Whistles / More French Fries

6:05a Ronin wakes up, calling out and thus all the kids are awake. But he was still laying in bed, which is a good thing. Last night he had some coughing fits and fell out of his bed for the first time. I heard a loud THUD, came running, and held him while he threw up. Poor guy.

I was surprised to learn from Mrs. Beyer the bus driver that there was no school tomorrow because it's Good Friday. Oh yeah. I was disappointed because I want Nikko to get the most out of preschool, and that means going every day he's supposed to. Moe evidence in his bookbag was in the week-end newsletter. Nikko didn't have any notes on his progress report other than the usual activities. He didn't eat much lunch. And then Maria came for therapy. Prior to her arrival, I did a quick sweep of the house for any reinforcer toys that Nikko could use. I came across a used Amazon.com gift card, a flat, round Thomas the Tank Engine whistle, and a party favor whistle with the paper that unfurls. During his session I could hear him using the whistle a few times. Maria said this was a note-taking session so it was going to be different from other sessions. When they came upstairs later, she told me that Nikko did fantastic, probably the best session she had with him. Maria attributes it to the whistles as reinforcers. She stated that he is really oral, and she could see why he's really into his fruit snacks. Maria got such positive results from using the whistles as reinforcers. That surprised me too, since it was a totally last-minute thing for me to collect them, resulting in this really good session. Whew! She noted that when it comes to the family picture matching, he did poorly with it today. But other sessions he does really well. She said that when she asks Nikko where's mommy's picture, she watches Nikko's eyes when he looks at my picture, and then he incorrectly points to another picture. I wondered aloud where the disconnect would be, but knew that that's probably the basis of all these autistic inconsistencies, that there's a disconnect in the brain between synapses which leads to the stimming, the speech delays, the inconsistencies, lack of focus, etc. etc. I was really proud of Nikko's accomplishments today, which made it ok for me to give him a mini bag of fruit snacks for his afternoon snack today.

Ronin finally woke up from a long nap, and that freed us all to go play outside in the backyard. Denis was home today so he was able to hang out with us and enjoy the first 80 degree, windy April day we've had in many moons. We got the kids inside to wash hands, change pants and get ready for dinner, but everyone seemed to have short appetites. I made a batch of french fries post-dinner and that attracted Nikko to the kitchen, of course. He finished a plate, then asked for French Fries and attempted to say this two-word thing. I was in the process of assembling them for him when he said, More French Fries. OK, how could I NOT meet his request? He just said and signed More, then said a two-word object. It's a good thing he was only asking for french fries and not Oreos or ice cream!

Tomorrow we have an ambitious agenda that I hope we can adhere to. We plan to go to the River Trails nature center in the morning. Then we will go to the Sweet Tomato for lunch, and finally I want to end up at IKEA. I had an idea yesterday of getting a small table and three chairs to replace the high chairs in our kitchen. It's similar to the layout at The Owsley's, where the kids all sit at a little table that tucks next to their kitchen island. These tables and chairs at IKEA cost only $25 total, probably because they have to be put together with an allen wrench. I want to replace the handed-down table and chairs that they're using during ABA. I'd also like for the kids to sit at the kid table because there's just not enough room at the big dining table to fit all three kids, plus all my junk sitting on the table would need to be relocated. I just have to make sure the kids don't eat off Ronin's plate and vice versa.

April is Autism Awareness Month, and April 2nd is Autism Awareness Day. There's all sorts of activity on Facebook promoting people to write it in their statuses or to wear blue.