One year ago, I was lying on a blue couch in my in-laws' living room in Ajax, Ontario, watching pee wee hockey on cable access and feeling as though I might throw up at any minute. It wasn't the hockey. I love hockey, no matter the size of the players; and, if this had been the cable access channel at home, I would have been watching the details of the county school system's lunch menu. (Which, frankly, hasn't been as interesting since they did away with peanut butter balls because of allergies.)

Yes, I was about six weeks pregnant, and miserable. It had happened a little sooner than we thought it would, and I was still getting used to the idea of splitting my time with MJ, my almost-2-year-old, into two bits -- one for her and one for this new little person. "But I'm not done with her yet!" I kept hearing myself say, both in my head and to others, as if she would no longer survive without my constant attention. As if I would no longer survive. I was in a state of mourning over my soon-to-be-defunct one-child-ness.

I suspect something greater was at play, though, an emotion bigger than moving from one child to two. I knew that two kids were my limit, all along I'd said it. (And still sort of mean it.) If this was No. 2, already growing and on the way, then I was ... almost done with this very young part of my life.

There are certain milestones, certain firsts, that we mark in life that are obvious: first day of school, first day of college, first job, first house, first baby. We don't talk a lot about the lasts. We suffer these quietly inside the smallest parts of ourselves. The last baby. When I had her, I would never again be a new mother. And new mothers were also young in my mind -- no matter their age in years. It's something about the firsts (there's that word again) that you get to go through, all over again, with each child. Once they happen, they'll never happen again. First foods, first steps, first smile, first laugh. They're such joyful bits of life, these firsts. And my favorite is first looks.

So different, each. So telling of who my girls are. I’ve conjured them up hundreds of times, so I never lose them, so their magic is never lost on me. The image of the scared little girl who was my first, the one whose umbilical cord, so thin and weak-looking that it wasn’t accepted for cord blood donation, so callow that it wasn’t long enough to extend my baby into my arms before it was cut. She could go no farther than my abdomen. (And it’s worth noting that, at five feet tall, I am terribly short-waisted.)

It was from that vantage point I watched her blue hands and feet cling to the surface beneath them, her blue eyes – their size seemingly matching the enormity of the world they had just entered – filled with utter terror. She was two weeks early for her party, so curious about what lay outside the womb that she had to get outside to see it – and then wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. The next day, while my husband and I sat watching Dodgeball on our laptop (true story; apparently I was responsible for feeding the child on a regular basis, but no one had bothered to tell me how), a nurse wheeled the poor soul I had just given birth to into my room, the tiny pink crocheted hat on her head leading the charge beneath a look of anguish. "She was getting a bit unruly," the nurse told us. This is the second look I make myself remember regularly, because it was the first time I realized, really understood, that she needed me.

I would think of those looks each time MJ suddenly crawled into my lap when a stranger smiled at her in a restaurant, or when she carefully looked over her food each time it was placed before her, or, when encountering a new place or a new kind of physical challenge (like a difficult climbing apparatus at a playground, or a strange new walking texture such as sand), she moved slowly, tentatively, cautiously. She was always so like those first moments after she entered the world: willing to try anything, but cautious about the process.

And then there was Little L, who was eight days late for her coming-out party, whose first boss was a drip named Pitocin, who was plump and pink and mad as hell when she arrived on my chest. She was not confused about the source of her anger: She had been disturbed from her cozy sleep, dammit, and this was not at all OK with her. We learned that she was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted, and as long as she got that, everything would be just fine. Indeed, the other look I try to remember of her is from the hospital. She lay in her bassinet, beside my bed, quietly taking in the world and everything in her range of vision. I remember how bright her eyes were beneath her tiny cap, how they followed our faces, how they seemed to be sizing up our needs as much as we were measuring hers. Even now, at four months old, Little L is content to lay on her back for long periods of time, batting a toy or watching her sister play. She rolled over -- once. It was as if she said, "OK, that's done," and went back to her visual investigations.

I wonder if their first looks will follow them through their lives, and through my life as I view them on their first days of school, their first days of college, their first jobs and homes and someday [gulp], first babies. Whether the answer is yes or no, I suppose I'm not quite out of those delicious little primary moments just yet. It's just that I'll be watching them happen to my little ones, instead.

A day or two after Christmas, my husband and MJ were out and about having a morning walk on the neighborhood trails. Our newborn was asleep, so I went into “me” mode. I had a long, luxurious shower. I put on makeup, even though I had nowhere to go. I turned on my laptop, and began fussing over the design of this blog (specifically, how to get text to scroll). Not being a techie, this was taking some time. But I was determined to get it done, because soon a baby would need to be fed, and soon a toddler would be home, and soon my “me” time would be gone until the late evening, when I would be too tired to think.

I was this close to a breakthrough in scroll comprehension when my husband burst through the door with MJ, who was beautiful and flushed with excitement: Her cheeks were pinched pink by winter's chill and her eyes were lit up like the Christmas tree behind her. “MJ go ride the bike! MJ's bike!” she said (something like this, anyway), making all sorts of hand gestures that defined her excitement. “MJ going on the bike! Mommy, come!”

Even though, by now, we had become fairly adept at translating MJspeak, R. and I still had a habit of looking at each other for some context. He explained for me that she had noticed the tricycle she’d gotten for Christmas in the garage on their way in, and she needed to go ride it NOW. “You should come, too,” he offered, helpfully.

Well, of course I should. I’m the mommy, after all. But this was “me” time, and there would be other times to see her ride the trike, yes?

