Just had the feeling that I was going on in cycles - one week of peace and calm and then one day of depression and sadness. And yesterday for once I felt a different sort of emotion - I was feeling angry. Angry not because she left me but because she said she loves the kids and yet she would literally abandon them to me. And worse, she was actually trying to tell me how I should take care of the children. I told her that if she is willing, we can swap our roles for a month - she stays with the kids and me alone - and that she spend every inch of her time with the kids - if she can do that - then she can tell me how I should handle the kids. I knew it was pointless to argue with her and yet I cannot stop myself from doing that. The only positive thing out of this episode is that I am getting much closer to my kids. They are now my everything. I would literally spend all my waking hours with them - sending them to school, talking to them, taking meals with them, helping them with their homework, playing with them and bringing them out for shopping, movies and so on and so on. I felt that I had took them for granted in the past - at times glued to my TV or my computer and ignoring their needs - I thought previously that being physically close to them was sufficient. Now I know it is not enough, they need more than mere physical presence - they need connections, they need conversations and they need me to express my love for them explicitly. And right now I am doing all that or at least trying very hard to do all that. But what about her? She has been so disconnected with the kids for the past 12 months that even now when she is already gone for a month or so, the children do not actually feel her absence - as they said - they got so used to mommy being not around that her real absence now is not felt.