How is it done?

Yesterday we had this great day. We made everybody work all morning and got the house all clean. In the afternoon we napped and played but still generally kept it together. In the evening I made people get off the screens and we played Hullabaloo (which is so worth it if you have littles; it's like Twister for preschoolers) and I sat and played baby dolls with Z and Matchbox cars with Z, and we got everybody to bed by 8:30 and it was bliss, and I was thinking maybe 2009 was going to be the year I got it together and was Organized Mom with Clean House and Well-behaved Children.



Today we went up to the snow. We borrowed a couple of sleds from my friend Jenne and proceeded up past her house to a place that is apparently called either Little Sweden or Swedish Hill, up Highway 108 above Sonora just before the pass is closed off. It's a pretty good sledding spot and very crowded.



In my five and a half years in California I had not yet encountered Sierra Nevada snow until today. It is not snow as I knew it in Utah or Alaska. It is really dense and really wet. If a bit gets into your shoe there is no grace period for you to get it out. You are wet immediately and wet through.



Also, because we have spent five and a half years in California, completed numerous closet purges and added two members to our family, we no longer have adequate snow gear. We were really Mickey-Mouse sledders. Note the ill-fitting, mismatched gloves. I have dug out some leftover fleece and I have a project to undertake!





It was still fun. K said to me, "I never sawed snow!" And I realized that he probably never has. So that was worthwhile, to take a four-year-old for his first experience with the white stuff.

(Can you believe this picture, with the eyelash yarn hat and the eyelashes on Z!!?)

But it wore us out. After dinner tonight we bathed the kids and then G zonked out on the bed and I got carried away in a new novel. (Who, me?) Suddenly it was 9:15. S was on the computer playing Roblox. A had gotten Z and K into their pajamas (my second son is a saint) and they were watching Night at the Museum. The movie ended and there was mass chaos getting everybody into bed.

I will say, I am grateful they weren't out stealing blow-up Santa Clauses on motorcycles, which I know they covet, from our neighbors' lawns. This wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. But I could definitely see a contrast from the night before.

So how do people be the Organized Mom and the Fun Mom and the Clean House Mom and the Well-behaved Children Mom for more than one day in a row? I really would like to know, and I think I'm asking in the right place, because there are a certain few of you out there whom I suspect of having it all together like this. Sometimes I think I need to do a mommy internship with some of you people. But I might flunk. I am not sure I have it in me.

Actually probably if I had not stayed up until 2 a.m. watching Wayne's World and folding laundry and eating peanut M&Ms with G I would feel a little better and more focused and capable today. Ya think?