Shark / Vitamin

11:46a - While dressing Nikko for school, Denis was reading aloud from Nikko's Nemo library book. He was mimicking the movie and chanted, "Shark bait! Shark bait!" Nikko started saying, "Shah, shah," while I put on his clothes. If you weren't paying attention it could have easily been missed, but I noticed he did it after each time Denis said Shark. That's cool. On his progress report from school, Kathy wrote that he was saying "Kuh" for car when prompted. She was also saying "Go" when it came to opening doors. I think we're both pushing for more language from Nikko.

2:06p - HOLY SPEECH THERAPY, ROBIN! I just took 50 minutes with Nikko trying to get him to say Vitamin or a derivation thereof. We started around 1:06 and he kept pointing up to the cabinet for the jar of vitamins. He wouldn't say it. He tantrumed, threw himself on the ground, beat his ears with his hands, spun around and kept landing on his knees. At first I pushed for the entire word, but 10 minutes and I tried for MIN. Any kind of Min. He cried so hard, then stopped at a few points. The last point he simmered down and I sat him in my lap. Other times he tried to climb into my lap and I wouldn't let him. I showed him some Chips, and got him to say "Chp", so I knew he was capable of imitating a word upon request. At the end I tried to coax him and he seemed to be so tired from fighting it. FINALLY, at 1:50p, he said, "Mmmm." It was short, but it sounded like the beginning of Min, so I gave it to him with lots of praise. I couldn't get another sound, so I had to end the session. Poor Audrey sat in the high chair and had to wait, me throwing her some cereal with her bottle of milk because I couldn't give her a proper lunch. Ronin wanted vitamins too, but I had to shoo him away for a while. I am TIRED from being a speech therapist for almost an hour. I don't even know if my tactics were successful (well, he said an "M" sound so that's technically successful) or correct in the speech therapy world. This is exhausting!

11:44p - Nikko was pretty calm the rest of the night. He watched lots of Wiggles with us. He even shows an interest in the brick block road I made for Ronin, so I had to make another one for Nikko (since Ronin was getting territorial and shoving Nikko away just for gawking at Ronin's car tunnel). Ronin turns everything into a physical squabble. He starts pushing and shoving Nikko, who will turn over on his tummy in defense, and even land on top of Nikko. I guess it's the small dog syndrome. I'm not sure how to curb Ronin's aggressiveness except to haul him away, distract him, or be firm and tell him IT'S NOT NICE to do whatever he just did to Nikko, and to Audrey. When Audrey cried the last time Ronin shoved her, I showed him that she was sad, that he hurt her, and he said he was sorry to Audrey and gave her a hug. OK, fine, but that didn't solve the problem later at night when she was getting into his car tunnel business again. It's a vicious cycle and it wears me out to be the referee. I truly don't mind running away after the kids are in bed because I need to get desensitized from kid stuff for a few hours.