Time to recommit

In typical "me" fashion, I have found that over the course of the last three weeks, our schedule for getting stuff done has been decidedly hit or miss.

I am a remarkably disorganized organizer--a feat that should win me some sort of medal but, alas, does not. The house stays relatively tidy (except, of course, for the Lincoln Logs that Logan scatters from one end of the house to the other), the laundry is 90% under control, the children are clean, meals are served at 8 a.m., noon and 5:30 p.m., and I usually don't forget the dog out back in a rainstorm. Somehow, though, school has slipped through the cracks of that very bare-bones to-do list.

I have found that we are getting started somewhere around 10 a.m. This is not acceptable because frankly, Logan has lost any interest in reading whatsoever by that point. He is generally so engrossed in whatever elaborate drama that he has constructed that the mere mention of actually reading a book aloud to me is enough to send him into one of his oh-so-flattering whine fests.

While I am in the middle of explaining to him in my Very Gentle Mommy Voice™ that while his irritation is acceptable, his tone most certainly is not, I am apt to hear Atticus piping in with, "Well, what are we doing?" If I answer with something that he finds interesting enough (say, a SL read aloud or science), he will joyfully begin routing his sister from her room by flinging open her door.

This is generally not a good thing, as Princess Jo enthroned in her inner sanctum usually means that she is knee-deep in writing a story for her newspaper or, possibly, designing a sign for her door that says something like, "Soldiers Needed! Strong, strapping youths (boy or girl) apply within. Pay is not good, but adventure awaits!"

In other words, she is busy. And she doesn't want to be disturbed, not even by a giddy little brother announcing that "Lincoln: A Photobiography" is going to be read post-haste. Her first reaction is inevitably to shout, "Door closed rules! Door closed rules!" This is code for "Please knock," but must, apparently, be yelled at the top of one's lungs in order to cross the language barrier that exists between a big sister and little brother.

This outburst means that I now have to disentangle myself from the fine art of disciplining Logan ("Do all things without complaining or disputing.") to rebuke Jo ("Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.") and to remind Atticus that his sister likes to be gently interrupted, just as he does.

By the time I get everyone downstairs, it feels like lunchtime already and I am not very inclined to tackle those things that I must use a little romancing to get my children to perform. Their patience--and mine--is already shot. The tone of the day is one of endurance rather than joy.

I hate that.

So I am recommitting--right here, right now--to getting back on track with our schedule. To making an effort to pull things to order before they disintegrate into too much willy-nilly free-for-all. To be the mom I know I can be. Hold me accountable, o.k.?