If Daniel Tiger were real life

For a long time, the only TV show Eli watched was Chuggington. This is because the first time I ever let Eli watch TV, it was the first show that came up in the alphabetical list of Disney Junior shows on demand. Chuggington is originally a British show (that's been dubbed over with American voices because I guess American children are incapable of following British accents?) about three trainee chuggers.

Koko is the fast one, Brewster is the strong one and Wilson is...kind of the dumb one, to be honest? In every episode Koko learns not to be so competitive and impulsive, Brewster learns not to be so plodding and indecisive, and Wilson learns not to be so distracted and overexcited. It's basically a poor man's Thomas the Tank Engine with zippier pacing and less expensive products (which has become important to us because Eli owns just about every chugger on the show).

Like most parents of toddlers who are attached to a particular program, I've seen every episode of Chuggington multiple times. I've added the phrases "Honkin' horns!" and "Traintastic!" to my everyday vernacular. It was time to expand our repertoire.

On vacation this summer, we cycled through Clifford the Big Red Dog and Caillou, to which I've attempted to heavily limit exposure because everybody knows Caillou is the most irritating bald kid on television.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, Eli had a brief, torrid affair with Doc McStuffins, a little girl who's a "toy doctor" with a magic stethoscope that makes her toys come to life.

Judging by his wide-eyed, moony smile when Doc was on, I suspected he might have his first crush. To this day, if you sing "Time for your check-up!" he'll pantomime checking your ears and eyes and listening to your heartbeat.

But then his love for Doc McStuffins abruptly fizzled out (perhaps the fact that he had to visit the real doctor so dang much this winter had something to do with it). It was move over, Doc McStuffins, make way for...

In terms of toddler shows, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood has a lot going for it. It's a spinoff of the uber-classic Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, with all the puppets from the Land of Make-Believe transformed into cartoon characters. It's gentle and quiet and won't irritate you much if it's playing in the background on a day when your kid is sick and watches 17 episodes in a row (um, this is a hypothetical scenario, of course). Every episode has a theme accompanied by a "strategy song" that all the characters sing to each other to help each other cope with whatever bull$#@! — I mean, challenges — they're dealing with. (In Eli's favorite episode, Daniel and his class go on a walk through the neighborhood to practice safety rules, and they keep singing, "Stop and listen to stay safe.")

Sure, the show has its downfalls. All the characters have their own little catchphrases, some of which I find super irritating. (Why does Miss Elaina need to call everyone "toots"? For that matter, why is her name Miss Elaina?) Much has been made of the fact that Daniel Tiger wears pajama pants at home but doesn't wear any pants to go out in public, and two separate times in the past week someone has asked me why Prince Tuesday needs to work as a waiter and a babysitter if his father is the king (my suspicion: King Friday is a Bill Gates-esque figure who wants his son to learn the value of hard work).

In Eli's mind, he and Daniel Tiger are like kindred spirits. When Daniel Tiger kept crashing into Katerina Kittycat at school and accidentally broke her car costume, Eli decided it would be a good idea to crash into me a lot so that he too could sing at me: "Saying 'sorry' is the first step, then 'How can I help?'" When Daniel Tiger announces his frustration with a "Grrrr!" Eli does too, waiting expectantly for me to sing, "When you're feeling frustrated, take a step back [at this point Eli actually literally takes a step back, which is just as cute as it sounds] and ask for help." When it's time to clean up, Eli sings the Daniel Tiger cleanup song to himself: "Clean up, pick up, put away! Clean up, every day!" Recently Eli ran into the living room holding a toy car and declared, "I found what I was looking for. I'm not frustrated anymore!" Articulation of feelings: made possible by PBS and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood.

But these strategy songs can backfire on us, too. There's one that goes, "It's almost time to stop, so choose one more thing to do...That was fun but now it's done!" All on his own, Eli started saying, "I choose one more thing!" when I would tell him it was time to start getting ready to go. At first it was like, This is fantastic. Who says TV rots your brain? Thanks, Daniel Tiger!

