Alden has many of my attributes: a frenetic energy, a preference for planning ahead, a desire to please.

But in other ways, she is Robbi through and through: an abiding love of ice cream, trouble waking up in the morning, and a refusal to go to bed at a reasonable hour. The other night, long after I had thought she’d gone to sleep, I went out into the other room, and there she was, sitting at her little table, painting something or the other by lamplight.

The primary difference between child and mother? Alden did not have a pile of candy wrappers and a 20-ounce bottle of coke sitting there beside her.

But there’s time for that still.