I went to bed last night at 1:15a. Nikko woke up within five minutes of me hitting the bed. I heard his whining and decided to calm him. He was crouched in bed and was sleepy. I patted him down and waited for his eyelids to get heavy. They did, but then they'd pop back open and his eyes would be darting back and forth around the corners of the ceiling. This became a cycle and I realized again that my presence was probably hindering him from totally falling asleep. I decided to leave, and that's when things fell apart. Nikko started crying loudly, getting up and trying to crawl into my lap. He'd jump from his bed to the middle of the room and try to keep me from leaving. I was getting mad at him for protesting so loudly and for not staying in his bed. I finally moved quickly enough and got to leave, taking a small lamp with me for fear that he'd pick it up and throw it, closing the door behind me. Nikko wailed and screamed loudly, falling to his knees with a loud BOOM and jumping from the bed to the rug. One thing I worried about was the night light, which was already on the fritz if you toggled it in any direction. He did take a few swipes at it, and it left him in pitch darkness until he swatted it back again. I sat in the hallway three feet away from the door, making sure I could see the night light still glowing under the door. I saw it flicker when he hit it, but the light remained bright. I wanted to make sure it didn't short circuit and cause a fire or that he burn himself on the bulb. I think I'll replace that night light with another LCD one that's got a better protective case. Anyway, I sat on the floor, feeling so bad that Nikko was thrashing around in his room. His screaming didn't rouse either Ronin or Audrey for some reason. I told myself that if he were still screaming and thrashing after five minutes, I'd go in and point him back to bed again. At three minutes his crying slowed down. At five minutes it stopped altogether. I breathed, relieved. It was 1:45a. I went back to bed. At 2a I heard his crying start up again, but I didn't go to him at all. They stopped, probably within another three minutes, but I wondered sadly when he would get it that he needed to just go back to sleep without me. I don't know when I fell asleep, but at 6:30a Ronin started calling out for me and I couldn't get him out of the room without Audrey already sitting up and refusing to go back to sleep. I brought us into the living room to chill out until Nikko woke up, which was at 7a. The way it's supposed to be.
The weather is warming up and today was predicted to be in the 60's, which it was. The morning is still cold, however, but I didn't put a hat on Nikko today. He was happy to go to school, and was awake on the bus ride home. We had lunch right away and I was cleaning up the place for an intended playdate with the Owsley's at 3pm. Dave texted me to say that he was still stuck at work and would have to cancel. I felt bad because I told Ronin about our "friends" coming to play in the basement and he was excited about it. But since they weren't coming I would have to break it to Ronin that we weren't having our friends over. Luckily I spoke to Atz, who was at Mom's house, and she casually suggested that we come over. Mom was off today, so I made sure it was ok, then proposed these alternative plans to Ronin. He accepted them happily as long as we were going somewhere. Meanwhile, Maria came over today at 1p instead of Thursday because she needed to switch days. According to her, Nikko had a REALLY good session because he properly reciprocated an activity where you sit across from each other, legs spread in a V, and roll a ball back and forth. I recall Maria telling Mrs. I about this exercise in our team meeting. She said that usually it's a hand-over-hand activity, but today he rolled the ball back to her on command about four times. Maria also noted that Nikko works differently when she uses fruit snacks as a motivator. She's trying to determine what would be the most productive use of the fruit snacks because while Nikko does a lot of great work when he knows the fruit snacks are coming, she'd like to do things without them. As I already knew, Nikko is highly food motivated and he goes especially berserk for fruit snacks.
After ABA, I put the kids in the car and shuffled off to Mom's house. Ronin and Nikko fell asleep in the car and I noted to myself that this would be a melatonin night. The kids played at Mom's house, had a snack of peaches and crackers, and fought over the oversized Ferrari and dump truck Mom keeps for the kids. Chinny and my dad were there as well. It warms me to see Audrey go freely to everybody. Ronin, on the other hand, was sullen at one point because I was encouraging him to sing the Veggie Tales theme song and he refused to do it in front of everyone. Nikko made Mom smile because he was chanting "Veggie Tales" and singing the song in his garbled language but was still discernible as a song if you listened to the intonation closely. We got there around 4 and left around 6. The kids' dinner seemed to have been spoiled because they were constantly eating something over there, but at dinnertime they were all still open to eating. I tried giving them hot dogs on buns, but it was a failed attempt. Nikko didn't care for it much at all; Ronin greedily ate the buns and only nibbled on the dog; Audrey only got hot dog slices. I put a 1/2 tablet of melatonin in Nikko's juice, but he wasn't very interested in drinking it because he was straining for a bowel movement again. If this continues until tomorrow after school, I'm going to have to resort to the suppository again. Anyway, I mixed up some chocolate milk and put another 1/2 tablet in there. Nikko drank most of it, and by 8:40 he was nodding off. It took about 45 minutes, but I'm not sure he got 1/2 or even 3/4 of the tablet because I had switched liquids halfway. He was just about asleep at tuck-in time. I truly hope he sleeps until 7a.
Tomorrow will probably have Costco in the afternoon because we are out of potstickers. The weather is going to get rainier but I hope I can figure out a place to take the kids anyway. One more note: On our way to Mom's house, Chinny called me and was offering to come over and help play with the kids because it was a nice day outside, the first all winter. I wish I could have taken her up on the offer but we were headed to Mom's house. Awwwwwww! That was so thoughtful of her!
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