Bright and early Saturday morning, I had 15 sheets of 1/2″ delivered by a nice guy with a forklift, and managed to hump all of them inside to the front porch before the snow really started falling. There was, however, no word from the drywall guy, who didn’t return a phone message on Saturday and never showed Sunday; such is the way of discount contractors. And thus, the drywall sits. The side room is ready for him whenever he wakes up, though—the insulation is cleaned up and debris cleared out, awaiting the clomp-clomp of drywall stilts. On Friday, Mr. Scout worked upstairs tacking in ceiling insulation to try and retain some of the heat, which seems to have made a difference throughout both floors. I’m going to tuck more in between the sash pockets and small cracks to see if that does anything else when I get a little time this week.

Back to Saturday. Mama is fighting a case of strep throat, so I wrangled Finn as much as I could over the weekend to let her rest up. Before lunch, Finn and I took a trip up to Lakeshore Learning, which is sort of a Target for teachers, to buy birthday presents for some friends. This was my first time there but she’s been before, and made an immediate beeline to the squishy erasers, amid an entire store full of sensory overload. After tearing her away and browsing the aisles a few times, we joined a group of kids doing crafts at a table up front and made a snow igloo (which, strangely, includes googly eyes, sparkly red stripes, and fuzzy pop-poms). Here is where I brag on my daughter, who walked up to the table and asked the woman in a confident sing-song voice if she could play too, then politely shared with the other children and said thank you when we were done. (She bent down, picked up a stray googly eye, and handed it to the boy next to her, with a cheerful “here you go, guys!”) Other parents sort of stared at us as we walked away, which made me wonder if they taught their kids manners too. From what I saw, not so much.

Sunday afternoon I chaperoned her to our neighbor’s second birthday party. She dove right in to the fray (about 15 kids of varying ages, from 1.5 to about 7) and did really well on her own with one early exception: Wading into the chaotic living room while I was caught in the middle of a conversation, she suddenly realized she didn’t know where her daddy was and had a slight freakout. I heard the timbre of her voice rising and zoomed in, scooped her up, and talked her down off the ledge. Once she understood I would stay in visual range, I set her down to explore on her own for the rest of the party, making sure she knew where I was. About two hours after cupcakes we finally hit sweaty meltdown, but a two-house walk home on my shoulders was gravy compared to Saturday’s car ride, when I pushed her right up against the edge of naptime and paid the price the whole car ride home.

There are days when I feel like I’m just making this up as I go along, but the days like Sunday, when I can walk into a party full of kids and candy and noise and people and still read her face from across the room and know when she needs a hug or a juice or when it’s time to bail—those are the days that I feel like I’m doing OK.

And there is no better sound in the world than the sound of her laughter.