When will September be over???

This is always such a crazy month for me, ever since the kids started "real" school.  I get totally overwhelmed with the volume of papers and sign-up sheets and new committees and all of the other stuff that comes my way at the beginning of the school year.  It starts to pile up in little corners and on table tops all over my house, and when I walk by and spy a pile that I know needs attention, it just makes me want to cram my whole self into a bag of peanut M&Ms.  I just finished writing apologetic emails to both of the boys' teachers for not returning the parent-teacher conference sign-up sheets on time, because I can't see any time listed that works for me, Matt, and the babysitter where we could do both conferences at the same general time.  Achieving this conference seems to be a logic puzzle that is going to defeat me, so I tire of trying to solve it and figure I'll update the blog.  With what?  Just my ranting about how busy I am.  And what better way to solve that problem than to spend some time telling people about it?  Perfect.
In other news, things are going well on most fronts.  All kids are healthy at the moment, and everyone - including Ruby - loves school.  She loves, loves it.  When I tell her it's time to go (2 mornings a week for 2.5 hours), she claps and says "yay yay yay" and rushes around gathering her shoes, her backpack and multiple sippy cups (she needs at least two with her at all times to prevent a major tantrum).  Very cute.  She is in a little class with mostly younger kids, since she has an October birthday, and she goes crazy over babies, so she thinks she is in heaven.  Adding to her advanced status, she has also decided to potty-train herself.  I'm going along with it, trying not to get my hopes up, but she's pretty determined.  We spend quite a bit of time each day on the potty, cleaning the potty, admiring pretty underwear and, occasionally, cleaning up accidents.  This is not the way I went about things with the boys, but I'm trying to be flexible and try new things if that's what Ruby desires.  So we'll see about that.  Her birthday is coming up in a month, and I'm trying to decide what to do - small party, big giant party, something in between?  I want to celebrate her and make a big deal, but there's a part of me that wants to keep everything just in our family too, so, typically, I'm not doing anything about it and will have to decide at the last minute, making whatever I do all the more stressful.  Anyway, life is good and I feel like I have many, many things to write about, but no time to do it yet.  Maybe when the kids are all in college I'll have a little time ...