Then he started saying things like, "I choose one more thing to do. I choose...play with my magnets!" Presumably this meant for an indefinite amount of time. My 2-year-old had found a loophole in the Daniel Tiger strategy of parenting. This morning I was complaining to Phil that the song should really go "It's almost time to stop, so play until I count to 10" or, more realistically, "It's almost time to stop, so choose one more thing to do, and then throw a tantrum anyway when it's really time to stop."

In the next room, Eli happened to be watching the episode that goes "When something seems bad, turn it around and find something good."

"It's more like, 'When something seems bad, throw a huge fit and kick and scream,'" I scoffed at Phil.

And so without further ado, I present...

If Daniel Tiger strategy songs were real life

When you're feeling frustrated, take a step back -- then throw some blocks

Find a way to play together by smacking your friend on the head

Making a poop on the potty is one way to say "I love you"

You can take a turn, and then I'll get it back by wrestling it out of your hands and screaming at your face

When you have to go potty, stop and go right away in your pants so you don't have to interrupt your playing

When you wait, you can play with your mom's iPhone that she'll hand you out of desperation if you whine enough

Refuse to try a new food 'cause it probably tastes awful

Clean up, pick up, put away! Then throw everything on the floor again

If you can't do it alone, cry 

Give a squeeze, nice and slow; take a deep breath and then scream really loud

Think about what you're going to do, then refuse to wear the clothes that are right for you

Everyone's job is important, except mine because it's really just a token activity to keep me out of the way

It's OK to feel sad sometimes; your mom will bribe you with a lollipop and you'll feel better again

They didn't need to warn me

You may have seen this blog post circulating around the Interwebs in the past few weeks, in which a new mom extols the virtues of new motherhood by lambasting the critics who had warned her it might be less than glamorous.

"They should've warned me that after all those hours of labor (half of which was with an epidural, which made things totally bearable), the first time I saw her face my heart would burst out of my chest and shatter onto the floor. They should've warned me that crying because you're happy is actually a thing, and it's a thing you can't control when you're a mommy and you behold the beauty in your arms."

It's beautiful. It also made me feel like I was being stabbed. 

See, they didn't need to warn me. I already knew that's what motherhood was supposed to be like. Every schmaltzy movie, every tearjerking Hallmark commercial, every sentimental essay had taught me how overwhelming the joy of motherhood would be.

They didn't need to warn me that motherhood is astonishingly sweet when it comes immediately and effortlessly. They didn't need to warn me that motherhood was supposed to instantly and irrevocably change me into a more selfless and nurturing version of myself.

I had always wondered how I would be transformed in those first few minutes in the delivery room, after I finally met my child for the first time. But instead I wasn't. I had been laying there for hours, dutifully pushing when I was told; you know how sometimes you go to the movies and there are so many previews you forget you're actually there to see a feature film? When he finally came loose from me that's how it was: I felt vaguely stunned that it had happened, that I had really just released a baby from inside me. Someone deposited him on my chest, facing away from me. "I can't see his face," I kept saying, trying to summon those mystical feelings of awe. Perhaps someone should have warned him: Just hours earlier he had been tucked away inside me, nestled away from our probing hands and prying eyes. He had descended not knowing what awaited him on the surface, armed only with his soft head and a loud cry to mark his arrival.

They didn't need to warn me that the only thing I was supposed to have trouble with was containing my exultation; I already knew that I was failing motherhood in so many ways. I didn't change a single diaper in the entirety of my hospital stay. I didn't lay awake at night and watch him sleep. I breastfed him for hours, but only because I sort of felt like: Well, someone should, right?

What they should've warned me was that I would still be a mother even if I didn't feel like one at first, that my baby wouldn't be able to tell that I was panicked and uncertain and scared out of my mind. That one day eons in the future I would step into his room at night just to see my boy's chest rise and fall inside his fleece pajamas and I would think to myself, "We made it." That I would kiss his cheeks a hundred times and mirror his goofy laugh and forgive myself for worrying I'd never treasure them. They should've warned me there were no medals for early motherhood, that it wasn't a race to love the fastest or the strongest. 

