Parenting | how to escape

Our new healthy eating plan, starting with Yummi Pouches!

April 17, 2013 · 12 Comments

I wrote back in my New Year goals post about how I was going to try and cook more meals from scratch for the kids. Well, that hasn’t really happened but I have been making tiny steps since the final straw a couple of months ago when I tasted the plain white rice porridge that Made’s mother was feeding them for dinner and it was so salty, I had to spit it out. That was then followed up with white bread rolls with chocolate filling

So I basically banned any food being bought from outside (except snacks as they just ignore me on that one) and I’ve been cooking my own bubur (rice porridge) every night for them. Really I’d prefer them to get more variety but it’s cheap, easy and they both love it. Kiran in particular who is a lazy eater and just loves having food shovelled into his mouth.

Anyway, part of the problem I have with cooking is that we’ve also been trying to cut down on our food bills recently and one of the things I tend to do is rely on imported fruit and veg and things like milk, cheese, bread, because I know how to make meals with them. Unfortunately they’re all kind of expensive here.

What we do have that is cheap and healthy is a whole load of tropical fruit. Up until now, our blender has sat unused in the cupboard but now I’m a convert. A while back I got an email from the lovely people at Yummi Pouch asking if I’d like to try out their product. I was a big fan of the pouches from Ella’s kitchen etc when Maya and Kiran were babies as they’re so handy to throw in a bag for feeding on the go but they are rather expensive. Also you can’t really get them here. I remember wondering why nobody had invented refillable pouches you could put your own purees in but actually somebody did – Yummi Pouches!

Now we’ve been super busy with Galungan and I’ve been working extra hard etc so my pack of Yummi Pouches sat forgotten and unopened for a couple of weeks as I couldn’t motivate myself to get out the blender. Now I’m kicking myself, wondering why I haven’t been using these all along. Let me demonstrate:

Maya was happy to be kitchen helper and chop up some banana and papaya (always in season here and very cheap). I was going to put some plain yogurt in too but somebody put it in the freezer. Kiran helped by eating banana and pressing the buttons on the blender.

So we’re talking literally a couple of minutes to chop up some fruit and throw it in the blender, plus bonus toddler entertainment/motor skills development. After whizzing it up for a few seconds, I poured it into the pouches which have a zip-lock opening and handed them one each:

They LOVED it! In the space of about two minutes they managed to polish off two bananas and a huge chunk of papaya between them. Kiran even decided to carry his around with him in the tricycle basket.

This is such a good idea and I’m so totally going to feed them smoothies for breakfast every morning and bring them as snacks when we go out. I might even have a go at doing some of those green smoothies that are all the rage these days. Who would have thought it would be so easy to get little people to consume massive quantities of fruit?

Yummi Pouches can be put in the freezer (so I’m totally planning on making up a weeks’s worth in one go) and washed in the dishwasher. I washed them with a normal bottle brush, no problem. They’re also BPA and phthalate free. I don’t have much else to say except they get a big thumbs up from us. Or a whole hand, if you’re Kiran

You can buy Yummi Pouches online at their website and they’re $14.99 for a set of 6. There are also some recipes on there, which I’ll be checking out soon.

I was not paid for this review but Yummi Pouches sent me a free set of pouches to try out. All opinions are my own.

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It’s tough being two…

March 28, 2013 · 2 Comments

My little girl woke up today and cried and cried. She didn’t want to eat anything for breakfast except ice cream. She didn’t want to go in the bath. She sobbed that she wanted her ‘gee’ and susu (her cuddly and milk) and weed on the kitchen floor (she’s been toilet trained for quite a while now but we still have the odd accident, especially when she’s upset).

I put her current favourite dvd on (Dora the Explorer), shut the curtains and she was asleep again within minutes. When she woke up at lunch time she was back to her normal self, laughing and asking to go in the bath. So maybe she was just tired. It’s hard work being a two-year-old.

