Six. *sigh*

A slightly better day than yesterday, still had some voice-raising going on but my attitude was a little better. This morning all the kiddies were in the kitchen with me. Only one of the two kitchen lights were on, no real reason. Nikko was standing next to my chair looking toward the window and I said to him, "Nikko, do you want to turn on the light?" I pointed to the overhead light, repeated what I said and also pointed to the switch. He seemed to understand what I said because he trotted over to his chair and climbed into the booster, stood up and flicked the switch ON. I applauded him, and he turned it off again. It makes me wonder if Nikko truly understood what I said, because I never really expected him to actually do what I asked. Usually he tunes out what I said or acts like he didn't hear it. But this time he acted the way Ronin would and obeyed my request. COOLIO. It's too bad that I ruined our feel-good moment by choosing to cut his nails next. I gave him a Gummi Vite vitamin to keep him sitting still, which I should have done at the outset instead of plead with him to allow me to cut his nails. I'm really supposed to give him two a day, but I think today he's gonna be overly healthy because I think I gave him at least four or five, mainly to placate him or keep him out of things such as Ronin's evaluation (will explain later).

Atz and Allie came over later to give us some spring jackets for the boys and to try out her in-the-ground fence posts. Bless her heart, she hammered into the ground some spikes that have holes to allow poles to be slid inside, and then I will rig my baby gates to the poles so that the boys will have boundaries and can play outside. I'll have to get Pat to hammer them into the ground more firmly.

Ronin had his Speech Evaluation today. Gloria and Jen our former DT (and later Mary Leonard our case manager) came over, asked lots of questions and then played with Ronin. They found a lot of great things about him, said he was doing excellent and had great skills for his age. They pegged his cognitive development between 21-24 months. Yea! However, while they said he was doing great, his ONLY problem was that he was not talking. Gloria pegged his verbal development at six months. SIX MONTHS! Um, that's almost as old as Audrey right now. (!!!!) But that's the reality. He doesn't have words to communicate his wants and needs, only whines and cries, but he does point really well. He also knows that a car goes vroom vroom, a train goes szhuh szhuh szhuh szhuh (his version of chugga chugga chugga chugga) and a duck goes quack quack, but he can't say train or duck. Only CAH. They recommend Speech Therapy, but believe that once he picks it up he will skyrocket and probably won't need the full year of ST. I really hope so. When everyone got here, I figured that we wouldn't have problems during the evaluation with Nikko, unlike when Nikko has therapies we have to sequester Ronin elsewhere because he gets into everyone's stuff. I thought that Nikko would be complacent and ignore everyone, not pay attention and do his own thing since he wasn't the focus today. We were all wrong because once they started playing with Ronin and hauling out their toys for Ronin to play with, Nikko marched into the middle of everyone and wanted Ronin's things. He tried to push Ronin away and started digging into the therapists' bags. Gloria said that Nikko seemed to want to be in the center of the action and it was good to see that he showed that he cared what was going on. I had to haul him into the kitchen and give him a vitamin to focus on. It helped calm him.

Later in the evening Nikko was his ever-clingy self to me. He wanted to sit in my lap a lot and look at me, and I tried my best to play with him but I had to start getting Audrey ready for bed. Nikko was like my little shadow in the bathroom because he was practically underfoot. This time I didn't mind so much and I didn't reprimand him for leaning on the tub nearby. He didn't nap all day again, so he fell asleep rather quickly tonight. Tomorrow we have DT at noon and OT at 3pm. Chinny will come over and that will be a big help. With great weather tomorrow I wonder if we'll have OT outdoors. Even if we don't, I'll try to get Chinny to help me take the kiddies outdoors. The problem is that if we go to the playground behind the clinic, so will everyone else around us. It will be manageable, I've done it once before with Brianna, and I will have to wear Audrey in the Bjorn so I can be mobile with Ronin. I'll consider it.