They didn't need to warn me that there would be hard moments where I wondered what I was doing at all and that there would be moments that shone with loveliness and pride; I already knew those things would be true. But they also didn't need to warn me that motherhood would feel so different than I expected, wild and complex and achingly sweet. I figured that out on my own.

Running partners for life

Eight years ago today I went for a run in Forest Park with a guy I'd never met.

We'd spoken on the phone (I in my childhood bedroom with the door closed and the lights off while my parents ate Chinese food in the next room) and chatted online after making contact on JDate. (Not until years later would I find out that he had done a search for women within one mile of his zip code under 5'4" whose profiles included the words "Mets" and "running" -- b'shert indeed). I was suspicious because he hadn't even set up his profile yet, and the two photos he sent me did not inspire confidence: In one of them he was posing goofily with a drunken Santa, and in the other he was leaning against a doorframe, unsmiling and looking really, really Russian.

But I, like Bethenny of The Real Housewives of New York City, was in a place of yes that year: yes to the career path with the Department of Education that would bring me back to New York City from Boston, where I'd just finished graduate school; yes to any guy on JDate who wanted to meet me in person. (I'd suffered through a memorable date at a bar in Cambridge during which I seriously considered slipping out while the guy was in the restroom, and yet I was still accepting all offers.)

I was surprised, and pleased, when he suggested we meet for the first time to go for a run. It was unseasonably warm for January, and I agonized over what to wear, finally settling for shorts over running tights to prevent him from getting too good a look at my behind. When we met in person, I was heartened: He was much, much cuter than his photos.

We ran at a similar pace, a good sign. He talked about being in the Army and I talked about some Army guys who'd run near me in a race, chanting cadence: "One mile, no sweat! Two miles, better yet!" Previous JDates had taught me not to prolong the first meeting, so when we reached the end of the park I was all, "Well, bye!" and he suggested a cooldown walk.

I think I stopped for a salt bagel after. I smiled all the way home. The following week I went out for sushi with another JDate guy (remember, yes to everyone). This one wore a gold Star of David chain and talked a lot about his mother. I'd been cautiously optimistic about the runner, but the sushi guy in comparison elevated him to new heights.

He was working full time and also going to school, and I think neither of us were phone people, so we communicated a lot through email. He'd write with quirky greetings ("Hola senorita") and suggest quirky outings, like the Beatles brunch at B.B. King's or outdoor swing dancing at Lincoln Center. He was an engineer, and he sort of wrote like one ("I guess that negates what I previously said"), but I found it charming.

Today, I text him probably 50 times a day about completely mundane things (Exhibit A: The last text I sent said, "So do you think we should start sending Eli to school in underwear?"), but when I want to overload on a huge dose of nostalgia I go back and read those early emails we sent to each other, which I archived instead of deleted on a hunch that they'd be meaningful someday.

"I was thinking, since we both seem to be morning people, do you want to meet a little earlier on Saturday?" I asked on January 10, 2007. "Sure thing," he wrote back.

Phil and I have gone on tons of memorable runs since January 13, 2007. We ran 10 miles in a downpour at the Broad Street Run in Philadelphia in 2009. Later that year, we ran Phil's first marathon two weeks after our wedding, with "JUST MARRIED" emblazoned on the backs of our shirts. Phil pulled me to a PR (by exactly one minute) in the Brooklyn half in 2011. Later that year, Phil ran a sub-2:00 half-marathon for the first time at a race in Central Park; I was so simultaneously impressed and jealous that I went out the next day to a women's-only race on Long Island and did the same thing. This past spring, we ran a 5K sponsored by the NYPD in Flushing-Meadows Corona Park while  "handcuffed" together, and we got a plaque for coming in third place. (Yes, there were only three handcuffed couples. I still have my plaque, though.)

Once, Phil met me in downtown Manhattan as I was finishing a 20-mile run and produced popsicles he'd packed for me in a cooler. Once we were supposed to meet friends at the Staten Island Botanical Garden and we decided to run to the ferry terminal instead of taking the subway. Once we set out in the dark on Martha's Vineyard to do a long run into the sunrise. It started pouring, but we didn't turn back.

