Lions Park

It was a low-key day at home until we went to Lions Park as a family. We met up with Pat & Gail Creen and their two daughters, Riley and Samantha. Ah, it's the park we should have lived near, had we ended up getting a house in the district we wanted. (sigh) Ronin and Nikko loved running and climbing all over the equipment. There were many slides and ramps to choose from. For some reason, Ronin kept making a beeline toward the basketball court and we kept having to haul him back. I was surprised that Nikko didn't do the same thing, and right when I vocalized it he started trotting toward the court. Nikko did really well on the slides, but also started exploring a "netted" ladder a few times. He didn't really know how to climb it, but gave it his best try. Gail said that Nikko seemed to be doing better, lots of eye contact and he seemed very focused on running around and creating paths to his next destination. After the park, we passed by Culver's and got some double strawberry ice cream, the flavor of the Buy one pint get one free. Whee! The nighttime routine was pretty calm as well. Nikko was in a good mood. He still has some tendencies to hang onto something stick-like. This evening it was a little American flag he found somewhere and it ended up in bed with him. Other times it's a toy spatula or a toy fishing pole. Sometimes I remove the stim object, but other times I let him have it because he manages to lose interest in it at some point anyway. Besides, there's no way he'll be able to avoid these stick-like stim objects in everyday life, so he's going to have to learn to live with them. We were going to take away the flag during nighttime routine, but he was going to put up a fuss and a fight that I think weren't worth it. Tomorrow we'll meet up with the Penepackers for Tristan's bday dinner at Red Robin, so I'll be gearing up the troops for another public outing. Fun fun fun.