Xylophone

Speech report: Working on 1-step directions, naming, greeting. Great job giving plastic food object from field of 9 today!

The school sent home a bunch of 3.5 x 3.5 cards with pictures/words: GO, STOP, HELP, Please Wait, Bathroom, and I Need A Break. I hope to get a hole puncher and some big rings to make this visual support. I should have added directions such as Stand Up and Sit Down. I'll think of some extras and then request them later. Nikko had fallen asleep on the bus ride home, in his snowpants, and was really groggy to wake him up. It was the only nap he got all day. It wasn't a very exciting day for Nikko, whereas I was constantly getting up from my chair to peek into the living room and see if Nikko was doing anything fishy, or checking his diaper constantly. I call it Poop Paranoia. I had put all the colored rubber mats from the living room into Nikko's bedroom, turning on the ceiling fan and opening a window to dry them. I put them back today and now things are looking more like normal. Ronin had a nap and I tried to catch a wink while Signing Time was on, but Nikko kept bugging me to put in one of the Veggie Tales DVDs instead. He can say "Veggie Tales," and can even babble the theme song in fragments. Ronin had the opportunity to go to the pool at the Rec Plexx with Denis tonight. They were gone for a long time so I thought Ronin must be loving the swim time. When they came home I was getting Audrey ready for bed. I asked Ronin how was swimming and he didn't say anything, just ran out of the room. For someone who seemed excited to swim like Bruce the Shark in Finding Nemo, or to be like Troy the Shark in The Reef, Ronin was noncommittal. I asked Denis how things went and Denis told me that Ronin didn't like swimming. I was totally shocked because Ronin loved going to the pool over the summer. Denis thinks that at the beginning when Ronin was stepping into the pool he reached for a bar and slipped under, and that might have ruined it for him. Ronin mainly sat on the side and threw stuff into the water. I was so disappointed to hear this! I hope he gets over it quickly because I think Audrey is going to be a force to be reckoned with at the pool this summer.

When I was giving Audrey a bath, Nikko came in and was getting annoyed that it wasn't time for him to take a bath. He was whining and trying to get into the tub, but I had to keep telling him his bath time was later. Finally, when I used the shower head on Audrey, Nikko found it entertaining to touch the sharp blasts of water. At least that ended on a good note. But when it was actually Nikko's bath time, he turned up the heat on his crying and wailing. I think he was overtired, especially because his bath was happening after 9p when it usually happens before. Nikko was really crying loudly and probably made Denis deaf. Denis had a lot of patience with Nikko, given that he himself was tired from work and then from taking a resisting Ronin to the pool. Nikko fell fast asleep when it was tuck-in time.

One more thing I don't think I blogged about because I keep forgetting: a few days ago, when we were in the basement, I pulled out the toy xylophone and started hammering out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I sang along so that the kids could hear what I was banging out. They also recognized it from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Nikko came over and grabbed the stick from me. He started tapping out random notes at a steady beat, so I sang the Twinkle song loudly. For each of his taps I sang a word. At the end when I sang, "How I wonder what you are?", he would emphatically tap each note, and slowed down until I hit the last note. His stick also hit the last note with finality, ending the song. I sang it a few more times, and each time I noticed that at the last phrase, Nikko was starting to tap each note more lightly, a decrescendo if you will, and then the final tap would be soft, a pianoforte. I really wonder if he noticed what he was doing, and wondered if he was really controlling the force of the stick to emphasize the loudness and softness of the song. The next day, during his ABA session with Maria, I suddenly heard the pounding of the xylophone again. After the session, she remarked that when Nikko had his solo play time, he went right to the bin with the xylophone and started hammering away. This solo play time was an issue in our last team meeting because Maria stated that Nikko didn't know what to do when told to go play by himself. He'd literally stand there waiting for the therapist to tell him what to do, or what to play with. So hearing that Nikko chose the xylophone by himself really makes me feel good!