When we got a dog, Ellie became our new running buddy. We let her run off leash in the trails of Forest Park and on the beach in Montauk. We brought her to a turkey trot on the boardwalk in Coney Island and overheard someone say, "If that dog beats me, I'll shoot myself." Phil shrugged apologetically. "Better get a gun out," he said. We brought her to another turkey trot on the boardwalk at Rockaway Beach, where she and Phil chased down a little boy's runaway dog and still managed to beat half the field.

When we became parents, the single best purchase we made was our jogging stroller. We ran with Eli through the woods at Wissahickon Valley Park in Pennsylvania and down the boardwalk at Coney Island. We don't get to run together as often as we used to, but Phil has always supported me as a runner: This summer, Phil and his mom drove Eli to the beach while I ran 12 miles to meet them there; this weekend, Phil drove Eli to gymnastics while I ran 5 miles to meet them there. When I took off into the 20-degree winds at 8 a.m. on Sunday morning, I couldn't have felt more elated.

Before I met Phil, I always ran alone. I wasn't sure if I'd like talking to someone on a run, or if our paces would be compatible, or if we'd have similar racing strategies. We've gone on runs where Phil was chatty and upbeat even as I wanted to die and also kill him for his cheeriness. We've gone on runs where I want to push the pace and Phil merely wants to cruise at what he calls his "top speed."

It's a giant metaphor for life, obviously. We don't always agree on the path (I still prefer Forest Park, he likes Flushing Meadows). But we're still traveling it together.

This fall, we are both supposed to run the NYC marathon. Phil likes to boast that he's not going to run it with me because he'll be going too fast, but we both know better. There is no one who can challenge me to run faster or love deeper. There's also no one else with enough room in his shorts pockets to carry all my GU energy chomps. There's no one else I'd rather run my life with. Happy runniversary.

Turn off, tune out, drop in

The other night when I came home from work, Phil decided Eli should show me some of his new dance moves, so he took out his phone and turned on our signature family dance party song (if you must know, it's Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" and we're proud of it, thanks). Eli's new move was amazing. It involved running rapidly in place with his feet very close to the floor like a hamster in a wheel while he lifted just one arm like a marionette, all the while keeping a look on his face that suggested great concentration.

I giggled, loving it. I had to have it on film. Because Eli hates it when I videotape him, I tried sneakily reaching for Phil's phone, not realizing that the song would stop playing. We turned it back on, but Eli was finished dancing.

I had ruined it.

I do this a lot. I feel compelled to document every new or cute thing we're doing, often at the expense of participating in the new and cute thing myself. Sometimes I catch Eli doing something extraordinary -- reading a book out loud to himself, singing the Shabbat blessing while lighting his pretend candles -- and the instant I try to capture a video, it's over -- and then I feel frustrated that I "missed" it instead of glad to have seen it with my own eyes!

I've always been a multitasker. When I was young, I tried to read at the dinner table, as if conversation with my parents wasn't enough to keep me occupied. In college, I often found myself working on two papers at once -- switching between them kept me fresh without wasting time with breaks.

When smartphones were invented, people like me rejoiced. Here was something at my fingertips that could give me backup entertainment at all times. I could check Facebook while waiting on line at the post office, browse movie reviews while talking to Phil about which movie to see, read BabyCenter message boards while nursing Eli.

When Eli was a baby, my iPhone and I were inseparable. In fact, if I sat down to nurse him without it next to me I'd be cursing myself for the next 20 minutes. Anyone who's ever spent any length of time at home with a newborn knows how lonely and boring it can be. I needed my phone to text my mom friends about what new foods they were trying next. I needed my phone to Google how often my baby should be napping. I needed my phone to post photos to Facebook that proved I was being a good mom to the cutest baby in the world. And as long as Eli had his pacifier and his bottle and his swaddle and his baby iPod and his jingly toys and his playmat and his Boppy, he didn't care.

