"I can't take it any more." A young baby, homeschooling, housework, too many places to go, too many house guests and not enough sleep have been pitching me over the edge recently. I'd be in tears at the drop of a hat and saying the meanest things to my husband, who was frustrated by me and started suggesting it might be time to put the kids in school.

Nothing seemed to be going well for me towards the end of last year. Putting the kids in school wasn't the answer I was looking for, but nothing seemed to be working.

A friend reminded me of a book I'd flipped through in the past called A Mother's Rule of Life by Holly Pierlot, which seeks to help a woman in my position figure out how to put all the parts of her life into the proper order and find balance. My first thought generally is not to turn to self-help books or anything of the sort, but one gets to the point where one must do something.

The author suggests not just writing a schedule willy-nilly, but actually considering one's vocation as a wife and mother and working to fit various important areas into ones day in the proper order of importance.

I think the overall idea of the book isn't terribly new or different, and yet it addressed needs I'd been having of late better than other things I've run across. One idea that really struck a chord was that when one creates a scheduled plan, it gives one a lot of freedom to know that something will be done. You don't have to fret over getting everything finished all at once, because every job has its time and place. As I've seen myself alternate between staring at the walls not knowing what to do, but knowing I had a lot to accomplish or running around frantically trying to get everything done all at once, this idea of putting everything into its proper order in a scheme and knowing when something should be done (so that it actually gets done) appeals to me.

Her schedule is not mine, but then again I am not her. In fact, I have yet to fix a complete schedule for myself. I have begun by making a few changes though. I've set aside a time to pray every day. Now while I am in the kitchen cooking dinner, I turn on my CD of the rosary, since I can't cook and hold beads at the same time (plus I really like the meditations by St. Therese). I also got my husband to sit down with me and help me write up a schedule for homeschooling. Not a schedule of specifically when to do what lesson, but a schedule of what lessons to try to get through in a day and I pulled out a three-ring notebook for each child with a section for each day of the week to put their readings, copywork and other similar assignments in so that when we get to something I am not fumbling around and asking them to hold on while I scan and print out work for them.

Is my house clean and tidy and my day perfectly ordered? Sadly no. However, I feel like I may be making my way out of a cloud of depression and frustration. The next steps for me are creating a housekeeping plan of tasks I'd like to get done each day or week and figure out which children can help me with them and perhaps to line up a babysitter who can watch the kids once every few weeks for a few hours so that I can have a chance to be alone.

The mice in my house have reverted to a more normal Pinkie status and are less Brain-like.

After the great disappointments of failed mice killing earlier, we managed to completely ignore the critters for several weeks. Until our dog parked himself firmly in the spot where I prepare dinner with his nose sniffing away madly under the cabinets. I still managed to ignore/step over him for one night, but when the mouse made a mad dash from his hide out, over my foot to another under cabinet location, I decided it was time to do something.

We had hardly turned out the lights in the kitchen before we heard that pleasant snap meaning that there is an ex-mouse somewhere on the premises.

The dog had also been nosing around the foot of our bed and a cabinet in the schoolroom, so we put traps out there -- and hit the jackpot in all locations. I'm paying closer attention to the dog and where he's paying attention. It's not as good as a cat and I doubt we'll ever really win the war on mice, but it's a start.

You know those spiral notebooks that Wal-Mart and Target sell for $.10 at the beginning of the school year? One year when they were marked down to $.05 each, I bought about 40 of them. Of course, that year my mother-in-law also bought us a bunch and has done so every year since. Even though my children inhale paper like air, we haven't managed to work through all the spiral notebooks in the house.

At the beginning of the year, I decided to start doing something with some of the notebooks, besides the usual scribble-fest that fills most of them. My oldest was also very into U.S. geography and so we decided to turn one of the notebooks into a study of the states. It's already bound. It's already lined. It's perfect.

This has become a great geography/handwriting/art project and one my son looks forward to adding to. I think the fact that it is a special book helps, because he has a dedicated space, layout size, and ruled lines.

Although one could certainly print out pictures for all the parts, since my son likes drawing, he's doing most of the illustrations himself, but I do print maps of the states for him from Houghton-Mifflin's Outline Maps.

In my son's geography book, we started with a title page and illustration of the US, followed by a list of the states and the years they entered the Union. Then each state gets a page with facts about the state, a map showing its location in the US and a larger state map. On the back of that page, my son has been drawing copies of the state flags. This does lead to a little confusion because you wind up looking a the state information for one state and the state flag of the previous one, but it's a pretty good format.

He's not quite finished with the original colonies, so this book will be an ongoing project for a long time to come, but it is one both of us our pleased with.

I'm looking forward to making more books out of our excess spiral notebook collection. I'm thinking about a study of prayers and the sacraments, an book of artists and a tree identification notebook.

