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We repeated the ordering-and-paying process about three hundred times.

Sometimes I ordered the “wrong” flavor, and Grace became unreasonably upset.

“Not strawberry , Mom,” she said, as if I was the crazy one.

It’s worth noting that Grace called me Mom before she ever called me Mommy or Mama.

She incorporated the latter terms upon realizing that they were more endearing and would serve her better in negotiations.

In the beginning of my stay-at-home-ness, the mind-numbing pretend play used to make me feel like I had fire ants crawling all over my skin.

I was going through a kind of withdrawal from regular life.

Now there are no fire ants. I’ve imagined the parts of my brain that would have lit up with activity on an MRI before having gone dark.

There was a news segment a while back about a power outage at a New York playhouse.

It was empty, pitch black inside, and I thought, That’s my frontal lobe.

I looked at my watch. Almost eleven. I recently told Kyle that I wanted to write a book titled Killing Time: A Memoir .

I couldn’t read his expression, but I think it was one of confusion.

I really did consider it, as a project to buoy me.

I would include anecdotes along with photos of the mundanity of life.

It would be marketed as the first book created completely with an iPhone—using the camera and Notes app.

For a few days, I took some photos at the park, tapped some thoughts into my phone.

Then I got tired of being interrupted every twenty seconds and gave up on the endeavor.

Grace left the “ice cream shop” and went to play in one of the plastic tunnels, Liv following after her.

“Mommy, come here,” Grace said with a mischievous smile, her face peering out of one of the round windows in the tunnel.

I was fairly certain she was going to have a booger on the tip of her finger and would place it in my palm and ask me to dispose of it. I went to her anyway.

Surprisingly, she did not hold out a booger-adorned finger. Instead, she said, “I have a secret” and motioned for me to lean in.

At bedtime, the girls and I do this—whisper into each other’s ears. I say, “I love you to the moon and back, forever and ever,” and they say it back to me. It’s one of those moments that compensates for so many others.

I leaned in, her breath hot on the side of my face. “Mommy,” she whispered. “You. Are. A. Penis.”

She erupted into giggles.

“Grace,” I said. I try not to give the penis talk much attention. “Five more minutes, okay?”

I set the alarm on my phone. I am attempting to train the girls to respond to the sound of the alarm. I am attempting to turn them into Pomeranians.

“Okay,” she said, though I knew it wouldn’t be okay when the five minutes were up.

“Oh, sweetie, what happened?” Kyle said.

He was giving Grace the exact reaction she wanted, rewarding the tears that rolled down her cheeks with his attention.

Of course, Liv saw the attention Grace was getting and then also started to cry.

Their ability to create tears spontaneously fascinates me.

In good moments, I silver-line the meltdowns by envisioning one of the girls—probably Grace—winning an Oscar.

She will thank me in her acceptance speech. She will buy me a house in Malibu.

“Mommy said we had to leave the playground,” Grace whined, falling dramatically into Kyle’s open arms. Liv pressed herself against Grace’s back, and Kyle included her in his embrace too.

“What a bummer,” he said.

“Mommy is mean,” Grace said.

“Mommy is not mean,” Kyle said, and I wondered if that was the best he could do. He went back to looking at his computer.

“Mommy is so mean that she is now going to make you girls lunch,” I said.

I went to the kitchen, the pitter-patter of four little feet behind me.

“What are you making me?” Grace asked. Like Chop-chop, servant .

“Grilled cheese?” I asked.

She scrunched her nose.

“Gracie want yogurt,” she said with a baby voice. “Livy, you want yogurt too?”

Liv nodded.

Grace has been doing this a lot—talking (and crying) like a baby. The only thing worse than a three-year-old is a three-year-old pretending to be an infant.

“You had yogurt for breakfast,” I told them.

There was that pesky logic again.

“Gracie and Livy want yogurt,” she said again, her request followed by a dramatic “Waaaa.”

Predictably, Livy added her own “Waaaa.”

“Fine, whatever,” I said.

They climbed into their seats at the table, and I gave them each a yogurt cup. I propped up the iPad between them so they could watch strange videos of Asian parents playing pranks on their children, or car tires rolling over containers of Play-Doh.

I considered calling my boss, or former boss, to beg for work.

I’d had a Zoom call with her a couple of weeks earlier to “check in.” (That was the subject line of the meeting invite.

