The Move Begins

I began packing this week, and now it looks as though the house has exploded. Sigh. And another sigh. Why is it that as soon as turn my attention to something other than keeping everything in check, it all begins to go haywire? The kids behave as though they've been turned loose out of cages, and there seems to be no catching them any time soon, so school is becoming next to impossible. I am trying to get another couple of weeks in - and to make it meaningful, rather than just tossing them a math page or cramming in whatever history we can manage here and there - but I don't know if I can do it in the middle of all this mess and chaos. I have a plan for packing, of course, and am going about it systematically, but it seems I forgot to make a plan for who would do everything else in the meantime! :-) Even as I type this, I'm looking at a cracker crumbs thoughtfully scattered all over the desk and in the keyboard. There's laundry all over the place - clean and dirty, and the beds are unmade (which is the worst housekeeping crime, second only to unwashed dishes, in my mind!). After an unsuccessful attempt to read to the kids outside (because I couldn't keep anyone's attention, and the baby was crawling all over me, probably trying to escape the dog, who kept licking him), I finally just left them to what they were doing and am now trying to get up the energy to gather them inside in a few minutes for some quiet time. I know I've been distracted (still so stressed about selling this house and buying the other one - it's awful thinking about those underwriters, whoever they are, who could, at a whim and at any given time, decide we're not worthy of another home loan after all!), so it's hard to ask anyone else to focus and keep things together, but I hope we can restore some semblance of order soon.