Bali adventures Part 1 - Siesta's all round!

We are now a week into our Bali holiday, and have enjoyed a few days of Nanny freedom from the terrible twosome to sufficiently unknot my usually hunched shoulder muscles, unclench my normally stoically set jaw, and even let out the odd relaxed sigh and smile.

Just to clarify - I do actually see my children while on holiday.  We just ensure we have our family time completed and out of the way by 1pm when my favouritest person in the world comes in to take over with the feral twosome - Tinah, the Nanny who I love more intensely than the Hubby when I first see her walking down the path towards us.  My heart really does skip a beat.  Looking forward to our afternoons and evenings being spent like normal people - not toddler wrangling - is what gets us through the rest of the year when we are fighting the good fight to sanely and calmly control our feral kids.

Anyway...on to the important facts.  I've been having a daily siesta!  I'm smirking like the proverbial cat that got the cream as I type that - from the comfort of my hotel verandah, overlooking the pool (well...overlooking the pool towel dispensary, which is next to the pool), Mojito in hand.  And it's not my first.  Jealous yet?  I'm sending my chilled vibes and sincerest thoughts out to all the Mothers who are stuck with their kids while I'm living the life of a carefree adult (no, I didn't forget one - Miss5 is with her grandparents in the pool).

The last time I had a siesta it was because I fell asleep sitting on the floor of the twins' room in the middle of a tense stand off over afternoon nap time.  After being awake most of the night with teething, they were beyond ratty.  They had also worked out how to climb out of their cots, and would proceed to bash all manner of objects against the wall until someone went in to them.  So I sat on the floor in between their cots, back against the wall (only half a frayed nerve away from rocking back and forth and banging my head against the wall), and we had a big stare-off.  Miss1 (at the time) threw everything she had at me - literally - dummies, stuffed animals, blankets etc. until she was alone in her cot, not even a sheet covering her mattress.  Then she just glared at me in a menacing fashion.  Mstr1 kept smacking the wooden bars of his cot and giving me the death stare, as if to say "you're next...watch your back".  Rather than winning the standoff, I fell asleep (thanks to the sleepless night before) and they gave up and went to sleep too.  And that was the last time I had a nap.

So you can imagine how deliriously happy I've been to laze away my days...while I listen to the Nanny occupy the feral twosome through the interconnecting door.  At one point Hubby had to stop me from knocking on the door to ask her to keep it down in there because I was trying to sleep (at 3pm in the afternoon....3PM!).  In hindsight, I can see how it would have been a bit rich of me to ask, so it's a good thing he talked me out of it.  Miss5 has been exhausted after heady days of mocktails, shopping, swimming and flirting with the male hotel staff, so she also has a nap.  It is pure bliss!

The only problem with getting used to having a sietsa, is that I have no idea how to do without one now.  I had to go a whole day (sob sob) without one, because we were at a water park.  I was like a blithering idiot by 3pm when I was having serious pillow withdrawals.  At one point Hubby had to nudge me awake on a pool lounge.  I know what you're thinking, that was a bit mean of him, surely he could've just let me sleep? I completely agree, except for the fact that I was in charge of watching Miss5 at the time, who had emptied the entire bottle of suncream on herself, looking decidedly albino white, and was now back in the kiddy pool creating oily tide movements around her person as she waded in and the suncream spread into the water.

The other problem with enjoying a daily siesta, is that Miss5 is like a kid high on crack by 8pm at night.  She's not used to having an afternoon nap normally, having given them up at the age of 4.  So now, when she would normally be getting ready to wind down for bed, she's ready to hit the clubs in Bali.  I know this because she asked if she could go with the girls staying in the room opposite ours.  She asked, but it was more of a token request, a rhetorical question - because she had put on her pink sequin covered shorts that we had just that day bought for her dress-up box at home, along with her nightie, all her finest drag queen make up, and half a bottle of perfume.  She had her handbag over her arm and was waving goodbye to me while I was saying no.  She had her pink plastic Hannah Montanna mobile phone (it's a lip gloss dispenser) and told me to call her.  Total Miss25 mode.

Don't worry, I did go and get her.  I figured she wouldn't pass the ID check outside the club anyway.

And now she has taken to the hotel band.  She shakes her potatoes (what she calls her booty) like a maniac after dinner, and I truly think she believes she is the back up dancer to the band.  The fact that her Father likes to grab the microphone to belt out anything U2 or a bit of "Wonderwall" from Oasis, probably only feeds that sense of entitlement to take over entertaining the other guests.

I've had to go out and buy a number of extra knock-off DVD's (apologies to those trying to make a living out of the real bona fide versions), because when Hubby and I are exhausted and trying to get to sleep at night - our little dynamo is jumping on her bed singing to herself.  Just for peace, we have to put on a Dora the Explorer DVD so we can sit and stare at her and will her to sleep.

Just as well we get to siesta in the afternoons so we can keep up with the party animal.

Oh and I am going to continue referring to afternoon nap time as siesta time when we get home, because it sounds so much more worldly than nap time.  It may fool the twins into thinking it's something different when we get home and I have to fight them tooth and nail to get back into their normal routine.  In fact, it would probably just be a whole lot easier to bring the Nanny home with us, and she can fight them on it...