I’d thought she might have a project for me, but no.) The call happened to be an hour after Liv had scratched my nose with one of her hadn’t-been-trimmed-in-weeks nails.

My boss leaned into the screen and said, “Are you ... bleeding ?” I was, in fact, bleeding.

There are more injuries involved in parenting than I anticipated, most sustained while the girls are walking the fine line between abuse and play.

Last week, Grace said, “ Mom , Be A Drum !” and then proceeded to pound on me.

Yesterday, I was bent over Liv, feigning fascination with an ant, and she looked up abruptly and hit me in the face with her extremely dense skull. I saw stars.

I called to Kyle: “Babe, can you watch the girls for a half hour this afternoon?”

Babe. A relic. A remnant of years past. My continued use of it is representative of our collective denial about our present.

“Mommy, mommy, mommy,” Grace said.

The girls are ruthless and blatant in their attempts to prevent me from having, or sharing, a complete thought. Most of the time, my brain feels like it’s in a car with a teenager learning to drive stick shift. Start, stop, start, stop.

“What?” Kyle asked.

“Mommmmmmmy!” Grace said, louder.

“Mommmmmmmy!” Liv said.

I shouted: “Can you watch the girls for a half hour this afternoon so I can call Michelle Kwan?”

He said, “Ummm,” which meant no. “I have a few calls later, but let me see what I can—”

“Never mind,” I snapped.

I could have turned this into a fight—it is one of my superpowers—but that would have ended with Kyle saying I needed to work on my anger issues.

“Mommy, I don’t like this flavor,” Grace said.

I did the only thing I knew how to do—I got her another yogurt.

When the girls finished their yogurt and crackers (yes, more crackers), they got out of their chairs and climbed onto the bench seat on the other side of the kitchen table. Grace turned onto her stomach, both hands stuffed underneath her, touching herself. Yes, like that. Then Liv did the same.

According to Google, it’s normal. Do toddlers have orgasms?

I’ve wanted to google this but am too afraid of what kind of list such a search would put me on.

I envision the FBI showing up at my house, confiscating our computers.

In any case, orgasms or not, the girls are undoubtedly pleasured, and I resent this.

They are both more sexually satisfied than I am.

“Girls, are you tired?” I asked them.

They usually touch themselves when they are tired. They must get this from their father.

Grace did not look up but said, “Five more minutes” as she writhed around.

I busied myself with the dishes, not knowing if I should discourage them.

I don’t want to be Catholic about this type of thing.

I don’t think they’re going to go blind, for god’s sake.

But I don’t want to be too lenient either, so lenient that they start doing it in public, flopping down in the middle of Target, rubbing against playground equipment.

I’ve never told Kyle about the girls doing this.

He would be appalled. It’s been weeks since we’ve had sex, Kyle and me.

Eight weeks, maybe. Meaning it’s accurate to say we haven’t had sex in months .

There are times he touches me—a casual squeeze of my forearm, a tap on the butt—and I shudder.

What a terrible thing, to recoil from touch.

But it’s not just touch, pure and simple.

I can’t help but feel it as a demand, a preface, a precursor to requests to come when the girls go to bed.

“Girls, come on,” I said after a few more minutes. They were both all sweaty. When they looked up, their cheeks were red.

“Five more minutes.”

“You already said that, Grace.”

She rolled around a little more, then sat up. Liv kept going for a few seconds, but upon realizing that Grace had stopped, she did too.

“Fine,” Grace said.

“You ready to go for a car nap?”

Neither of my girls is a great sleeper. They have never gone gentle into that good night.

They share a room, so they do the whole bedtime routine together, a routine that I have always managed, even when I was working full time.

It started innocently enough—I was breastfeeding, so I would do a top-off and then put the girls down.

Now that they’re older, Kyle could step in, but he doesn’t, and I haven’t pressed it.

He works a lot; he’s tired. Plus, I’m better at it than he would be.

The girls take approximately two hours to brush their teeth, then want to read seven hundred books.

Kyle would never survive this. When they finally get into bed, I close the door knowing one of them (usually Grace) will summon me back at least twice: Mommy, I don’t like that shadow on the wall .

Or, Mommy, my pajamas feel weird . Some nights, I feel a wave of nausea come over me upon hearing the whines. It’s visceral, motherhood.