As we came to our room, with its marble floor and, “Very own plunge pool.” The head shirt opened the door full of pride and said, “Welcome home!”

No, wait. Paradise and Home are two very, VERY different things. I dared to hope it would be the former and the evidence suggested it could be. Everyone seemed so happy, so at ease and so peaceful.

And if your idea of paradise is having a small person emptying the sugar sachets from their container on to the floor and shouting “Ut oh” on repeat until you bend down to retrieve the white devils from the floor every time you go out to a restaurant, sometimes if you’re lucky you’ll simultaneously get a glass of (freshly squeezed reassuringly expensive) orange juice poured on your head, as the same small person had 3 minutes earlier, insisted on drinking from a straw, but hasn’t yet worked out that straws don’t require you to tip the incredibly heavy, highly breakable glass in order to transport the liquid to mouth, or if you love watching the small person defy your every request as they inexpertly navigate the wet marble floor from plunge pool to bedroom at speeds they really can’t control and a head trauma or broken limb feels only nano seconds away, or if you simply can’t get enough of the squirming protest accompanied by a high-pitched ear-splitting scream – you wish only dogs could hear – because you selfishly tried to place a hat on their delicate blonde curls in order to prevent heat stroke or a good dose of sunburn, or even if none of the above really do it for you and it’s the sudden aversion to any nutritious food coupled with a sleep strike partnered nicely with a dose of herculean tantrums and 3am lamentable moans for “Agua, Agua.”  -She’s not even Spanish- That really light your fire then YES this truly is Paradise.

But to me it felt much more like home, and  the worst thing is, I wouldn’t swap it for the world.