But now Eli makes it clear that he does care. "Leave your phone!" he'll say impatiently, waving his hand at me in a classic Jewish-grandmother-no-no gesture. "Put your phone away!" Sometimes I feel like a character in The Sims, that computer video game I loved playing when I was in high school. In The Sims, certain household objects emit temptation that compels your Sims to keep interacting with them, even when they have to do more urgent things like flirt with their significant others or, um, use the bathroom. They just keep being drawn to play with their computers even as the school bus drives away or their hunger begins to rise to unacceptable levels.

Or, as an article I once read put it, "When I look back on these moments in 20 years I know I'm going to have enjoyed playing with my kids more than browsing on my phone, so why am I so compelled to browse on my phone when I could be playing with my kids?"

This past summer, when we were on Martha's Vineyard, I went as far as deleting the Facebook app from my phone so it wouldn't be a distraction from our vacation. Because besides the fact that just browsing my newsfeed is a timesuck, I didn't want to get caught up in posing the perfect pictures and then constantly posting them all, "Look at what a great time we're having!" (Instead, I preferred to go for the Grand Facebook Reveal when we returned: Look at what a great time we had!)

This is all a long-winded way of saying that my new year's resolution is to unglue myself from my phone. Gradually, because we're BFFs, but I'm making a concerted effort. My ultimate goal is to go media-free on Friday nights and Saturdays (aka Shabbat Lite, if you will).

In the meantime, there are certain moments that you're just never going to capture. Like last night, when I came home from work and Eli streaked out into the living room. I say "streaked" because he was stark naked except for one sock. With the door open behind me, he caught a glimpse of his stroller still sitting in the hallway.

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "We have to get my stroller!"

I quickly pushed the door shut to prevent him from a naked escape. "Not now," I assured him, "we'll get it later."

He looked at me with wide eyes. "But Mom!" he protested. "It's gonna be amazing!"

It sure is.

Like a mommy

In case you missed it, there was a cute video circulating just before Christmas of President Obama helping to sort toys that had been donated to Toys for Tots. Obama was supposed to divide the toys into bins intended for "girls' toys" or "boys' toys," but -- like anyone who's seen this graphic demonstrating how to tell if a toy is intended for girls or boys ("Do you operate the toy with your genitalia?") -- Obama thought the sorting wasn't so obvious. "I want to make sure some girls play basketball," he said as he tossed a basketball into the girls' pile. "Let's break down these gender stereotypes."

Following on the heels of the little girl scowling at the "gifts for boys" sign and the renaissance of the vintage Lego ad that makes it clear that Legos are unisex toys, it feels like it's been a good year for the de-genderization of toys.

But when I watched the crowd applaud Obama's decision to put a T-ball set into the girls' pile ("Girls like T-ball!"), I wondered if the reaction would have been so positive if he had, say, put a set of princess dolls into the boys' pile. Or if he had given the boys a tea set and said, "Boys like tea parties!"

I find myself wrestling a lot with this issue. For example: I buy Eli cars to play with because he likes to play with cars. But does he like to play with cars because he likes to play with cars, or does he like to play with cars because I bought him cars because I've assumed that, as a boy, he would like to play with cars? I know that girls like to play with cars, too; in fact, one of my favorite childhood memories is lining up toy cars on the floor of my living room and racing them. So it wouldn't surprise me at all to see cars in a girl's room. But would it surprise me to see, say, My Little Ponies in a boy's room?

In October, just for fun, I brought Eli into a Halloween store and showed him some costumes, which he playfully rejected one by one. Then on the way out of the store, we happened to walk into the princess costume aisle. His eyes got wide; he literally oohed and ahhed. Who can resist all the sparkles and glitter in the princess aisle? After that, at home, he'd sometimes hold his blankie around his waist like a dress and exclaim, "Look, I'm a princess!"

He had a brief but torrid week-long love affair with Doc McStuffins during which I bought him a Doc McStuffins figurine playset, and yet in all this time I've never bought him any princesses to play with. But why? If he were a girl and he had shown the slightest interest in princesses, we'd probably already have princess paraphernalia in our house by now.

