So! Sarah left a comment at mamazine asking for advice on keeping her household running as she adds another member to her family. She’s got three boys, who are being joined by a little sister (congratulations Sarah!), and she’d like them to continue to arrive at school on time, get through their homework every day, eat meals, go to bed at bedtime, that kind of thing.

I want to have something brilliant to tell her. Really I do. But I’m mostly useless—partly because living on minimal sleep fries my brain a little, and partly because I don’t know what I’m doing here half the time (hence the clever blog title).

So I thought I’d ask all of you lovelies to offer your best suggestions. Bernadette suggests making bedtime a priority, which makes sense. I have these couple of gems to add:

Be Lame.
Cut back on whatever you need to. Really. If your seven-year-old doesn’t play soccer (or softball or basketball or chess or girl scouts or whatever) this season, it’s not going to affect her ability to eventually drop out of college and go pro. And really, do you want her doing that anyway?

Be Boring.
Make up a routine to handle some of the details. Thinking of meals was more than I could manage after Sadie was born, so we’ve gone to a weekly meal plan. As in, every Monday night we eat soup, every Tuesday night we eat a roasted vegetable dish, every Wednesday night we eat… blah blah blah. Like that. Saturdays are the bonus not-scheduled night. Yes, I’d rather be spontaneous and creative with food, but I’d also like to only have to grocery shop once a week and then know we have meals ready to prepare. Easy wins over creative. For food. For now.

That’s all from me; what have you got?