On the morning after Christmas, the six year old gently shook her father awake and announced that she had thrown up, but that it was all under control. She'd made it to the toilet and she was just letting us know. "Phew, did we get off easy," we thought.

Hahahaha! Early, early that Sunday morning, the bug hit me and the two year old. Then it seemed that things were getting better, though one or two children had on and off diarrhea. We continued on with fairly normal life (meaning we probably infected tons of people, sorry about that), even going up to The Fathers of Mercy for Mass on New Year's Day.

We came home, ate, watched The Great Race with the kidlets and had a nice lazy New Year's day.

I was curled up and sleeping when the screaming started. The four year old had emptied the contents of her stomach onto the bed she shares with her sister. When my husband started cleaning up their bed and transferring the girls to separate locations, the six year old threw up all over her brother's bed and managed to shoot it under another bed. And by morning, there was yet another set of sheets covered in more of the same. That, if you are keeping score, is three sets of sheets/pillows/duvets/pajamas/etc.

I had been caught up with laundry when I went to bed the first time and I loaded of the washing machine at midnight with the first load from the first attack of the plague of 2009 and got up at 7:30 to start a new load before doing anything else. The washer and dryer have been running continuously since then and if nothing else happens, I still have at least two more loads to wash.

The year can only get better from here, right?

We began 2008 on an up-note, spending our very first night ever in the Purple House on January 1. It was exciting -- and freezing. That first week of January was very, very cold and we did not yet have any insulation. The kitchen was not yet functional and all the bigger kids were piled together in one bed in the family room. The one year old slept in our closet. Can you hate a house enough to stop taking pictures of it? I did.

On February 1, we moved out of the Purple House even though it had gotten better with the addition of insulation, a kitchen and a sink in the master bathroom. We left all that luxury living behind and went to England, with a stop in Virginia where I got to meet one of the handsome hunks of the Blogosphere.

After taking the British Isles by storm (or not) we returned home in mid-March on Palm Sunday and dragged our very sleepy selves to Mass.

In April, I turned 33 and invented cheesecake tart recipe.

In May, my mind turned to gardening and the impending arrival of baby number 5.

By the end of June, I was feeling rather huge.

July was an overwhelming month. My husband's grandmother died and our baby finally arrived.

We started our homeschooling year in August and I began dealing with some postpartum depression.

My friend Jo-Lynne came to town in September, which was especially exciting, since it was the first time we've met in the nine+ years we've known each other. And my five year old turned six.

Then someone else turned two in October (Never mind the three candles he is only two).

On All Saint's Day we celebrated yet another birthday.

I discovered the baby had a hemangioma and we survived hosting Thanksgiving for twenty.

December has run me rather ragged with a ninth birthday,

Happy New Year, Y'all!

I generally don't think of myself as having a busy social life or much reason to get out of the house generally, but the past several days have involved flying from one thing to another.

It began last Thursday when the kids and I built gingerbread houses with our homeschooling group after The Boy's Latin class. The next day the oldest girl had a Little Flowers meeting, followed by a grocery trip with all five children. When we arrived home there was a message on the phone inviting us to a dinner with people from our old church. Since we don't get to see these old friends all that often any more, we piled into the car and headed to that. And didn't get home until 10. Yikes!

Saturday I went to Recollections in the morning, got home around 1, headed back out with the rest of the family to meet up with my husband's siblings, and then came home and cooked dinner for friends.

Sunday we went to mass in the morning and spent the afternoon at a birthday party.

Monday evening we had an Advent program at church and didn't get home until late.

Tuesday the oldest and youngest had check ups at the doctor. The oldest is getting so big. I knew he'd had a growth spurt, but he's even shot up a bunch in the height percentiles -- still skinny though. The baby is staying on the same curve she was on a month ago. No huge weight gains, but no losses either so that's good news.

Wednesday the kids and I went to a belated celebration in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The kids acted out the story of Juan Diego, did some craft projects and ate quesadillas.

This morning the littlest had another doctor's appointment. This time with a dermatologist to confirm that the lump on her back is indeed a hemangioma. I guess it is good to know that it looks good and is unlikely to cause any problems, but that was an expensive 15 minutes, I'm sure.

Tomorrow evening we go to my husband's work Christmas party. It's a family party and always fun.

Saturday we have tickets to the Children's Symphony in the morning and agreed to go caroling with some friends that night.

As far as I know we only have mass scheduled for Sunday and next week doesn't look too busy (although we do, I hope, have some friends coming over on Tuesday and there is that whole, um, Christmas thing), but if you don't hear from me for a while, it is probably because I have barricaded myself in the house and refused to have any further contact with the outside world.

You know you might have been listening to the radio too much, when you are helping your six year spell the word "princess" and after she says "P-R-I-" you want to add "Public Radio International."