Sarah / Running Errands

Nikko had ABA with Sarah today. She's the new line person that will work with Nikko on Mondays. She just graduated from Prospect High School and is family friends with Maria from MGB Services. A sad story is that she had an 11 year brother that had autism and recently died from seizures. This happened in February. It's June. I can't believe that Sarah is ready to work with little kids with autism so soon, but I'm also not walking in her shoes. Sarah told me this info, but I didn't question anything further. I had heard the baseline story from Maria, and now I understand who's funeral she went to back in February, needing to switch a session from a Thursday to a Wednesday. Nikko did very well with Sarah, by the way. He had seen her twice before so she wasn't a complete stranger. I didn't hear any major whining or protesting, and I heard her try to encourage Nikko as well as try to get his attention. The best part was that I was able to put both Ronin and Audrey down for a nap at the same time. I had to go back in just once and order them to stop fooling around and take a nap, but they managed to settle for 1.5 hours. I started working on clearing out a section of my closet. I need more days like that.

When the kids woke up and Nikko was done with therapy, I gave them a snack and then got us packed up to go run errands. My goal was to go to Target to get a prescription and some envelopes to mail our flex spending account reimbursement request, then off to Costco for the essentials. I wonder how people feel in Target when I'm walking with the cart and my two little boys are orbiting wildly around me. It was strangely busy at Target with lots of people in the aisles that I wondered if Nikko zipping around was irritating someone. Nikko had in his hands a burp cloth, Buzz Lightyear, a springy orange alien, and a cylindrical toy with a fish attached to it from a set of stacking cylinders. At Target he also picked up a plastic Toy Story pencil case (shaped like a big plastic pencil, of course). I picked up another for Ronin because I knew they'd fight over one. Nikko was dropping things left and right while I tried to show him how to put his figures into the cylinder. Didn't quite work so I kept an eye on his belongings. I saw some Toy Story wipe boards in the dollar bins and picked up three, knowing that each kid will want to draw on his/her own board the minute I introduce it to them. I plan to do this in a few weeks, if possible. After taking my circus from Target and back into the car, we drove to Costco where I unloaded my circus and trekked inside, trying to dodge Nikko's greedy grasp as he reached into my pockets for my Costco card. I was able to zip around and get the essentials (Coke, grape juice, bananas, baby wipes, Veggie Sticks, chicken nuggets, milk 2% and whole), then lugged them to the self-checkout lane. Nikko was hovering by the credit card machine waiting to pounce on my credit card. It was laborious loading and unloading everything on and off the conveyor belt, and the old guy who observes the self-checkout lanes for sticky problems didn't help me unload the heavy stuff either. Sometimes I get a younger guy or girl who uses the scan gun to save me the effort, but this older guy usually doesn't do that. Grrr. Nikko saw a bag of Cheetos Cheese Puffs that was in the cart and he automatically wanted some NOW. I told him later, maybe during dinner, but it was hard to get him off the cart for this. As we exited I had to surrender my Costco card so he would stop whining and pulling at my arm for the cheese puffs. It worked, and I was able to confiscate it back later when unbuckling him from the car seat because he accidentally dropped it at the side of the car seat and didn't realize it. I was pretty irritable when we got back, had to unload all the groceries and jam the freezer items quickly into nooks and crannies, and was tired from the heavy lifting in the process. But dinner went rather smoothly, Denis came home, baths were given and happy children went to bed. Tomorrow, Denis will stay home with the little ones while I walk Nikko 1/2 a block to the Fairview school for his first day of Extended School Year. I'll get the gist of the drop off and the ESY routine. I'll also have to check what time are playground hours so we are not there at the same time. I really hope Nikko will transition ok into this new school environment, knowing that Margie will be there.