The bottom of the slump

This morning when I came into Nikko's room he flipped over and I saw he was awake, but he wasn't talking. This is highly unusual for him because I can hear him babbling by himself in the mornings when he is awake. I heard not a peep until I came in and greeted him. I looked him over and he was fine, and he managed to blurt out some garbly sounds that sounded normal. His demeanor was listless. He sat at the kitchen table with half-lidded eyes as if he woke up too early. He drank some chocolate milk, ate half the Eggo cinnamon toast w/syrup I fed to him, then sprawled under the table as if to sleep. I got him up and when Ronin was finished I herded the kids into the living room. Nikko lay on the couch and moved to the floor pillow and back. I came to check on him around 10:30a and saw that he had thrown up on the cushion near the armrest. Yuck! I cleaned it up, soaking the area with Carpet Resolve, then changed Nikko's clothes. He didn't have a fever at all, and I hoped he didn't have a stomach bug. Nikko crawled to the floor pillow and basically passed out for an hour. My poor little boy. The nap helped him. He came to the kitchen right before I was going to wake him up for lunch. He nibbled slightly on a chicken nugget, but started eating the slice of cheese pizza I put before him, then ate two more slices. Yea! In the afternoon he seemed to improve slightly. He played with some cars a little bit, lay on the couch and the floor a lot, and walked around. I tried to ease into some tickle games and that seemed to work better in the later afternoon. Denis came home from work and Nikko was acting a bit better, slightly grumpy this time. We went to the in-laws for dinner and Nikko was the most quiet we had ever seen. His appetite was back because he ate his nuggets and even ate some of the eggplant parmesan Lola made. I think it looked really appetizing, and the sauce and cheese tasted good. I am not a fan of eggplant but the taste was masked in the tomato sauce so it tasted like a regular lasagna to me with a hint of stringy-ness. Denis wouldn't touch it. I took home some leftovers since Nikko showed an interest in it. Nikko still clung close to me all evening and it wasn't until Maya and Rex were getting ready to leave that Nikko, Ronin and Maya started a chasing game in the living room that seemed to liven his spirits. No collisions so that's a good sign. I read in a book that I should make a learning opportunity out of every experience with Nikko so that he'll always be engaged, but on a day like today where he threw up and obviously wasn't feeling good, I didn't want to make sitting on the couch a school lesson. I tried to read him a book and his attention definitely wandered off. I'll have to keep practicing at it.