Phil says that once he was at an arcade with Eli picking out a toy, and the man behind the counter offered Eli his choice of colors. Eli systematically rejected each one until Phil finally asked if he wanted the purple (which he did, because who doesn't love purple). The man hadn't even offered it to him.

For a long while at school Eli's class was doing a "color of the week" theme where they'd all wear that week's color on Fridays. At some point I wondered what we'd do when they came to pink and purple, because he doesn't own any pink or purple clothing. Then we got a newsletter mentioning the end of the color theme. They'd done red, blue, green, orange (Eli wore his trick-or-treating shirt), yellow (pajama shirt), brown (Mommy's sweater) and white (out sick that day), but they skipped pink and purple entirely. I still wonder why.

Occasionally Eli requests to wear nail polish. The other day, while he was in the bath, I painted a few of his nails. He held his hands out, admiring them, and declared, "Beautiful!" It occurred to me that I should buy some non-toxic Piggy Paint for future rainy day manicures, so I hopped on Amazon. Besides being shocked at the price ($8.99 for a tiny bottle!), I was disappointed that their motto is "For fancy girls." What about fancy boys?

This summer, one of my favorite mom bloggers, Mommy Shorts, posted about an Always ad campaign that asks: When did the phrase "like a girl" become a bad thing? She did an awesome post of reader-submitted photos of their girls kicking ass: playing baseball, catching fish, earning black belts, riding road bikes. All the photos were hashtagged #likeagirl.

Then she followed it up with a post of boys acting #likeaboy: having tea parties, baking cakes, wearing Mommy's heels, getting their nails done.

I LOVED IT. Both posts made me teary.

Phil and I are like 99% sure that Eli will be our only child, and every so often I feel sad that I'll never have a daughter. And then I think: What if I wanted to have a daughter to dress in sparkly clothes and get my nails done with, and then my daughter wanted to play with cars and ride dirt bikes?

A few months ago, I took this adorable video of Eli walking around the apartment wearing my shoes and my work bag. He reached inside it and pulled out my work ID, which I've attached to this funky beaded necklace. "Oooh!" he said. "A necklace!" He immediately put it around his neck and then, studying it more closely, he noticed my picture. "It's you!" he said to me. I'm always showing him pictures of himself as an infant and telling him, "It's you! When you were a baby!" so he started to say, "Like a baby" and then corrected himself: "Like a mommy!" So I know that's the reason he likes to wear my heels and ask for painted nails; he wants to be like me.

And I want to embrace that idea that I, and mommies, and girls, can be emulated in all sorts of ways, that it's fine to choose the purple toy and crash your cars and wear nail polish and build with Legos. Like a girl. Like a boy. Like a mommy. Like an Eli.

In whatever time we have

I really wanted to go for a run today. It's symbolically important to me to run on New Year's Day, and plus the weather was cold but sunny -- perfect for running.

Phil wanted to drive to the Central Park Zoo since it'd be easy to park in the city and we just renewed our Wildlife Conservation Society membership. I had this vision that we'd go for a family run in Central Park, eat fluffy pancakes at the Boathouse Express Cafe and then hit the zoo.

But by the time we roused ourselves out of our lazy morning funk, the cafe was closed, and Phil didn't feel like running in the cold. So I optimistically dressed in my running clothes, figuring I'd drop Phil and Eli at the zoo and then head out for a loop on my own.

But then, as we walked into the zoo, Phil said, "If you go for a run now, he's going to miss you while you're gone."

He was right, I knew he was right. But ugh, I have never felt more resentful and selfish and guilty all at the same time than I did standing in the tropics staring blankly at a peacock while Eli raced in and out of the curtains.

Before I got married and had a dog and then a child, I very much valued my alone time. In fact, Phil still teases me about the time I kicked him out of my apartment during our first winter break together because I claimed to need some personal time (and then I missed him about two hours later).

