This past weekend marked the start of a new era in the Cheung Household. I'll call it The Grad School Days. For the next two years, my husband will be working full time and attending class on Friday nights and Saturdays. I'll be home, holding down the fort, one hand changing the channel to Sesame Street and the other hand lifting my glass of wine.

Phillip is worried about how to put 100% into work, home and school, and I am going around micromanaging our schedules and free time, trying to make the most out of what we have. We're excited and anxious and intimidated. Mostly we're tired. If one child isn't waking up at 3am and wanting to snuggle, the other is tantrumming about having to go to bed in the first place. I don't think they've received the Pull Together and Cooperate Family Memo.

I have a confession to make. (Don't judge me before you hear me out!) I am a procrastinator. I know. You are horrified to hear such a thing from me but it is true. If I am anything with you, it is honest. Therefore, I felt it was time to come clean. (I should have told you weeks ago. I realize that.)

It seems I tend to be eternally late with everything. (Christmas cards should go out before the 24th of December?! Really?) In fact, I am terrible with deadlines. (Shhh! Do not tell my editor.) I count on my friends, co-workers and Google Calendar to remind me when I have an upcoming appointment, project or deadline.

It was always a strike against me in school. Yes, I was the student who waited until the last minute to get her work done. Thankfully, I was able to maintain an A average in spite of my irresponsibility. Besides, if I missed a deadline, I was the only one who suffered back then. To be honest, the adrenaline rush of making sure I met the deadline usually resulted in better work and more concentration on the project.

Ah, Spring. The little robins settle in a nest outside my window. The azaleas explode into bloom. And my calendar nearly implodes under the weight of itself.

It catches me off-guard, every year around this time, how busy things can get as school starts to wind to a close. Every club, every team, every class -- they all prepare for their big end-of-year presentations/banquets/parties. End-of-year school projects come due and big spring dance recitals loom on the near horizon. Deadlines emerge for summer activity sign-ups. In this family, two birthdays pop up, ready to be celebrated and planned for. My scraggly flower beds beg for attention.

It’s all fun, of course -- great fun, actually, since much of it takes place outside in the beautiful weather. But that doesn’t change the nearly manic level of busy-ness I find myself facing, especially since our kid activities are multiplied by four. As I flipped through my calendar last night, a little overwhelmed at the weeks ahead, it occurred to me that the month of May might actually surpass December for schedule craziness, at least in this family. Except without the benefit of all the delicious holiday food, which is probably a good thing, since swimsuit season beckons.

(Oh, rats. Add that one to the list: find a swimsuit.)

Our house has roughly six or seven clocks in it. That doesn’t count wristwatches and the clocks in our cars. No two clocks will tell you the same time. You are better off phoning a friend or looking at the position of the sun in the sky if you want a precise time of day when you are in my home.

I showed my daughter how to change the clock in the van. I told her to change it anywhere from four to seven minutes ahead and not tell me how many. Now, unless I yell out the window at some unsuspecting stranger, I have no idea what time it really is and have to rely on the clock. Yet, I am still usually late to things anyway. I call it my Defective Arrival Time Gene. No one buys that.

I used to tell the children that the reason it was one time in one room and a different time in another room was that the rooms were in different time zones. Just slightly off. For a little while they thought that was super cool to think they had more than one time zone in their house. Now, they think I was horrible to tell them such things. (I still think it was funny!)

I've never been one of those moms to wax annoyingly rhapsodic over her pre-kid days, that glorious time when I could go wherever I wanted at any time I wanted. No way would I send Jack and Molly back to the manufacturer so I can go back to sleeping in on Saturdays.

That said, I'm just going to be flat out honest and say: life with a toddler and a baby has put a serious cramp in my style.

People giddily warned us about expanding your family from two to three. You'll hate your husband! (Not true.) You'll feel scared and inadequate and incapable! (Sometimes true.) The first three months are HORRIBLE! (Not true for us.) Life will be such a blur- night will be day! Day will be night! (This, unfortunately, was EXTREMELY true.) But Jack was an easy happy baby who didn't put a lot of constraints and demands on his parents. Fitting him into our world (or, should I say, adjusting our world to fit his) wasn't too difficult.