I’ve felt like Maya’s not been herself for a few months now. She suddenly decided she doesn’t want to go to school any more after months of being excited about going. We never had any tears from her about leaving her at school, even the first week she started there before she was even two years old. Now she howls that she doesn’t want to go to school in the morning and doesn’t want to stay when Made drops her off. The school even called us to come and pick her up the other day because she was just crying for her papa and wouldn’t stop.

Maybe she’s just bored of school (it’s a small local playgroup with not many activities and I did always plan it as a stopgap for something more stimulating when she was a little older). Maybe she’s not getting enough sleep – some days she doesn’t nap now and it’s a struggle to get her asleep before 9pm if she does nap. Maybe she’s picking up on the stress around here – it’s not just school, she seems clingier and is crying more than usual at home too.

It really must be hard work being two. Yes it’s hard for us parents too, but at least we get to call the shots. I read somewhere a couple of days ago that 2.5 is the peak age for tantrums, violent emotions and inflexibility and this stage continues until about the age of 3. Maya will turn 2.5 at the end of next month, so this seems to make sense.

I do struggle to find the balance between discipline and keeping her happy. She’s obviously very distressed when she knows she’s been naughty and that we’re angry with her. I even hear her in her sleep wailing “Maya’s a good girl!”.

Having to split my time between them just makes things harder, especially now Kiran is displaying his own version of toddler behaviour – namely having a total strop whenever we take anything off him or tell him not to do anything, getting so frustrated and upset that he bashes his head off the floor.

I long for the days when they’ll play nicely together – can that be soon? Please? They will sometimes play together and be very cute for about two minutes and it’s lovely until Maya decides she wants the toy that Kiran’s holding, Kiran won’t give it up, Maya pushes Kiran over and they both end up wailing.

Yesterday I came running in because I’d left them playing while I was tidying up in the adjoining room and I heard Kiran crying. I found Kiran on the floor and Maya doing something to his mouth. Cue much shouting from me at Maya while I picked Kiran up and tried to comfort him. Maya was crying harder than usual and just kept shouting “adik nakal!” (my little brother’s naughty). When I looked in Kiran’s mouth I realised he’d been trying to eat one of Maya’s crayons and she was attempting to get it out of his mouth. The fun never stops!

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Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries – Beauty

March 14, 2013 · 10 Comments

So we’ve finally come to the end of The Sling Diaries. I really can’t quite believe it – 6 months gone in a flash. Kiran has grown from a little baby into a walking, talking (well, grunting!) little person. I’ve had so much fun going on adventures with my baby on my hip and exploring the themes of delight, connection, discovery, expression, tradition and beauty.

So beauty – here is what I know. I’m lucky that my children get to grow up in such a beautiful place as Bali. They are lucky they get to see the world from our height instead of seeing nothing but feet. We are all lucky we get to explore the beauty around us whenever we want.

This is one of my favourite walks in Ubud and I learned recently that the land is for sale and there may very well be a big hotel being built here within a couple of years. There’s a very real possibility that many of my favourite places and walks in Bali may simply not exist by the time my children have kids of their own.

Thank you Sakura Bloom for inspiring us to get out and see all this beauty while it still exists. I hope in some small way by getting out, exploring and posting up my pictures here I will inspire some others to enjoy the natural beauty of the rice fields, forests, hills and rivers in Bali as they are instead of putting up another hotel or villa.

We wear simple linen and silk slings from Sakura Bloom

This post is the final part of a 6 part series for the Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries. We are one of 15 families documenting our babywearing experience over a six month period. You can follow the Sling Diaries on Pinterest, Facebook or Tumblr. You can read all my other blog posts for the sling diaries here.

Photos by my beautiful and talented friend Stephanie Mee

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Giveaway – Amber Baby Teething Necklace

March 8, 2013

If you’ve been around here for a while you’ll notice that both Maya and Kiran wore an amber necklace when they were babies. I heard about amber teething necklaces from an online baby forum I was in when Maya was small and I thought they were worth a try.

