Third week of January and things are really getting back into the old busy rhythm. Training for the kids have started in earnest so we’re back to Saturdays being super-packed.

8.30am Send Cait to gym training in school
9.05am Owain has Berries class
10am Gillian has bowling practice in Chinese Swimming Club
11am Pick Owain from Berries
12pm Pick Caitlin from gym
12.30pm Pick Gillian from bowling
1pm Lunch
2pm Gillian, Cait and Owain have catechism class in church.
3.30pm Isaac has catechism class in church
4pm Swimming lessons for Cait and Owain
5pm Isaac ends Catechism class and takes a bus home by himself
6pm Finally everyone is home!

This weekend I’ll have to practise splicing myself into two or three. Cloning would also be a good option. Or does anyone have a teleportation device to lend me?

KH would be away on his ‘company cohesion’ trip in Bintan, officially paid for by the company and touted to promote bonding among employees, but what really is just a thinly veiled excuse for lots of wine, golf, karaoke and pool time! I am left to hold the fort. I will have to sit down and carefully work out the details on who goes where and where I have to be at what time etc. It will be a finely tuned plan of precision and balance but I think I can pull it off!

So our days can be crazy busy but I don’t mind this. Or more accurately put, I like it. I like the buzz and the energy. I like the pockets of downtime I get when I am in transit between picking up x and sending y to z class. It used to hurt my head to think about who goes where and when but now, it’s a cinch. By the end of the day, we’re all running on very flat batteries as the adrenalin winds down but we feel like it’s been very productive and that’s a nice feeling to have.

But you know, I really would not have it any other way. While there are days when I just want to tear my hair out and fervently wish (or yell!) for some peace and quiet, I know I would miss the constant swirl of activity that surrounds me now. I know I would feel a sense of loss when it goes – when the kids grow up, prefer the company of friends and leave home for families of their own. I guess I’ll have plenty of peace and quiet then but how lonely it will be!

Already I get a taste of this – on weekdays from 10.30am to 1.30am, the kids are off to school, the cat takes a siesta and the house becomes still and quiet. So quiet I can even hear cricket sounds, when the very air feels drowsy and slow. At first, I am gleeful: so quiet! No fights to referee! I can go online without anyone looking over my shoulder and bugging me to go on Facebook to farm! I can laze on the couch and read! I can even snooze without someone flinging herself on me and shocking me out of my sleep! Bliss!

But then, after the first 30minutes, the stillness gets to me. Like the princess on her bed of mattresses with a pea far beneath, I get a vague, indescribable sense that something is not quite right. A sense of restlessness that I am missing something. By 1.30pm, I am listening expectantly for the sounds coming round the corner – the high-pitched excited chatter that tells me the Holy Terror Trinity is home. Then the noise level slowly builds back to normal as one by one, the kids come home, the school bags are flung carelessly on the ground, my nagging starts and by evening, its full-blown chaos once again. And what is that I feel? That warm fuzzy feeling? It can only be… contentment.