One of the things I don't think I anticipated about having a child was the crashing sense that you are never alone again. This afternoon Eli and I were about to make chocolate chip challah together and I realized we didn't have enough flour, so I ran over to the supermarket to get some. Every time I do this I feel like I'm on some Mommy's Supermarket Sweep -- on the one hand, it feels like a luxury to be wandering the supermarket aisles perusing the pre-packaged Starbucks drinks and Rachael Ray stock mixes, but on the other hand I know the clock is ticking before Phil texts me that Eli is losing his mind and I need to hurry home. And there's this sense that any waking time during daylight hours that I spend doing something by myself is time that I lose with Eli, so there is always a cost; I always have to decide whether or not it's worth it, and isn't it selfish to choose myself over my child? When I first went back to work, I used to go to a running club on Tuesday nights, but eventually I felt so sad about missing that one night of bedtime (in which I get home from work in time to see Eli for approximately 20 minutes before he falls asleep) that I stopped going.

While the dough was rising, I decided I'd go for that run after all, only this time I felt guilty about neglecting my other running buddy, so I took the dog with me. She was her usual self, yanking me over to every single patch of grass we passed to make a pee stop, hanging back all slow at the end of her leash and then suddenly bounding forward after squirrels or fellow dogs. I found myself so frustrated with her pace that I just cut the run short and headed home. When I got there, Eli seemed both surprised and thrilled to see me. "Where you going?!" he said, as if he hadn't even noticed I'd been gone.

When I run with Eli, I feel like a stronger runner because I'm pushing 50+ pounds, sometimes uphill, and I feel like a better mother because I'm taking my son to experience nature while doing something that shows him what I love to do to feel healthy and fit. But I also make lots of unscheduled stops along the path to ask what's the matter or to assure him that I'll let him get out once we get to the tree stumps or to explain why we're not going to walk into the woods. When I run alone I feel the extra pressure to make the time count, to run faster and harder than I would be able to with the jogging stroller, to break speed records getting home so I can get my Eli-time started. But I also feel the freedom of running alone, the freedom to go where my sneakers take me, the freedom of anonymity without a stroller or a leash in my hands.

When I got home I told Phil I needed a run to myself and that I planned to run the next morning. Phil announced that he wasn't going to wait around at home for me (which I can understand, because that can end in disaster) and he'd be taking Eli somewhere by himself, at which point I petulantly whined that I wanted to go on the family outing, too.

Basically all I want is for the rotation of the Earth to be suspended and my family to be frozen in time for 45 minutes while I go for a run by myself outdoors in the daylight; is that too much to ask? (Alternately I would settle for Hermione's time turner from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.)

I don't know how much I'm a fan of new year's resolutions, but if I did make them I realize how they would all boil down to time: how to carve it, who to spend it with, what's worth it and what isn't. How to spend time with Eli without compulsively checking my phone ("Leave your phone!" and "Put your phone away!" are already a part of his vocabulary). How to make time for myself -- which I'm sure helps me be a better wife and mom -- without missing out on time with the people who've made me a wife and mom in the first place. How to see my friends without abandoning my family. How to enjoy time with my family without neglecting our chores. Sometimes I want to have a glass of wine with my dinner but I'm afraid the wine will make me sleepy and I'll be forced to go to bed early, thereby missing out on 45 precious minutes I could have spent watching My Five Wives on TLC.

If there's anything that classic Twilight Zone episode taught us, it's that the only way to really get all the time you need in the world is to be the only survivor of a nuclear apocalypse (and even then your happiness isn't guaranteed). There's a poem by Margaret Atwood where she describes being bored by the minutiae of everyday tasks like carrying wood and drying dishes. "Perhaps though/boredom is happier," she writes. "It is for dogs or/groundhogs. Now I wouldn't be bored./Now I would know too much./Now I would know."

Sometimes I feel all the time the weight of that knowing, that echoing cavern of each-moment-is-preciousness. All the things I do with my time: divide it, spend it, save it, waste it. Savor it. I guess if I had to settle on one resolution for the new year, it would be more of a thoughtful question: How am I going to savor my time?