Behavioral reflections

We were home for the morning and early afternoon, and then geared up to go to mom's house for a few hours. We got back by dinnertime, and then bed for them. That's our day in a nutshell. :)

Nikko wasn't carting around the watermelon slice again. Perhaps he is tired of it. He's been spending lots of time poised near the armrest of the couch, peering into the mirror and stretching his arms out, kicking back a leg, or jumping off the ottoman into that pile of pillows he positioned two feet away from the TV. When we get ready to leave the house, I announce that it's time for Socks and Shoes. I've begun to place the socks in the kitchen and put the shoes on the floor. Either boy may pick up their socks to try them on, but they both try to slip their feet into their shoes without much success unless it's their Crocs. Ronin has this down, except he doesn't know which is the left or right. I gave Ronin his orange baseball cap to wear, and he put it on for a bit but it fell to the floor because he got distracted. Nikko picked it up and put it on backwards, showing no resistance at all to it. I was surprised and praised him greatly. He also did this at mom's house, put on the hat and patted it in place, almost looking around for a mirror to check himself out (there wasn't one around). Too bad! Lately, when Nikko is in a not-so-great mood and is on the verge of not cooperating with me, I tend to give him some tickles. It seems like laughing from tickling perks him up, and he gives me great eye contact when anticipating when those tickles are coming. When we got back from mom's house, I had a hard time getting the kids into the house. Ronin was refusing to leave his cozy coupe car and Nikko was dragging around an umbrella from mom's house that we are now borrowing. I started doing some tickle pokes to keep the boys away from the neighbor's yard, which they were heading to, and then I lured them even closer to the house by taking away Nikko's umbrella and prompting him to chase me. This caused Ronin to want to be chased. I started singing a Limbo Stick song from Hi-5 while we chased and that added some familiarity to our game. I was able to scoop Nikko up and carry him into the house once he "caught" me and the Limbo Stick. Ronin followed us in without resistance. Whew!

Denis pointed out to me that Nikko hasn't really been crashing lately. I stopped to think about it and it's somewhat true. His crashing has been greatly reduced as of the last two weeks. I recall complaining about it to Shelly for the last month and a half! But today during lunch Nikko did do some crashing in the kitchen. He hasn't been as Velcro-Man-y to me over the past week, to be honest. He's been tantruming a bit more than usual, but I see the tantrums as communication blocks. Something is definitely going on with Nikko lately, in the direction of GOOD. He's making small steps and the outlet to the achievements is probably the tantruming. Tomorrow is his last day of OT. Wah!!