Tireder than God

This week was the kids' first week of school in HK. The first day, Kate went bounding into class, and I had to call her back to give me a kiss goodbye. Charlie is only going in the afternoons, and when I took him in that day, he saw Kate coming out of the lunch room and freaked out, wanting to go into her classroom. I think the teachers thought he was having separation issues, but it wasn't separation from me he was having issues with, it was separation from his sister! Then when I went to pick them up, Kate had gone into Charlie's classroom to 'pick him up' from school. This she has done every day this week. And every day on the way home, Charlie squeaks,"Kate pick me up school, Mummy! Kate pick me up school!"

Today I missed the Mother's Day celebration at school because I was holed up in the new flat with IKEA, who was delivering (yes, they do that here!) and building (and that too!!) our wardrobes and TV cabinet, in preparation for the sea freight delivery tomorrow (gotta have something to put all our stuff in). It took the guys from 10:30am to 3:45pm to do it all, and there were four of them. It would have taken me at least a week, 24/7, to do the same. Well, if I would have finished, and not just left everything half done and wandered off, disillusioned.

After we got home from school today, I thought we would just have a special trip to McDonald's for dinner (I didn't feel like cooking is the direct translation). After she finished eating and while she was waiting for Charlie to finish, Kate leaned on me and said,"I'm tired Mummy. I'm the tiredest person in the world today. I'm tireder than God. And he gets very tired because he has to stay up all the time and watch us, and see who is being naughty, so he can tell Santa who to bring presents to."

Tomorrow we move into the new flat. I am so excited I can't even say. We will have OUR STUFF back! When we were getting ready to move and I had to sort out the house, I had posted up a quote from Karl Lagerfeld: "We should not get attached to things. The thing is to do things, not have them." That got me through all the trials and tribulations of selling things and then pretty much chucking everything else. I was getting really good at it - if in doubt, throw it in the skip. We were going to come with as few possessions as possible and be minimalists. Which is great; I fully intend to (try to) keep things pared down and get rid of things when new things come in, all that sort of stuff. But I have to say, after being in a place that's not yours, without all of your things, there is nothing like your own STUFF.