The Beast Within

You might be asking yourself, "'The beast within'? What is this post about?" Well, as a parent I feel that it is my duty to use this blog to document the ups and downs of Elisa.

I mainly talk about the ups: how cute she is; the funny things that she says and does. This post, however, is about one of the downs.

Now, I will say that this cute little girl to the left has Jennifer and me saying daily how much fun she is and how lucky we are to have her. Truthfully, 95% of the time she is great!

But, there are those moments that make you say "what is happening here? Where did the cute and precious little Elisa go?"

The purpose of this post isn't to embarrass Elisa later on down the road. I love her and would never want to do that. It is to show that all children are capable of "the breakdown". Today was one of those days.


Let me begin by saying that she has struggled to sleep during nap time lately. For one reason or another she will just lay in her bed talking, singing or kicking the wall for a couple of hours. Sometimes we go in and try to get her to go to sleep and sometimes we decide to ignore it, hoping she will give up and wind down into "Sleepyland".

So, because she hasn't been sleeping we decided that we would take advantage today and go to the mall for the afternoon. Our thought was, "if she isn't going to sleep, then we should just go out and do what we want. Why should we let her manipulate our schedule if she won't even do what she is supposed to?" This line of thinking may have been a ticking bomb we detonated without knowing it.

We left for the mall around noon today. Today was rainy and there were a lot of other people that wanted to go out too. Luckily, the mall is about 30 seconds away by car. We went to a restaurant to grab some lunch, did a little light shopping for Children's Day tomorrow, walked around a bit and ended our time with a nice coffee/expresso.

By the time we were having coffee it was getting close to 4pm. Elisa was showing that she was on her last leg. I thought that she would get that 2nd wind any minute. It is usually pretty consistent if she misses her nap. We left the mall for home soon after and decided to let her play a little before trying to feed her an early supper. Due to skipping a nap and the fact that her 2nd wind never arrived we also decided to put her down for the night around 6 (bedtime is usually around 7).

Jennifer, Elisa and I started playing with blocks and her dollhouse and anything else she was interested in. However, when she is super tired like she was at this point, nothing holds her attention for too long - maybe 15 to 20 seconds at a time. Then, at around 5 pm it happened. That ticking bomb that we had set, you know "the beast within", decided to make an entrance!

Elisa transformed just as fast as Bruce Banner changing into the Hulk. It happened when I simply put her sippy cup upright after noticing that it had fallen over. Elisa came over and said, "No. I don't." Then she knocked it down. I put it upright again. Then, she slammed it down! Very calmly I said, "No mam. Let's not do that." Suddenly, Elisa's lower lip dropped. She began to get teary-eyed. Then.... "WWAAAAAAAAAAAA!" It was just like Bruce Banner warning the bad guy "Don't make me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry." Knowing how tired and fragile she was I should have listened to the "No. I don't." line. But, honestly, it would have happened if I set the red block on the pile instead of the green block. She was at the breaking point.

Now you need to understand. Just like the Hulk destroying buildings and cars and anything else in the way, Elisa can do damage too. When she gets really worked up her super power leaves a mark that only the washing machine can redeem. She vomits. Big time. We know when it is coming because of the preemptive burp. I know it is gross, but that is what happens. I heard the burp, picked her up and got her off the rug and on the tile just in time. She let loose too. This was the worse vomiting episode so far (and we have had a few!). The poor child threw up all the way to the bathroom and then got so upset that she was throwing up that she threw up even more. It was bad. Really bad.

It took about an hour, but we finally got her calmed down, fed and in bed. It was lights out for Bruce, the Hulk, Elisa and the Vomiting Beast by 6:15pm. There wasn't a lot of damage - you know, nothing that a roll of paper towels and some Lysol can't cure.

I know this makes Elisa sound like a terror. She really isn't. She is the funniest, smartest and most precious child ever. However, like I said earlier, all children are capable of a "breakdown". Children aren't perfect and neither are parents. This is real life with real child rearing challenges. Hopefully, no one reading this post has a child who vomits uncontrollably when they are upset. Maybe this post was even encouraging to someone. I really just wanted to paint a more accurate picture for our faithful readers of what life can be like on the "off" days. Everybody has them - even the perfect "Little Missy".