It is a well-known fact among working parents of young kids that weekends are now your work days. Your kids are not in daycare or school. In fact, your children have this innate ability to sense when it’s the weekend, because once Saturday morning rolls in, they somehow instinctively wake up before the sun even peeks out.

One day, when my children are much older and I have to shove them out of bed to wake them up, I might forget what these weekends are like, so I decided to record a typical Saturday for us with a 2-year-old and a newborn.

5 am: I hear Woori stirring. I climb out of bed shivering. My postpartum night sweats have been cooling down, but I still wake up with my hair and clothes kind of damp, and because we sleep with the windows open, it’s freezing.

I change into a dry T-shirt then stumble to the kitchen to grab my pump and warm up a bottle of refrigerated breastmilk. I bottlefeed Woori while I pump, nodding off to the sounds of her sucking.

5:30 am: I finish pumping. I throw the bottle and pump parts into the kitchen sink. Too sleepy to wash them. I swaddle Woori and place her back into her bassinet. Climb back into bed. She’s a little fussy still but I pass out and eventually, so does she.

6:30 am: Tov’s up! David gets up and turns on the TV for Tov. Saturday mornings, we allow Tov some screen time. He’s currently obsessed with a YouTube channel in which some brilliant guy’s making tens of thousands of bucks by creating videos of trucks and police toy cars driving around and getting into glorious accidents.

“Oh no!” Tov yells at the screen every time a truck crashes.

7 am: David heads downstairs to the gym to work out. Tov gets bored of his show so gallops over to my bed and starts making enough ruckus to awaken both Woori and me.

Welp, time to get up.

7:30 am: I make a matcha latte and try to nurse Woori while Tov literally climbs all over me. He grabs my hand and tries to drag me to his room, but I’m still feeding Woori. He begins whining.

Then he suddenly remembers he has a little sister and grins at her. “Aaaaaay!” He says, rubbing his hand all over her face while she’s trying to feed. Poor Woori. She tolerates a lot from her big brother.

I try to listen to a devotional podcast called The Daily Liturgy (my favorite) while nursing, but with Tov yelling and running all over the place and grabbing at me, I am so distracted that I have to rewind over and over. I also fall asleep while breastfeeding despite all the noises Tov’s making. As soon as the podcast is over, I forget everything except “His steadfast love endures forever.” Or something like that. Amen.

8:30 am: I try to eat breakfast. It almost always includes three soft-boiled eggs. The problem is Tov loves cracking and peeling eggs. As I’m peeling the eggs, he scampers over and asks for an egg to peel, too.

I give him an egg. He screams and cries. He wants a different egg. Fine. I give him another egg. He seems content with that one. He peels it but doesn’t eat it. It rolls on the floor, coating itself with dirt and crumbs.

Usually Tov doesn’t eat breakfast, so we stopped offering it to him unless he asks for something. But today he seems hungry, because he ate most of my eggs.

9 am: I try to give Woori some tummy time. She screams. I try to give her some face time, attempting to get her to smile. She shoots me an expression of pure disgust. Babies are delightful.

9:30 am: David trots up sweaty from his workout. It’s my turn to work out now. This is Mr favorite part about weekends now— I can leave Woori with David and get a full workout, instead of cutting it short because Woori decided to take a 15-minute nap, which is almost every day.

10 am: Welp, never mind. Woori is screaming her head off and David can’t get her to settle down because his man boobs are useless, so I cut my workout short and rush up to nurse her again. I’m kind of resentful that my husband got a 90-minute workout while I got barely 30 minutes.

11:30 am: Shower. Woori is perky and content now so she lies without fussing on her changing pad on the floor while I rinse off and do my morning skincare routine.

12:30 pm: I don’t know where the time has gone. We are dashing about preparing snacks, changing diapers and pull-ups, getting ready to leave.

We have a special treat for Tov today. We are going to Irvine Park Railroad! It’s a kids amusement park that offers train rides and paddle boats. I saw it on Instagram and we knew Tov would love it.

Problem is, Tov doesn’t know that we have a whole wonderful afternoon planned for him. We have to physically wrestle him to get him ready.

While David puts Woori into her car seat, I’m trying to cajole Tov to go down the stairs with me while I struggle with two heavy bags filled with essentials for baby and toddler. He wants me to carry him. I hoist him up on my other shoulder and say a little prayer for protection for my bad back. I have a feeling it’s only a matter of time before I hurt my back again.

1 pm: We somehow managed to all pile into the car. Both kids are strapped into their car seats. Tov has snacks. Woori is throwing a fit. She’s tired and hates the car seat.

We start driving east towards Irvine while Woori shrieks and yowls her displeasure. And then Tov starts screaming as well because he spotted David drinking a can of Waterloo sparkling peach drink and he wants it too.

The GPS says it’ll take us 2 hours to reach Irvine Park Railroad. Thankfully, Woori eventually tires herself out and pass out. Tov passes out too. So do I.

