Siesta Culture With A No Siesta Child

When my youngest was a baby and toddler I recall all to well many afternoons as I lie on the couch holding my breath, knowing that it was just a matter of minutes before the next round of futile attempts to get her to take a nap. No matter how I adjusted her sleep schedule - late nights, early mornings, or ran her ragged in hopes she would drop out of exhaustion - the child would not take a nap to save her life. Or to save mine. I am reminded of this feeling these past few weeks that we have been here. Everything and everyone shuts down at 2:30 to eat lunch and then have siesta until 5:30 when shops re-open and life begins once again to stir. Everyone but my sweet little sleepless wonder. She is bouncing off the walls as the rest of us groan and do our best to keep what little patience we have left. I've been having a return of my insomnia at night so I am sure her lack of midday respite is grinding on me a bit more than the others. No matter how late we are up, nor how early we rise - she is raring and ready to go all day long. The age old question of how to bottle that kind of energy comes to mind. I'd be first in line for a bottle if you could!

Aside from the flashback to the napless days of yore, we have been mostly just taking it slowly in settling in here on the finca. Last week I posted about my birthday cake, which I did get a picture of but had forgotten about until I was uploading other pictures a couple days ago.

Isn't it lovely? My first birthday cake in Spanish! It was delicious too. And rich! Oh my goodness - one small slice was enough for all day so it lasted well into the week. Yummy!

Last week also brought us the first full moon of our time here. The night sky has barely begun to turn dark as the time marched on towards 9:30 and I took this picture.

As the night went on the moon shone brightly over the finca. Such an enchanting thing to walk in the moonlit sky late at night. Makes me appreciate my insomnia in some small way. Silver linings and all that. This week the moon is waning and the dark is returning to the night sky. My late night wanderings feel a bit more 'wild' and adventurous as I strain to see my route. It is interesting to me how a familiar path can take on new stories and wonder when there is darkness. Ones mind left to fill in whether a dark clump ahead is a patch of grass or a fellow creature out on a night's wandering.

Monday was the day that la Vuelta a España came through town. We had a great vantage point as the riders rounded a corner on an uphill approach. 30 minutes of waiting for 2 minutes of riders whizzing by. Why it is so much fun is beyond me, but it is. We saw the Tour de France when it came through a nearby city in England 25 minutes drive from our house. This seemed twice as exciting to me in that the route was just a few short kilometers from the road we live off of. A less noteworthy race on the world stage perhaps, but in the scope of our new lives this one was significant to us. If you click through the picture below to our flickr you can see more snaps of the racers as they rode by and a few of Axel as we waited for their arrival.

Today is.... Thursday... if my memory serves. Not much need to know exactly what day it is right now. Hopefully things will pick up after next week and we can start to make some steps towards getting things started here. There are some issues that need to be settled before we can start with any real work, which if things go as planned should mean that next Monday brings a shift in that direction. We still do not have our belongings here either (nor a kitchen in our house...) so settling in is a bit hard. Our stuff is in storage in Malaga until we are ready for it to be delivered here. It may be a month before we are ready. I hope it won't be that long and I don't want to think of it being any longer than that. We did take advantage of the offer to do our laundry but hate to use up the good graces of that so it is back to hand washing until then. Fun times I tell you. If I keep telling you that maybe I will believe it too!

So that is about it. Not much to report, thus the lack of posting. Many thoughts rattle in my head throughout the day that I consider blogging about but by the time it is my turn on the computer I feel like they are not worth mentioning. Just a part of another day. Next week I am going to try and do more posting. It is probably too ambitious of me to attempt an every day post, but I will make an effort to do at least a few more than I have been.