Seriously, how do you do it?

I have had one of those weeks ... admittedly, for a few weeks. One of those weeks in which nothing gets done. OK, truth be told, I did a lot of playing Farmville, and playing "throw the ball to Mama," and wanting nothing more than to sit on the couch with a cup of coffee and my new Runner's World magazine. (Yeah, forget that running business--I haven't done anything that qualifies as exercise in a full 15 days.)

Now, fortunately I have managed to keep dinner on the table every day except one (plus a time or two when we have gone to get a meal), and all our bills are paid. And our clothes are clean. And mostly put away (except for the baby's, but since it's hard to put them away when she's awake, and when she's asleep I don't want to go in her room to put them away, the clean clothes live in the hamper in the living room for a few days).

But the table ... well, do you want to see what the kitchen table looks like?

Yikes. We just push everything over at dinner time to eat off of one half of it.

And the living room:

Those are gift bags (top left) from the end of February when we did our family birthday lunch. And Sam's t-shirt(s) on the couch. And the baby laundry on the chair. And the mail on the piano bench... because there isn't any more room on the kitchen table. And cedar chips to go in the dog house outside - then why are they inside still? And the toys...... Sigh. These are small pictures, so you can't see too much in detail.

But the bathrooms have gone too long. Really, there will be no picture necessary.

So, how do you do it?
How do you keep things up? Do you budget your time? Do you say "no ____ until I finish ____"? Or maybe you have children who are done with teething and no longer eat leaves when you're not looking? Perhaps you actually have people come to your house regularly, so you have motivation more than once a month, to keep things picked up.
Of course, why would I try to pretend I keep a nice clean house for company, when I just put pictures of my disaster area online for the world to see?

Do you have secrets to keeping your sanity? Or do you have weeks like this, too?

The past week, however, has had some milestones:
On Saturday Sam, Lizzie and I went with Jessa to the vet's office, and only Sam, Lizzie, and I came back. After 14 years, Jessa had her 3rd strike, and we had to put her to sleep. It was sad, but it was the right time, and I had a peace about it. It has actually been a huge relief to us to not have to take care of her anymore. Though of course I miss seeing her around the house, sleeping like a log, and I keep thinking I can throw the odd table scrap to her, but then she's not there. Lizzie kept looking for her for about a day - Jessa used to always follow me into the room whenever I went to pick Lizzie up from a nap or go for a diaper change. So every time Liz looked down, there was the old yellow dog. She's stopped looking now.

On the brighter side, Lizzie popped 2 teeth in one day, so now she has 5! Two on the bottom, and three on the top. The top ones are slowly coming down more. I wish I could get a picture of them, but that would require her to hold still while I hold the camera, which is not a skill set we have mastered yet. Now that she can bite down into things, she loves to take her Cheerios and put them in her mouth just to hear them crunch between her front teeth. She also spent several days testing the sound her teeth made when she crunched or ground them together. I am glad that's stopped for the most part. Terrible noise.

Lizzie now throws the ball. She's actually pretty good at it!


She also dances to music or a beat. Here is a short video:



Please excuse the misspelling of the word helicopter. I don't know where the spelling brain cell went.

Isn't she fun? I do love having her around! The fun of watching her learn, play and understand is probably a fair trade for the chaos that sometimes surrounds us. Though I do hope that before long we'll have less chaos and just as much fun.