Good, bad, good, bad, etc.

Today started out really well. We have 14 days until school starts, and these last two weeks, we are all out of programs. Akila slept until 9:50 this morning, it was great!!! She had a busy weekend. She woke up in a good mood, and was really good this morning. So at about 12:30, we decided to head to the health club to go swimming at the outdoor pool.

We have a mini-van, and Zeke use to sit in one of the middle seats next to Akila, until over spring break when she popped him and gave him a gusher of a bloody nose. He did not want to sit by her anymore. So the boys both sit in the back in booster seats, and Imani usually sits in between the boys. Some days, Imani wants more space, or wants to sit in the middle seat as it has a fan that blows directly on it. Today she sat down in this seat, which set Akila off big time. She went into full blown raging, and we had to pull over multiple times on the way to the health club.

Usually when she is raging in the car, she settles down by the time we get to Highway 100. This probably takes about 7 minutes or so, and that is a long time to be driving with a child raging. But pulling over and trying to wait her out has not proven successful. Anyway, today, it lasted the entire way to the health club, which took about 25 minutes. We got to the club, and she was fine. We swam for about 3 hours, and she was great. I knew we were close to hitting her limit, so I asked if she wanted to go into the child care center at the club which she loves and usually asks to go into when we are leaving the pool. She jumped at the chance. I checked her in and the kids finished up swimming, about another 45 minutes.

When I went to get her, one of the workers pulled me aside and said Akila had been really mean to a little girl, was calling her a loser and giving her the L sign on the forehead. She had been rude and disrespectful to the worker as well. She has never really had any issues at the health club, so this was a bummer. I went in to get her and she was being extremely rude. We got into the lobby area of the child care center where my other 3 kids were standing next to a growth chart seeing how tall they are, when Akila went up to them yelling that they were doing it wrong and pushed one of them, and they fell like domino's. Imani got up and lightly pushed Akila who barely even moved from the push.

Akila lost it. She went after Imani full force and I had to step in front of her. She kicked, hit me, and went nuts. I was holding her arms down, while she was trying to bite me, continued to kick me, slap my arms, etc. I sent the other 3 kids into the hallway, my back was to the check in desk where I'm sure the child care workers were staring at us. Nothing I could say to Akila was de-escalating her. She would not calm down. I finally grabbed the bags, held tightly to Akila's arm, and forcefully guided her out of the child care center. Imani had to walk behind us as Akila was still trying to get her.

The child care center is in the back of the club, so we had a long walk to get out of there. All the while, Akila is yelling, I mean yelling, hateful and mean things, and kicking and trying to bite me. I'm sure we gave some people lots to talk about at the dinner table tonight. Towards the exit, when passing the cafe, there were samples of ice tea they were handing out. This miraculously distracted Akila and she was fine the rest of the way out and through the parking lot.

Then in the van, she started raging that she was hungry, although we had been snacking all afternoon at the pool. I offered some more snacks, but she wanted to stop and buy some food. I said no. She then raged the entire ride home. As we were driving, my leg was stinging a bit, and when I looked at it, I saw a huge bump had risen on it. Very nice.

We got home, and thankfully Michael was home and out front with Hibeam. I told him to get her away from me as I needed space. It has been a rough night. 14 days, 9 hours and 41 minutes to go.