My L. has always been a party-planner. While he’s not a fan of parties in general (too noisy, too many people, too much food), he likes to plan a party, especially when he can be in control of every single detail. But it’s been awhile since he’s shown any interest in planning any type of party, and we’ve been sad about this. Last year was a rough year for him, and he withdrew socially for most of it, and regressed quite a bit. This year is different, though, and we're keeping our fingers crossed, and watching it all unfold.

I can't tell you how often I hear from parents, " ow do you do it without losing your cool?" They are referring to the paint, the glue and the sparkles that seem to spread far and wide every time they do an art project with their child.

Because I know how important it is. It's worth the mess. Honestly. Doing a project with your child is more than just having something to show your spouse, at the end of the day, even though that is still my son's favorite part. It's about bonding, it's about learning while creating, and using their imaginations.

So I beg you to chill about the mess.

Last night was the season finale of Lost, and I mentally checked this one off the list and breathed a small sigh of relief. I'm a little sad to see our favorite shows end, one-by-one, for the summer, but I'm actually kind of happy, too. I think our list of shows we follow has gotten unwieldy over the past few months and I'll be glad to trade most of them in for longer evenings on the porch, and dinners at the pool.

I tallied up our recent schedule of our nightly TV habit and came up with this:

I was at the pediatrician's office on Tuesday, for a quick check-up for T., and while we were waiting for the doctor to come in I looked up at the clippings and ads pasted to the back of the door and saw this:

This past weekend T. went to a birthday party, and while I was digging through our collection of used gift bags to put the present in, I discovered one from T.'s birthday back in January. The bag still had the little gift card attached to it--you know, the card you never read because so many people thoughtfully leave it blank because they know you'll want to reuse the bag? And kids always seem to make their own cards instead of writing their names on those microscopic gift bag cards--I know mine do.

Yesterday morning I sat down to update my status on Facebook and I erased what I wrote, because all I could think to say was: I'm tired. I feel like everywhere I go lately I'm sounding like a broken record. My conversations with family and friends are the same ("how AM I? I'm tired, that's how I am") every day it seems, and I can't even twitter anymore because I'm too tired to come up with creative ways to say--in 140 characters or less--how overwhelmed I feel lately.

Sleep deprivation is the pits, it really is.

I'm tired. It's been a Long Week--maybe it has been for all of you? So instead of a somewhat coherent (?), post, I wanted to throw out something I've been pondering and see what you, wise internet people, think about this.

The other day I was in our local Barnes & Noble buying Scott a CD for his birthday. The friendly cashier lady, whom I like a lot, and who I swear was pregnant with her first child only like the day before, told me tiredly that she had a five-month-old at home, and she was feeling utterly exhausted.

"She's not sleeping well," she told me. "I can't wait until she grows out of this phase."

We love traditional sayings and folklore expressions at our house. Sayings are easy for L.--and for children in general--to grasp. They are comforting, short, pack a lot of meaning into a few words, and are easily remembered. We have a saying for almost everything around here. Things like:

A place for everything, and everything in its place.
Two heads are better than one
Where there's life, there's hope
If at first you don't succeed...try, try again

And this one we've been using quite a lot lately:

If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb.

When L. was first born, a dear older friend (and mom of five children!) gave me a blank notebook with calendar pages and told me I should write down all the funny/interesting/important happenings in our new child's life. It would be especially important, she instructed me, to write down his first words--those first declarations of self out into the world. And I did try to commit as many of these as I could to paper, that first year and a half of his life.