I looked at R. with a whiny face, as if pleading with him to let me out of my own chamber of guilt, to allow me to believe for just this moment, just until I figured out this piece of HTML code, that what I wanted to do was more important than watching my little girl trike off into history for the first time. That what I really wanted to do did not involve watching her pedal down the sidewalk on her Radio Flyer wheels.

He wouldn’t budge.

“Can you wait just a few more minutes?” I asked. “I can’t work on this thing if I don’t do it now. I don’t have enough time. I just can’t do it all. ”

“Well, then,” he said, simply, “you just can’t.” He has a way of deconstructing the complexity I like to create. It’s maddening.

Because – holy crap, Batman – he’s right. It doesn’t happen often (even though he thinks it happens all the time), but I’ll give him this one. Because so much of my time is delegated, by necessity, to what little people need from me, I sometimes find myself spending every spare thought I have while wiping down counters and changing diapers on the pursuit of my “me” time: on what time it will begin, on what will have to happen for it to begin, on what order my “me” tasks will done in, on whether other grown ups should be involved in my “me” time, etc. Anybody who has ever come to the realization that she doesn’t want to be the one taking the pictures on Christmas morning -- because she’ll be too busy waiting for the right moment to treasure the moment itself -- knows what I mean. It’s like throwing a dinner party and spending the entire night in the kitchen, cleaning up, while your guests chat.

So, my resolution this year is to not let my pursuit of “me” time get in the way of my time with the kids. Yeah. I know. Good luck with that.

My nephew, who is six, told my sister with a straight face that he wanted an elf for Christmas. Not a stuffed one. A real one. "Because then, any time I wanted something, I could just tell him to make it for me."

In the movie "Elf," the Will Ferrell flick in which a human raised by an elf goes to New York and saves Christmas spirit, elves are said to have "nimble fingers, natural cheer and active minds" -- perfect for the task of toymaking. If those are the job qualifications, mothers are also ideally suited to churn out Etch-a-Sketches and Jacks-in-the-Box for the jolly man. Let's take a look at our resumes:

Nimble fingers? Check. We catch cereal bowls before they hit the floor; bat flying bits of chicken out of the air; snap car seat safety belts together with the precision of a machine; clean bottoms with one hand while holding two ankles together with the other (and singing "You are my sunshine" at the same time -- which, given the task, is a serious moment of false advertising); hide candy behind vegetable cans in the blink of an eye; and, when that doesn't work, scrub chocolate hands before they head for the couch.

Natural cheer? Check. Well, let's say our cheer is sometimes artificially stimulated by fear of visits from a place called Social Services. As one mother puts it: "It's a good thing they're cute." Really, though, who but a mother is going to let a toddler put all the ornaments on the same four low branches of an 8-foot Christmas tree? Only the one who was patient enough to carry her around for nine months (and the one who will have to redecorate the tree during naptime instead of doing laundry.) Let's face it: If mothers didn't have natural cheer, birth centers would go the way of the 8-track.

Active minds? Check, check and triple check. Check to infinity. Nobody ever had a more active mind than a mother. One step ahead? Try 20. How many other people you know park their cars at Target based not on its proximity to the door, but on how close the spot is to the cart return -- to which they will have to run, post-shopping, after installing both a toddler and an infant in the automobile and locking the car so no one will hotwire it and run off with them in the 3.9 seconds it will take to roll the red cart back to its stall? Then there's the dance one has to do with the cart while getting one kid in the car -- which is, of course, parked too close to the car next to it, leaving little room to swing an infant seat into the back seat. Do I put the car seat in first, and leave the toddler in the cart, exposed to the other cars flying through the parking lot, or vice versa? And this is just what goes through the mind in the parking lot. Imagine the strategies that take form once inside the store, what with all the brightly colored aisles and toys and puppy dogs with bullseyes over their eyes. Tired yet? I am. But I can't rest, because, once home, I have to worry about how to get my sleeping toddler out of the car, shoes off, jacket undone and into bed for her nap without waking her up so I'll have time to make a bottle and feed the baby without worrying about ... well, all the household damage that can be done by a toddler while her mother is busy feeding a baby.

Frankly, we're fully qualified for the other two jobs an elf can have in the movie, as well. Baking cookies in a tree while it's on fire? Who among us hasn't baked cookies while putting out some sort of fire? And as for making shoes for the lazy cobbler while he sleeps ... not to call our children or our husbands lazy, but: Who's the last person asleep in your house every night?

Christmastime is the easiest time of year for a mother to feel like she's a cotton-headed ninny muggins, as Buddy the Elf says. My own mother's anxiousness goes into warp speed around the holidays, and now that I'm a mommy, I finally understand why. It's the most fragile time of year for the mother's psyche, and it's not because we're under pressure to get the right gifts for our kids, bake goodies for our friends, make a special dinner for our families, or put together last-minute presents and cards for the people who got us something or sent us a greeting we weren't expecting. We do those things all year round. What's maddening is that this is the only time of year when they must be perfect. It's all too easy to feel you've failed at something when the task you give yourself is nothing less than making everyone's dream come true. On one single day. Who can do all that?

Somehow, we do -- even if we don't think we have. Here's the thing: Nimble hands, natural cheer and active minds can take a girl, and an elf, a long way. (And if you're having trouble with the cheer part, there's no shame in a little spiked egg nog.) Indeed, I got the perfect gift for my nephew this year, and it's exactly what he wanted: I'm putting a red bow on my sister's head, with a gift label that reads, "You already have one."