, the logic of consequences, the proportionality of an event and the reaction thereto. Toddlers don't get those things. If Nora's jacket is not on (or, five minutes later, is on) and is not zipped up to the exact spot she likes, then it is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, one to be lamented with the approximate level of rage and reasonability of Lear howling back at the storm.

Happily, however, the tradeoff is that when she's like the girl with the curl: her sweetness is every bit as sweet as the tantrums are bitter. We just got a piano, for instance—it was my late grandmother's—and Nora is entranced with it; she likes to just bang the keys, of course, as any kid would, but she is also delighted by my beyond-rusty, hunt-and-peck playing, such as it is. We're working together on "Mary Had a Little Lamb," which unfortunately may be about the limit of my piano-teaching skills. Still, there's a quotidian joy in having her sit with me on the piano bench and plink out a hesitant melody on the very flat instrument.

The sweetness of time at the piano with her, though, is far outstripped by the bits of time we spend in the garden. Over the winter, we had our good-for-nothing lawn ripped out of our tiny box of a yard, replacing it with a patio and a perennial and edible garden, complete with a trellis for berries and climbing vegetables, and raised beds for other vegetables in the side yard. Nora helps me water the pots, and has tasted mint leaves (and asked for more) and "helped" thin basil seedlings. That last one wasn't a great success, actually; she was an overenthusiastic thinner, and it became something of a tragic occasion for the basil.

My favorite moments, though, are the ones when she asks for peas. I put in some late sugar-snap peas, and Nora caught on to their sweet deliciousness. Now, when I'm out puttering around or sitting under the patio umbrella with a book while she arranges rocks or plays in the sandbox, she'll look up at the vines: "Peas? Peas?" (I think the second word is meant to be "please"; at least, I'm interpreting it that way.) I snap off a pea and she tromps through the garden eating it, happy and heedless of the plants beneath her feet. (Note to self: plant hardy herbs.)

Seeing her wander through the garden, poking at the plants and munching a pea, is, I think, probably what I daydreamed about, back when she was a baby and I was mired in nursing and sleeplessness. It makes the whole thing—the toddler tantrums, the sick days, the digging in the garden—worth it and then some. I've hardly tasted a single one of those sugar snaps this year, but I couldn't care less.