The idea behind amber teething necklaces is that the oils from the amber are absorbed slowly when worn next to the skin and act as a kind of natural analgesic. Well, whether you believe they work or not, they look pretty and it can’t hurt to try and reduce your baby being in pain, right?

Actually my two have never been particularly bothered by teething. I’ve never had to resort to calpol or teething gels or powders. Whether it was down to the necklace or not, I’ll never know, but I’m not going to tempt fate by not using it. Actually Kiran hasn’t worn his for a few months as it has a magnetic clasp and he kept pulling it off. Sure he’s due for some molars soon so I’ll be making sure he wears his necklace again.

The lovely people at amberpieces.com are offering a baby teething necklace of your choice to one lucky reader. There are many beautiful styles and colours to choose from, from pale yellow to dark brown or a mixture of several colours.

All you need to do to be in with a chance of winning is leave a comment on this post. For an extra chance to win, like How to Escape on Facebook and leave another comment to say you’ve done so. Giveaway closes at midnight Bali time (GMT +8) on Friday 15th of March. Winner will be chosen at random from all the comments. This giveaway is open to readers worldwide.

Update: The winner is Ashley Booth – congratulations Ashley! I’ll be in touch very soon

Thoughts on Co-sleeping / Maya’s New Bed

March 7, 2013 · 6 Comments

It never ceases to amaze me, the drama that is caused over baby sleeping arrangement. Everyone has their own opinion and loves to join in the argument – let them sleep when they want; put them on a schedule; rock them to sleep; let them cry it out; train them to stop needing night feedings; let them night wean in their own time.

Personally, I think everyone should do whatever feels right to them and I tend to lean more towards the hippy attachment parenting side of things. It didn’t even really occur to me to buy a cot when I was pregnant with Maya. In Bali, everyone co-sleeps and it is considered rather cruel to put your tiny baby in a room on their own (I must say I do feel a little sad when I hear people talking about training their 3-month-olds to ‘self-settle’). Maya slept in our bed until she was about 13 months old and then I moved her onto a cot mattress on the floor next to us (we moved our own mattress onto the floor when she was about 3 months and started rolling).

Some people I know (generally not those in Bali) are pretty shocked at the idea of co-sleeping and say “aren’t you scared you’ll roll onto the baby and suffocate them?”. Now really this is not such a crazy question and I did think the same thing before I had kids. But as soon as you become a mother you know this is practically impossible. You’re so in tune with your baby and wake up at the slightest cry or snuffle – there’s no way you would roll on top of them in your sleep unless you were seriously out of it on drugs or alcohol.

Every now and again there seems to be an uproar in the news about a baby dying from SIDS with the headlines screaming “another co-sleeping death” or something equally ridiculous. Actually if you do your research, you’ll see that there is a fair amount of evidence that co-sleeping actually reduces the risk of SIDS. There’s not been enough research into it yet to know why this is but it seems that being close to the mother helps to regulate the baby’s breathing patterns while they sleep. This is another reason why the NHS recommend that your baby sleeps in the same room as you for the first 6 months.

Think sleeping in a cot is safer? Look up the incidences of cot-related injuries and deaths and you may be surprised. A woman in an online forum I was in for babies born the same month as Kiran lost her first baby when he managed to climb out of the cot on his own and fell down a gap between the cot and changing table. It really doesn’t bear thinking about.

Anyway, whatever you believe, my reasons for co-sleeping were that I wanted to be close to my baby and I wanted to get more sleep. I still don’t know how people survive when they have to get up out of bed, feed baby and then try and settle baby back in the cot several times a night. Co-sleeping makes it so easy – roll over, feed baby, sleep again. Simple! In fact I still couldn’t tell you now how many times Kiran wakes in the night as I’m not awake enough to even notice.

