After a busy, fun-filled Fourth of July weekend, it was time yesterday to slow down the pace and regroup before Monday hit.

I woke up Sunday morning with only one plan in mind -- hit the beach. Which beach didn't matter, all that mattered was that it would include water and sand and maybe some nice trees and sun and a beach chair -- you get the idea. The real beach experience.

A mostly cloudy Friday and Saturday seemed to make this need even more urgent.

Of three possible takers in my family, I got one on board, and he brought a friend. In short order, the three of us -- me and two 10-year-olds -- were off to the beach.

I plunked my chair down into the sand, spread out the towels and watched the two boys hit the water -- only to shriek after running calf-deep into the icy pool known as Lake Michigan. I have to admit I was a little nervous after seeing their response because my internal timer indicated that I needed at least two hours of beach time, and if freezing water was going to cut the boys' activities short, I could be in trouble.

But before I knew it, the boys put their snow tubes on the water and proceeded to jump on top. Paddling away from the shore, they floated north, got themselves back to the beach, only to set out again into the lake and repeat the process.

After a few rounds of this, they headed over to a large puddle (hardly worthy of being called a pond, but a very large puddle works) and began the very serious work of catching tiny black tadpoles in the plastic containers we'd brought along. In short order they were joined by some other boys and girls, all shouting orders to each other ("More rocks!" "More water!") in an effort to get the perfect beach habitat built for as many tadpole babies as could fit inside.

They threw rocks, collected driftwood, dared each other to swim in the freezing water, kept up work on the tadpole haven, dug in the sand and even did a little exploring in the nearby woods.

The first time I checked my watch, nearly two hours had passed without one request to leave or any indication of boredom of any kind. It would be yet another hour before we packed up to leave, a little sunburnt and sand-caked, and very grateful to the beach that worked its magic yet again.

I should be embarrassed to tell this tale, but shame's not my strong suit so I'll go ahead and share.

I've lived in a house with a three-season screen porch on the front for 13 years and I've really never used it right. I finally have righted this wrong, and now every single day I think about how it could have possibly taken me 13 long years to figure this out.

The revelation came while on vacation in Door County with my husband's family last month. We were staying at a place that featured little cabins along the lake. (This was not the lap of luxury, as this previous blog post revealed.)

Each little cabin was just a few small rooms with dated, damp furniture, but each one also had a stellar feature -- a screen porch on the front with views of the Green Bay. One night while the boys in our family were out go-karting and other loud messing around, I grabbed a book and headed out to the screen porch to take in what was left of the evening and watch the light fade across the lake.

After 20 minutes or so alone, I was joined by my 13-year-old daughter. She pulled up one of the white plastic chairs (not the most comfortable, but they did the job), plopped down next to me and started talking. And talking. Nearly 90 minutes later, long after the last of the daylight was gone, we were still on that porch and she was just starting to wind down for the night.

If you're not the parent of a teenager maybe this is hard to understand, but in many ways this night, this one single night, was the highlight of my vacation. It's hard to get kids that age to open up like that about everything. It was rare and precious, and if she had never stopped talking, I promise you I'd still be there, riveted to my chair.

Something felt different, really open and free that night. I decided it was the screen porch, calling back to a time when that's where you went to cool off at night before air-conditioning. Before nonstop TV and high-speed Internet connections. Before cell phones that can find you anywhere.

That night I told her how great it was that we talked for so long, and asked her if I dragged some comfy chairs out onto our screen porch at home, would she hang out there with me this summer and just talk?

"Well, I do have a lot more things to do at home than I do here," she said.

Please? I asked.

"Yeah, I would," she said.

Less than two weeks after returning from that trip, I was lucky enough to score a great comfy chair and ottoman secondhand and scrounged up another underused stuffed armchair from inside the house and set them up on the porch. I added a big potted fig tree, a small Ikea table perfect for board games, a little lamp with a stained glass shade, a few strings of hanging lights and the final touch -- a Boston fern. The wooden table and wooden chairs that were there before were moved into the basement for another time.

Thanks to nice summer weather, the porch is now the destination spot in our house. The kids know where to find me just about any time I'm home. We've shared wine with friends on the porch; I even beat my mom at Scrabble there just last week.

And the point of the porch, to get my girl gabbing to me on a regular basis? There's been a lot of that, too.

I'm so sorry this idea didn't come to me sooner because we're enjoying it so much. But I have to say, I'm glad I didn't miss it one minute longer.

I'm on Day 10 of a nasty summer cold that is threatening to turn into a sinus infection. The first weekend that I contracted this thing, it was beautiful outside -- sunny, in the 80s, perfect.

Weekend Two of the nasty cold was mostly crummy and chilly, so no regrets that I spent most of it inside on the couch rather than poolside.

Some friends and I were debating this the other day: What's worse -- a summer cold or a cold summer?

Despite feeling lousy for the better part of two weeks, I'm going to go with a cold summer. I know this cold will eventually end, but will summer ever warm up? That's a question I can't answer.

All I can say is that I'm hoping I feel better when -- and if -- it ever warms up.

Kerri Engebrecht knew she had a boy who loved sports and wanted to be part of whatever was going on around him.

Despite his desires, whenever opportunities came up, he held himself back and couldn't jump in -- behavior that became very obvious when he moved into kindergarten. Engebrecht said her son's teacher was worried that something was wrong with him because he spent so much time in the bathroom, but they quickly figured out what he was doing -- removing himself from the hubbub of the classroom.

After doing some research to figure out why her son reacted so strongly to noises, smells, touch and other stimulation, Engebrecht (pictured right) learned of something called sensory-processing disorder and the symptoms were a match.

"When he was a newborn, he had a startle reflex that lasted longer than most," Engebrecht said. "He didn't sleep through the night until he was 5 and he had a hard time calming down after he'd wake up. He loves motorcycles, but had to wear earplugs to watch a motorcycle parade. All these things were different, but we didn't know why."

Engebrecht had her son evaluated by an occupational therapist, typically the first line of attack in dealing with sensory-processing issues. The results came back that her son was sensitive in a variety of areas, so they started a program with the OT to address it.

Engebrecht also read "The Out-of-Sync Child" by Carol Stock Kranowicz, which further explains signs of sensory-processing disorder (sometimes also called sensory-integration disfunction) and provides ideas to do at home and with an OT to help the child calm down his or her responses.

Through working with the therapist and trial and error, Engebrecht figured out why her son still wasn't sleeping through the night at age 5. He didn't like the feel of a sheet underneath his body, so she put a blanket down instead and he slept the whole night through. Soon she realized that the feel of certain clothes on his skin or clothing tags also made him uncomfortable and jittery, so she started to shop differently.

Engebrecht can't believe the difference these small changes have made for her child, so she's started a support group for other parents to share ideas. The group meets the second Wednesday of every month at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin corporate center. (Click here for more information.)

She hopes the group can help parents work through the issues surrounding sensory-processing disorder and get through to the "real kids" underneath all the sensory issues.

"I'm a soccer mom with tears in my eyes this year because my son was in there having fun," Engebrecht said. "I always wanted him to be able to be the kid he wanted to be."