I was feeling a tad guilty about bragging how the twins are off with a Nanny every day, so I thought I'd appease my guilt by posting about our heart felt and valuable family time....all 4 hours a day of it. Just so you don't think I'm a totally crap Mother. Since all of my posts to date would NEVER lead you to that conclusion...
Mstr2 and Miss2 actually officially become a Mstr2 and Miss2 tomorrow. I was bragging about how much effort I put into all of Miss5's birthday cakes, and how I love to make lots of cup cakes and decorate them in a different theme each year, sending them to daycare in the past, and now school. What a shame it is that I can't do the same for the twins this year. Oh well.
All of this is said only slightly to prove to everyone that I was normally a proactive mother who put a little effort into her childrens' birthdays (and how domestically goddess-like it makes me).
The staff offered to let me use the hotel kitchen to make the twins' birthday cupcakes. Crap.
Quick cough and splutter of my cocktail, buying me some time to think of a credible excuse. Thanks but I've left my children's birthday cake cookbook at home (really, that's what I went with?!), and besides I've already ordered a cake for them. Stellar effort Georgia.
Back to the twins' role in the family part of our daily holiday. All four hours of it. They wake at 9am. That's right...9am. And you know what? That's normal! They get up at 9am at home too. I love them the most for this fact. Miss5 was a champion sleeper in her early days too, but has now taken to rising at the ungodly hour of 7:30am. I am having trouble coping. Thankfully, in Bali where she is full-on and stays up late partying hard (Dora and Sponge Bob 24/7), she is back to sleeping in again.
So at 9am we get ourselves together enough to walk to breakfast. Our hotel rooms are the first two after the pool. We walk out of our room, everyone's happy. We get to where we have to walk past the pool - Miss2 makes a run for it, intent on diving in and never ever getting out. I thought Miss5 was a water baby, but she had nothing on Miss2. Miss2 would live in there if they found a way to sort out her bathroom business without her having to leave the water. Either hubby or I sprint after her. She is freakishly strong for a Miss2. So while we are always holding her hand in preparation of this, she has managed to break free of our grip every single day.
What follows is a negotiation where we try and lure her to the restaurant with promises of pancakes, juice, a puppy, anything. She has a mini-meltdown, and in her best hurt and wounded "woe is me" voice, chastises us "no....bad....stop" - in the same manner, and with the same expression you would expect of someone being attacked.
Mstr2 usually puts on his own squealing performance. While that's totally normal for him, in this instance it is because he has an aversion for water. Except bath water. He is deathly terrified of the pool.
As we attempt to walk as far around the pool as possible, whoever is not dealing with Miss2 trying to climb in, is dealing with Mstr2's water aversion. He walks normally until he can see the water, then his back arches, he walks on the tips of his toes, half stalking, in a rather jilted manner. As he stalk/walks, he screeches and looks fearfully at the water. The calm, blue, still water. Nobody tries to throw him in or take him anywhere near the water - but that doesn't matter.
We feel really super and happy after this 10 minute daily occurence. We are like a black cloud of thunder as we stomp into the restaurant. Which is on the other side of the pool. So we can see our room from there. That is the distance we have travelled, the teeny tiny distance in which this epic tragedy has occured, much to the twins' daily horror and disgust.
The two terrors have morphed instantly back into normal children the second they step into the restaurant - while Hubby and I require some time to get over the experience and sit like stunned zombie's, puffing and panting from the effort. Miss5 waits impatiently to take our breakfast order, tapping her pen on her notepad, saying "ahh...hello....I'm waiting....what you want?".
After breakfast we head out. Usually to a shopping mall or the beach, or somwhere the twins can walk around. Only we don't get to walk much. We are stopped all the time by locals. According to Balinese custom, boy and girl twins are the most treasured blessing. A single birth is hoped to be a boy, as they stay with their family and care for their parents when they get older, and when they marry, their wife joins their family. Based on that logic, you'd think with twins, that 2 boys would be the most prized - not so - boy and girl. Excuse any inaccuracies in any of that, but it is exactly as i have been told by many Balinese. I'm not just guessing, or assuming.
So my two little stars are regularly fawned over, as if they were the Jolie-Pitt twins of the same age. Particularly when Miss2 looks like she could fit in well with the Balinese, thanks to her olive skin and dark features (due to her part-Burmese heritage). Mstr2 is the blonde wavy haired and bright blue eyed Aussie with the whiter than white skin. They are polar opposites as far as looks go. So there is much oohing and aahing. I kid you not when I say that MANY Japanese tourists have asked to have their photo taken with the twins. It's even happened to me while shopping at IKEA at home in Perth. If only they could witness them on a regular day's rampage and they'd all be a little less enamoured by them...
The twins lap up the attention. Well Miss2 does, Mstr2 will seem fine before a very concerned frown crosses his face, and then we have about 30 seconds to get him to me to hold before a tantrum strikes. So far, so good. Only the one, in the middle of a shopping mall. To say that everyone stopped and looked would be an understatement. I'm pretty sure the entire island of Bali could hear him, and stopped and looked.
After lunch we try and take them for a swim.
Miss2 is off, without even a sideways glance at us. Her grandfather is usually in the pool, and that's the last we see of her as he's off parading her around proudly. She is super cute in her blue and white spotted 2 piece. And she is the child who smiles, actually attempts to swim - for real, I think she has fluked the movements that closely resemble freestyle - and generally wins over the masses with her disarming (but calculating) charm, inevitably ending in a smoothie or milkshake or ice cream.
Mstr2, well we take turns with him. He hates getting in, hates having any part of his body touch the water. And instead climbs all over you to ensure that doesn't happen, a lot like a cat clinging to a tree because there's a dog at the bottom. I usually end up with him since he's a Mummy's Boy, and I have held a number of conversations in the pool, with people I could not identify by anything other than their voices, as I haven't been able to see them thanks to Mstr2 being perched ON MY FACE AND SHOULDERS in order to avoid that evil pool water.
By 1pm we are craning our necks from the pool out to the Reception area, counting the seconds until our Nanny arrives. As soon as we spot her, whoever has Mstr2 catapults out of the water, and sprints him back to his room. DONE. Whoever has Miss2, well whoever should have her, has to convince my Dad to give her up. While she is happy and totally in love with the pool, experience has taught us that she will turn feral in precisely 90 minutes if she does not have a nap. Trust me.
So off she goes, tantruming her way to their room.
We are free! 1pm and it feels like it's been an eternity.
It may have only been 4 short hours, but it feels like a lifetime. It feels like the same duration as a normal day at home. I think I have adapted to only dealing with my two youngest kids for 4 hours a day. I'm terrified of going home and having to re-adjust to 24hour days with them.
Seriously, I am a little bit panicked.
A cocktail should fix that for now.
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