Maya is a thrashing sleeper and when we slept in the same bed she was constantly kicking me all night. I slept with a bolster pillow between us (as I do now with Kiran - I may be a fan of co-sleeping but I still like my space!) but I was still somewhat relieved when we moved her into her own bed.

Maya has never been great at sleeping through the night. She’s not a terrible sleeper either but compared to Kiran, she was much tougher as a baby. The last few months she’d been tossing and turning a lot in her sleep. Not really getting up but crying, shouting that she was itchy and remaining unsettled for a couple of hours. I figured she’d outgrown her little mattress and it was time to upgrade to a big girl bed.

So now we have another single mattress for Maya while I sleep in the big bed with Kiran. She’s very proud of her bed and won’t let anyone else sit on it. She’s actually quite an independent little girl and pretty much refused to sleep in my bed since she got her own. I’m not sure if it’s made much of a difference to her sleep or not, I’ll have to give it a few more weeks until she’s used to it but at least I know she’s comfortable now.

The only problem is she keeps falling out of it. On the first night I woke up at 3 am and found her curled in a ball on the floor at the foot of the bed. On the second night she rolled right off the side and gave herself quite a fright in the middle of the night. She didn’t hurt herself but still the mattress is quite a bit higher than what she’s used to and you’d definitely notice if you rolled off it. On the third night I wedged a bolster pillow under the sheet to stop her rolling off which worked… kind of – sometimes she just rolls right over the cushion but we seem to be down to one short wakeup in the night for water so fingers crossed.

Once Kiran is night-weaned I plan to get another single bed and turn that room into their bedroom and our current living room into our new bedroom. I’m kind of getting to the point where I think they’d sleep better on their own – I seem to disturb them every time I come to bed. I do love co-sleeping but I’m looking forward to getting our bed back too.

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61/365

March 3, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Apologies for the horrendous quality of these photos. I didn’t take pictures all day, was out at the dentist all evening and then didn’t remember until Kiran was already asleep for the night and Maya was nearly asleep. They are heavily filtered to distract from the poor image quality :p

Kiran – passed out for the night. It’s out of focus because it was pitch black in there and there was nothing to focus on.

Maya – bedtime cartoon watching on the kindle fire

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Could I Roll My Eyes any Harder at You?

March 1, 2013 · 6 Comments

One of the things that I find hardest about living in Bali is the differences of opinion when it comes to raising children. Particularly as I live with my in-laws so there’s no opportunity to run off home and do things my way with nobody tutting and looking at me with disapproving eyes.

Kiran was in a mood yesterday. I think he’s teething and he’s got a bit of a cold so fair enough. He was wingeing, crying and I just couldn’t keep him happy. Eventually I just took his clothes off and plonked him down on the bathroom floor so he could ‘help’ me wash the clothes. This he loved, just pouring water with a cup from one bucket to another. After a few minutes Made’s father walked past and gasped seeing his poor defenceless grandchild naked and wet in 30 degree heat and shouted something like “quick Kiran, come here before you get a fever” which we both ignored, obviously.

After another couple of minutes I’d finished the washing and decided to get Kiran dried off despite him still having lots of fun playing in the water. Generally I don’t like to rock the boat and prefer to keep everyone relatively happy and then go and rant about it on facebook later. But Kiran was having none of it – thrashing in in my arms, screaming, flying snot, we’re talking full-on tantrum. And sorry, the happiness of my children trumps ridiculous ideas about what causes illness so I filled him up another bucket of water and let him get on with it. Made returned home 5 minutes later and I could hear my father in law saying something to the tune of “do you know your wife is trying to kill your son?”

This is why I love it when my parents visit as we can set up the paddling pool over at our other house and let them splash and play and frolic to their heart’s content. Guess what? They don’t get sick! Or maybe they do get sick because surprise surprise, kids pick up bugs and get sick sometimes. They get sick if they don’t play in water. They get sick if they do. THERE IS NO CORRELATION BETWEEN PLAYING IN WATER AND GETTING SICK.

