I am not a great sleeper. No. I must amend that. I am not a great nighttime sleeper. I am either working (having become so entrenched in writing, I don't realize it is 3:47 a.m. and I need to be in bed) or I start playing a video game because my children (a.k.a. the little gamer pushers) begged me to do one last Game Quest with them. As I see the sun rise, I ground them all for making me stay up all night. Because, you know, it is their entire fault. I am just the tired parent.

Then there are those nights that I try to go to bed (like a person not imitating a vampire) and read or do something soothing.

All eyes are on Beijing right now, as the finest and fastest and strongest seek to dazzle an entire world with their exploits. There is pageantry, there is history, there is peace on earth, good will to men.

It is a beautiful sight to behold.

But I would submit that there is an equally challenging Olympics of sorts, being played out in minivans all over this great nation. In our family, it's an event my husband has always called "The Mommy Olympics."

Magoo likes to wait. It’s not that he has great patience, because I assure you he has no more patience than any other boy of the 3-year-old variety. He just likes to put things off. He takes after me, someone who’s been known to say, “I’m too busy to procrastinate right now. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Magoo doesn’t want to do anything practical or boring if there’s even an ounce of fun to be had in the world, even a smidgen of fun going on without him. Magoo does not want to miss the boat to party time.

A byproduct of having a mother who can't physically lift herself off the couch, let alone stack your stacking cups into towers for knocking over, is a lot of second-hand television. Second-hand, because chances are, if you are fifteen months old, you are not terribly interested in cable news, the Olympics, or whatever Mommy has TiVod on the Bravo channel because she couldn't stay awake to watch it the night before. Fifteen-month-olds don't really have opinions about that Kenley girl on Project Runway, and are content to let the designers make it work in the background while they ram their new plastic truck into the coffee table over and over. (At least, my fifteen-month-old is not terribly interested. I have been around toddlers who would happily watch test patterns for hours.)

A friend from high school told me recently she hasn't had time to create the business she dreamed up for herself. There hasn't been time. She's a stay-at-home mom with a 4-year-old.

"I bet you feel guilty or you're mad at yourself,'' I say.

"Oh, yes!'' she says.

Somewhere between the celebration of the last day of school and today, the calendar quickly flipped through June and July and has now landed on mid-August. That led to just one thing in my house. Panic.

It isn’t so much the kids who are in a state of back-to-school panic, but I am in the midst of it. Wait! I am not ready. Where did those hours go that I was going to use to de-clutter and organize the kids’ rooms?

Every summer, when the schools publish their school supply lists, the ten-year-old girl in me materializes out of nowhere. I gaze in rapt adoration at the perfectly symmetrical rows of Elmer's glue lining the shelves of our grocery store, and my heart sings.

I love school supplies – I always have. It's funny how a completely blank, two-dollar spiral notebook is the epitome of a fresh start. If it's adorned with a swirly pink unicorn, then all the better (though my strapping sons might disagree).

We call it "leaves and sauce," that lovely little dish most people call salad. Spinach leaves are the best with sauce because they have those nice little green stem handles you can use for the dipping. My kids love leaves and sauce, but salad? They won’t touch it.

Ideally, I would have something thoughtful and insightful up here. I even started a couple of fabulously interesting and, of course, well-written posts, but OH MAN, you guys, I AM SO TIRED OF BEING PREGNANT.

I know that is a horrible thing to say. I know I have absolutely nothing to complain about. This pregnancy has progressed along the same ridiculously easy line as my first, and the only real complication is that of having to take care of a toddler instead of lounging about eating ice cream all day.

An unpleasant reality has made itself known in our house: The girl is seeing herself through the eyes of others.

It has me ill.