I Think I Can, I Think I Can.... LOL!

OK, so I'm trying to get this single parenting thing down.

I think I've moved through the "Stages of Grief" in the last two weeks - The first week was all "denial" - this *can't* be happening! Not to our happy little family! Last week I moved through a couple of days of serious, serious sadness and mourning as the reality of what my husband had really done settled in. By the end of the week I had moved in to "Anger" and I'm proud to say my husband is still alive. That is a credit to my self restraint. LOL!

Now I'm moving in to acceptance, and I think that's a good place to be.

We had a really good day today for the most part. I am managing the single parent thing really well most of the day.

However - evenings are turning out to be an on-going nightmare. Trying to get 5 poor sleepers to bed BY MYSELF has been completely overwhelming, as has trying to cook dinner for 5 monkeys while the baby is in a "hold me or I will scream non-stop" stage. I would say from 5pm on, my happy home turns into some level of hell.

Oh, and our level of hell is really, really messy right now. LOL!

So, any advice? Anybody with a husband who travels or something and who has a system for getting lots of little bitties to bed while flying solo? Without screaming or losing it or bursting in to tears? ;)

Also, I am totally interested in any tips or advice on organizing my life so that I can manage these 5 precious creatures and still be a great mom to them. I think organization may turn out to be the key to my sanity.

We've re-instated our schedule [a la "A Mother's Rule of Life"], and it went OK today. It is hard to schedule us though because we have a different set of things to do every day... we homeschool in the mornings of course, but some days we have choir and other days we have soccer and some times we have Little Flowers and Little Saints... and its just hard to schedule.

Homeschooling went really well today though and we had a great day up till the end there. I'm feeling VERY optimistic that life is going to get better from here and I feel like I'm getting the hang of things again.