I grew up in the UK and have fond memories of splashing around in the paddling pool in the summer. My mother is an experienced early years educator and understands the importance of letting young children play with water so they can learn the basic concepts of science, the environment and get sensory stimulation. In fact she’s suggested on a number of occasions that I invest in sand and water table for them to play with. Bali is after all the ideal place to play in water – it’s hot every day, we live outside most of the day so there’s no need to worry about mess and cleaning up spill. Of course my kids are happy playing in water on a hot day.

But oh no, this is Bali where apparently playing in clean water in your own house on a hot day makes you deathly sick. I am wondering if this water is really so dangerous, why are they happy for Maya and Kiran to bathe in it twice a day? And I’m pretty sure it’s a hell of a lot cleaner than the river at the bottom of the street that they all like washing in where everyone washes their clothes, dumps their rubbish etc. Meme came back from the river with Maya early the other day “Oh you’re back so soon?” I say to Maya “yes mama, dead dog in the river” says Maya. Lovely.

I can understand where this fear of playing in water comes from. Yes, contaminated water can harbour typhoid, cholera, parasites and all sorts of other nasty things. But I am not letting my kids play in a dirty puddle on the side of the road. This is CLEAN WATER IN OUR HOME.

I’ve given up on repeating that illness is caused by viruses and not by wind, rain or playing in clean water. I find it ridiculous that the kids are whisked inside at the first drop of rain and yet they’re happy to keep drinking out of the same cup without ever washing it and eating meat that’s been sitting out for a week. I fully accept and appreciate that western methods and ideas are not always correct, or at least not always the most effective. I have experienced first-hand the wonders that a balian (traditional healer) can perform. But please, do me a favour and learn some basic germ theory. Oh and by the way, bundling kids up in big jumpers, blankets and a hat when they have a fever isn’t very helpful either.

There are some parts of Bali life that just continuously frustrate me day after day after day. And I think it might be time to buy that sand and water table.

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Things are Different in Bali

February 20, 2013 · 14 Comments

Recently I’ve been catching up on some of my favourite UK tv on youtube (namely One Born Every Minute) and to my surprise, the adverts are making me long for England in an odd way. I never really get homesick but it’s funny how advertising can make you miss random things – the eccentric British sense of humour (some of those adverts are just downright weird!), online supermarket shopping, Cadbury’s creme eggs, even the dark cold gloomy days before Spring arrives. I’ve also been away long enough that I’m a bit bemused at some things – breakfast biscuits? Is the nation really gullible enough to believe eating biscuits for breakfast is a good idea?

The longer I’m here, the more things which shocked me at first here seem pretty much normal. I’ve written before about the potential dangers around the house, which are pretty much overlooked by everyone but actually there is a whole load of stuff that I actually think is pretty terrible but I’m just used to it now:

Our nextdoor neighbour leaves her 3-year-old alone in the house watching her 1-year-old sister while she shops in the market.
Children stay up late every night playing and watching tv until they fall asleep. Bedtime routines or an actual bedtime are non-existent.
Nobody wears seatbelts in the car. Nobody has baby seats. In fact most people don’t have cars and just stick all their kids (un-helmeted) on the back of the motorbike.
Talking of motorbikes, it’s pretty common to see young kids driving themselves to school on one alone.

Made’s always reminding me that as I live here I should adopt the local customs and practices and stop doing things the way I would do in the UK. Ok that’s fair enough, but I do struggle a bit with some of them. Especially when I think they’re just plain WRONG!

My friend on facebook joked yesterday that I was becoming Indonesian but I think in some ways it’s true!

