Calming down

This should be a post about how we've managed to enjoy a few fair weather outings in the past week, but instead I'm feeling tired and beat up tonight. Some nights it's all I can do not to count the minutes til bedtime and pray it comes fast. Nacho has had a run of work, work, work with three days gone, one night home and another three days gone, so I'm feeling in the thick of it. On paper, today should have been a good day: we slept in til almost 8 a.m., went to the playgroup at St. Teresa's, had lunch, a good two hour nap and the afternoon was starting off fine. The signs were all pointing to an easy end of the day.

(Enjoying a break in the rain on Friday and having the run of the park because of it)

(Finally making it back to Sunnyside Gardens Park on Sunday in the sunshine after a loooong winter)

But taking a little walk up to the store, things started to turn, and damn it if it wasn't the ice cream man's fault. Yes, the first appearance of the ice cream truck on our block and wouldn't you know it, Elisa was not happy just walking past. Last summer we paid no attention to these trucks and Elisa was completely clueless about the goodies on offer. But today's warmer temps (high near 60 degrees) meant that the season of treats has begun again and apparently Elisa is not taking no for an answer. Except that she had to. We made it further up the block and she seemed to come around to the idea that it wasn't happening tonight. Then we hit the store and all hell broke loose. One little thing set her off and we ended up with a total slugfest, namely her pummeling my face as she tried to run away. And this is when I wished I'd brought the stroller. So how to extract a child and my groceries from the store and get home three blocks away while she's a raving lunatic? Oh and in the midst of this, she hits herself in the face with a maraca (which doubled as her microphone on the way to the store--don't ask) which really pissed her off. I did my best to slow down and get her out of the way to calm down, but it wasn't easy. By the time she started chanting, "I wanna go home. I wanna go home..." I was pulling her out of the store and down the block. And then we rounded the corner and that fucking truck was still there. And just like that, the ice cream craziness started again with a renewed vigor. And now, Elisa was on the ground rolling around on the rainy, filthy pavement screaming. A highlight in parenting to be sure. Of course, I realized I had no way to end this but to power through and that's just what I did scooping her up and carrying her sideways across the street--all flailing arms and legs--and into our building. And then I let her go. Just get away, I thought. I was so, so done. She ran after me and once in the house, she spent a good five minutes decompressing in her bed before I could approach her and talk some of this out. And boy, did we talk. She narrated the whole thing ("I hit and scream") and I asked her why she was so mad. And without giving me much in the way of an answer, she definitely seemed to be thinking about it. So we spent the last hour of the day sitting on the couch together playing out scenarios and hugging. Ahhhhh, this girl. Such a study in contrasts. And when I heard her telling me to "calm down", a first, I figured something good might have come from this episode today. In the midst of everything, she heard me saying that. And that's a start.