2:30 pm: We are getting close to the railroad park, only to discover that every entrance into the park has a half-mile-long line of vehicles waiting to get in. GPS says it’ll take us 40 minutes just to move 0.8 miles. WTF.

Turns out, it’s pumpkin patch season. We chose the worst possible time to come here. We jettison our plan and scramble for Plan B. We decide to turn around and go to Heritage Park in Irvine instead.

3 pm: I find a public library in which I can nurse Woori, while David takes Tov for a romp around the park. Pretty much every single person I see in that park is Asian. If I see a white person, 10/10 they are married to an Asian.

David and Tov find a water play fountain by the lake. Tov gets soaked. He is the only one splashing. The other kids are apparently not allowed to get wet. They eye Tov from their safe dry spot with envy.

We change Tov into dry clothes and look at the clock. 4 pm and more than an hour away from home. What the heck is there to do in Irvine?

4:30 pm: We head to Spectrum Center, a massive outdoor shopping center. Maybe we can get some coffee and a nice dinner? So exciting. Things we could have done at home without the waste of time and gas money.

Spectrum Center is packed as well. Lots of young couples and families. But Tov is the only child insisting on dunking half his body into every fountain in that center. And there are a lot of fountains. They’re beckoning to Tov from every corner. How can he resist? How can he not run screaming “Wawa!!!” to every fountain and dip his forearm into the pool?

When he’s not chasing fountains, he’s insisting on pushing Woori’s stroller, getting upset when we try to steer him away from people, bushes, and poles. When we finally snatch the stroller away from him, he flings himself onto the floor, prostrating like a professional mourner and wails. Fat globes of tears roll down his cheeks.

After 40 minutes of this, we’ve finally had it. Forget dinner! We are returning home!

5:15 pm: But first, coffee. We stop by the Citibank Cafe since David gets a discount with his credit card. He gets a coffee, I get a matcha latte. Tov points at a sugar-crusted almond croissant. He orders, “This!”

I order him a zero-sugar protein strawberry yogurt instead. He polishes it off.

My stomach growls. I realize I haven’t had time for lunch and Tov had eaten most of my breakfast.

We sit down for 5 minutes at the cafe but Tov, high on yogurt, hops and skips and yoddles and climbs all around as though the cafe is his personal play gym. I see a young Asian couple give him the stink eye and then glare at us.

I was you just five years ago, I want to tell that couple. Just you wait.

I grab Tov by the hand and we leave.

It takes us another 20 minutes to make it to the parking lot because Tov kept grabbing for Woori’s stroller and then running off with it as though drunk and drugged.

We speed home in roads that are surprisingly low traffic (prime dinner time), playing obnoxious Cocomelon songs to keep Tov quiet, and make it home by 7.

7 pm: I am ravenous by that point, but Woori is also starving so I run up with her to feed her again, but I also really need to pee, so I set her down on our bed and then rush to the bathroom.

As I leave the bathroom, I hear a BOOM!

Woori had fallen off the bed and when I run over, she’s on the floor with her head bang on the hardwood floor, screaming. I must have put her too close to the edge, and as she was jostling about, she must have slid off the bed covers.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” I yell, scooping her up to check on her.

David sprints over to see what’s going on. “What? What happened?”

Woori is startled but otherwise seems OK. Babies have pretty sturdy heads. My heart, however, takes a good 10 minutes to finally slow down as I rock her and nurse her. Meanwhile, Tov climbs up and down my legs while I feed Woori.

Stomach growls again. I really need to eat something.

7:45 pm: We have leftover eggplant pasta for dinner. I wolf mine down over the kitchen counter while holding Woori with one arm.

We clean up while Tov makes more messes. It’s a never ending cycle.

8:30 pm: Bedtime for the kids. Our favorite time of the day! Cue hallelujah songs.

We bathe them both. David puts Tov down, while I put Woori down. Tov passes out the moment his head touches the mattress, but Woori wakes and cries a few times and needs me to rock her back to sleep.

9:15 pm: Me time. Me time. ME ME ME ME TIME!

Also the time when I consume the bulk of my calories. When I don’t have to shovel food into my mouth because the baby is crying. When I can sit and enjoy each bite while reading a novel. When no grubby little hands are grabbing for me, demanding attention. When my brain is not aching from overstimulation. When my ears are at rest because it’s all…quiet. Aaaah.

And because this time is so precious, I drag it for as long as possible. Which is why…

1:30 am: Go to bed. I am so exhausted the marrow of my bones are aching.

But this is the real reason why I’m sleep-deprived. I can’t blame the newborn. She’s a wonderful sleeper once she settles into the night. Every day, given the choice between recharging from more sleep or recharging from more quiet time, I choose the latter every single day. Hands down.

And just like that, a Saturday is gone.

What did I used to do on Saturdays before I had kids? Sleep in? Movie nights? Concerts? Dinner out with friends? All that seems like a distant dream a long long time ago from a land far far away.

And yet. Maybe one day I’ll read this post and remember it with fondness.

Nah. Who am I kidding. Definitely not.