All in the family

Tomorrow we're heading back to New York where we will hopefully meet up with Nacho after he lands from Spain. It's been a good week here with the family, but as always, it's time to get home and get back to life in the city. After about 4 or 5 days, I really start to get itchy about walking around more and this time was no different. There are many conveniences about living in a house in a nice suburb (I LOVE doing laundry here--it's just a room away), but walking around and running into people isn't part of the fun. So after a week of the lounging and the eating way too much, I'm hoping to hit the ground running at home. Nacho has the next two days off, so if we're lucky, we'll find some things to do in the city that will alleviate my post-vacation blues. Here are some of the rest of our photos from Mom's birthday on Sunday:

We went out for Mexican food, watched Elisa dance in her chair to the mariachi music and then throw a fork across the dining room. Yeah, things have gotten interesting lately with her tantrums. Suddenly, and quite dramatically, Elisa has to throw an object whenever she gets angry. Today for example, we racked up one cell phone, one sippy cup, a butter knife, a calculator and her burp rag (multiple times). It's getting old real fast. What used to pass as a little hiccup in her mood that could be controlled or at least tamed with some diversions and a quick balm of bottle and burp rag, has now turned into full out arm flailing, leg kicking, hand/foot biting, object throwing warfare. The girl knows rage. Today when Mia and Stacey pulled out of the driveway, she chewed on her hand, kicked and flailed in my arms and then shouted "Go! GO!" as they drove away. It was pathetic, and slightly hilarious, to watch, but it made me fear for the time when she really turns loose and does some damage. I'm just waiting to pick up shards of glass during one of these fits. All that I've read about tantrums is that kids this age (less than 3 years old) really cannot control their emotions and they need to safely express themselves and may benefit from timeouts where they can regain their composure. So we've been doing A LOT of those lately. I'm practically wearing a path out on the carpet here with all the back and forth. Because as much as Elisa loves amusing everyone and loves playing nicely with her cousin, she has no way to moderate her displeasure when something doesn't go her way. Whether it's turning off the TV for a while, or saying no to the kiddie pool again, or just helping her with a toy, Elisa does NOT want interference. She wants what she wants and right NOW. So much about her anger is the normal kid stuff just magnified by the fact that she can't understand "later" or "tomorrow" or "in a minute." Everything is so immediate and her rage is about having no control. I know this intellectually. I just can't seem to make a Helen Keller-style breakthrough with her wherein she would know that I get it. That I'm on her side, but listen, this kicking and hair pulling and biting herself has to STOP. So for now, we're trying our best to catch whatever she's throwing. Literally. As we learned in Dodgeball, if you can dodge a fork, you can dodge a ball. Or something like that.