I dress my kids in long sleeves and trousers if it rains.
I ask Maya if she wants “more nasi” with that.
I’m shocked at seeing tiny babies (belonging to foreigners, never Indonesians!) out and about outside.
I caught myself chasing Kiran around with a bowl of rice the other day, much to my shame

I do feel like my kids are missing out a bit on the British half of their heritage at the moment and I’d love to take them back to the UK for a few months when they’re a little bigger to improve their English. Actually Maya’s vocabulary is a lot larger than I thought it was after quizzing her when we’re reading picture books and she randomly comes out with a little gem like “oopsy baby!” (mishearing oopsy daisy, haha). She also love shouting “Mama stupid!” at the moment when I won’t let her eat another biscuit/crisps/sweet. Sigh.

I’m not sure if I should be doing more to balance out the British half of their heritage or not. We have lots of English books, a decent number of English cartoons and a city of London wooden train set…. Maybe I should be feeding them baked beans or something. Maya quite likes tea – that’s a start. Or maybe I should just go with the flow and let them be Balinese children who happen to have an English mother because this is Bali after all and things are different here…

Photo of random Balinese children by my dad

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Finding My Balance

February 12, 2013 · 2 Comments

This morning Kiran woke up at approximately 3.30am and refused to go back to sleep. My usual trick of lying him back down and feeding him didn’t work and he rolled away angry and pointed at me shouting “uhhhh!” Kiran has a few words that aren’t really words and he’s in a phase of not saying mama and papa at the moment (Maya did the same thing at about the same age) but is very good at getting his point across all the same. So I picked him up and we cuddled for a bit and then watched cartoons for half an hour until he started yawning and I put him back to bed. I’m normally not too happy to be woken in the middle of night and forced to stay up but I didn’t mind the extra cuddles last night after reading on Tamsin’s blog about another blogger who just lost her little boy to SIDS and then another little boy I follow on facebook, finally losing his fight with cancer.

I’ve been struggling with my temper recently. Maya is headstrong and at a difficult age and sleeps late every night. Kiran is napping so little now and needs to be watched constantly now that he’s walking – he toddles around with his arms out in front of him like a little zombie baby and then inevitably loses his balance and topples over onto the concrete steps or Maya comes along and pushes him over. He had so many bangs to his head yesterday alone that I was seriously considering investing in one of those baby helmets. Anyway, all this means that I am getting very little time to myself and to work and I’m screaming constantly at Maya not to push her baby brother or scratch his face when he takes one of her toys.

I don’t want to shout or scream and I don’t want Maya remembering her toddler years as me being angry all the time. She’s two and she can already remember things that she did a year ago. I don’t want her to be spoiled or naughty but it really breaks my heart after I tell her off and she sits and howls “Mama, Maya anak baik!” (Maya’s a good girl). I remember being very patient with her when she was younger and Kiran was still newborn but now she’s older and wiser and quite deliberately naughty sometimes, I find it very hard to keep my temper in check.

And then there’s the time issue – I don’t want to waste these precious years working on my computer when I could be reading or playing with them. Yes, I must admit, it’s not always fun for me and I’m sometimes at a loss for how to entertain them without losing my mind in boredom myself. Maya is pretty fun to be around now, plus she’ll tell me whether she wants to read a book, play with her train set etc., but I do get a bit stuck with Kiran – what do you do with a one year old? I don’t remember! He just wants to walk everywhere. And climb things.

I talked in my 2013 goals post about how my aim for this year is balance but wow, it’s tricky. I have not been working a lot recently, nowhere near the amount I was working when Maya was the same age Kiran is now. It feels good to work on my own projects and not drive myself into the ground working for stupidly low rates but at the same time, the money situation is stressing me out. My debt level stayed the same for many months (just earning enough to cover what we spent) and then I managed to reduce it a little but after working a minimal amount for the last three months while I had visitors, it’s gone way past the level I’d mentally set as the ‘maximum’.

Things need to start turning in the other direction and I’m not ure how I can do this while still not getting stressed out and eating into my quality time with the kids every day. One thing is for sure, I need to get out of just working X number of hours for X per hour and create something that will make money on its own even if I can’t work for a few weeks. I did know how to do this once upon a time but things changed before I managed to scale it up and it’s not so easy any more. I wish I’d put the work in while I was still child-free with all the time in the world and I’d probably be a lot less in debt now. Oh well, live and learn.

Anyway I watched a video recently posted on a forum I’m in that talked about separating money-making activities from your other business ideas so you don’t have the pressure of needing to make cash from it straight away. Basically if you can make $50 a day through whatever means, that is $1,500 a month (which is enough to live on and start paying back my debts here). Put that way, it doesn’t sound so bad. Work at $50 an hour for 1 hour or $25 an hour for 2 hours or $16.67 for 3 hours. Make the quota for the day and I’m free to work on my business ideas, blog and other personal projects. Now who wants to hire me for $50 an hour?

I’ve been terrible at getting up early since I got out of the habit while the kids were sick and interrupting my sleep. Now I think this is the key to my success and I need those 3 uninterrupted hours every morning. Let this be my public accountability – I will get up at 5am every morning or strike me down!

Work and computery stuff aside, I’ve been really wanting to get back into drawing/illustration lately, spurred on by some of the amazingly talented artists I follow on instagram (lillypiri // outtoplay // becwinnel //audkawa // kozyndan – my mini claim to fame is that I took the photo reference for kozyndan’s Battle on the River Tyne panoramic). Please let me know if you know of any other amazing artists on instagram! I used to really enjoy drawing but I’ve not done it in years. I have 2 blank moleskine notebooks sitting on my bookcase and I jsut bought myself a set of nice good quality colour pencils (which I will be hiding from Maya) so whenever I find that elusive free time I’m looking for, I’m going to get sketching.

Wow, another epic post. I’ve got to stop doing that, I’m sure nobody bothers reading all this! Oh and if anyone knows of any good websites or books about how to parent toddlers without strangling them or screaming at them all day, please let me know! I’ve heard 3 is worse than 2 – god help me.

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Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries – Expression

January 24, 2013 · 2 Comments

If we were living in the UK I’m sure we’d be taking the kids to the park, but as we’re in Bali we take them to the Monkey Forest.

Yet another reason why Maya and Kiran are so lucky to be growing up here – nature is not something separate from our everyday lives that needs to be sought out on weekends and school holidays. It is all around us in the rivers and the palm trees and the orchids and the snakes and the monkeys.

It’s strange to watch the monkeys and see how almost human they are in their activities and their expressions. Fear, anger, curiosity, contentment is plain in their faces as they go about their day ignoring the humans that pass through their little world. Siblings fight over food, youngsters whoop and chase each other through the trees, babies cling to their mamas. There was a lot of ooh-ing and finger pointing from Kiran towards the baby monkeys and I think maybe he was trying to say “Look! My mama carries me too!”

Bali is also an island of artists which is clear everywhere you look from the intricately carved temples to the colourful daily offerings that are placed on the ground daily. Monkey Forest itself is filled with stone carvings of monkeys and mythical creatures with grotesque expressions. Balinese children are taught from an early age to express themselves through art, music and dance. As a creative person myself, my parents always encouraged me to follow my passions but growing up in the west, the pressure to follow the crowd in terms of education, career and life in general is undeniable. It wasn’t until I left the UK that I finally felt free to live life as I please. I hope Kiran and Maya can grow up with the freedom of never having their creative spirits crushed whether they want to be a dancer, an artisan stone carver or just go and live in the jungle with the monkeys.

I wear Kiran in a Sakura Bloom Essential Silk Sling in Aubergine/Fig

This post is part 4 of a 6 part series for the Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries. We are one of 15 families documenting our babywearing experience over a six month period. You can follow the Sling Diaries on Pinterest, Facebook or Tumblr. You can read all my other blog posts for the sling diaries here.

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