Cooking

Nikko had a rage-free morning, thank goodness. Kathy was coming at 11a for therapy and when she arrived I discussed Nikko's recent volatility. At the end of his session she mentioned that he seemed aggressive and agitated during some of the drills, but started out focused and in a good mood. Similar to Melisa's session, Nikko started getting agitated when they were reading a book about emotions. The book has a bear with removable emotional faces. Nikko has done well with it in the past but only recently has he been reacting differently to it. Nikko didn't nap in the afternoon and neither did Ronin. In fact, I took a golden opportunity to teach Ronin how to use the remote for the DVD player and press the Enter button to replay his current favorite Pixar short: Mater and the Ghostlight. It's 7:06 minutes long and I went batty yesterday having to keep coming into the living room to replay it for him. Today I learned my lesson and gave Ronin an opportunity to be independent. He loved it. I loved the freedom!

After Audrey woke up I gave then a snack and decided to venture out to Menard's for some carpet backing and possibly Costco. Everyone seemed in good spirits and the boys were curious walking in the store. After getting the rubberized carpet backing, Nikko thrust a package of something he picked up in one of the aisles. It was a sealed pack of garbage disposal freshening balls. They looked like magenta gumballs and Nikko was whining for me to open it, probably thinking it was candy. I tried to move along and distract him but he was whining so loud that I had to give all the kids lollipops. I just had time to get a push broom for the garage when Nikko started getting more aggressive with me to give him more lollipops. He had ingested three of them by the time we got to the checkout counter and was seeking more. I was so aggravated that he was whining, Audrey was crying about not being able to hold the push broom in the cart, and Ronin was touching every product at his eye level that I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. The Menard's crowd and cashiers are not as forgiving as other retail stores in my opinion. I refused to give any more lollipops in the parking lot and I decided that we were NOT going to Costco after this. Instead, I drove us home and took the kids for a walk to watch for trains.

I fed the kids first. Nikko finished two pieces of pizza and was going for a third when he spotted a half-empty bag of cheese puffs on the table. He asked for it so I emptied the rest of the bag onto a plate. The last crushed cheese bits sprinkled around the bigger puffs, signifying the end of the bag. I put it before Nikko and turned back to assemble the things I needed to start making spaghetti sauce for the adults to eat. When I turned my attention back to the kids, I saw Nikko, Audrey and Ronin hovering over the plate of cheese puffs. I gasped when I realized Ronin had bright orange crumbs on his face and fingers. "DID YOU EAT THE CHEESE PUFFS?" I asked him in a voice trembling with fear and rage. When he nodded uh-huh happily I became totally unhinged and picked him up from the table, half-brushing the crumbs off his shirt and hands and half-shaking some sense into him while heading to the sink.

"Ronin, you are ALLERGIC to cheese! Those are ITCHY! You must NEVER EAT ANYTHING ON NIKKO'S PLATE!!" I was panicking inside, wondering if he'd break out right away, so I started washing his hands. Then I opened a chewable allergy tablet and shoved it into his mouth. All the while I was wailing about how eating off Nikko's or Audrey's plate is never safe, kicking myself for not having my eyes glued on Ronin at the table all the time (unrealistic, honestly, but now it's regrettable) and wondering how much he ate and how long it would take before he threw up. My answer came five minutes after he left the kitchen for the living room. I heard him throw up a little on the mat so I ordered him to run to the kitchen to throw up. He made it; right in the doorway by his chair he unleashed his dinner onto the floor. I couldn't chastise him any more because he was bleary-eyed from throwing up. I put him in the tub and went back to clean up the huge mess on the kitchen floor as well as in the living room.

This incident delayed me from starting to make spaghetti, but after Ronin's bath I quickly decided to get started and finish before Audrey's bath time. As I was stirring the sauce on the stovetop, Nikko came in and was saying something unintelligible at first. He dragged a stool over to me, got up and peered at the stove. "Cooking," he said, "cooking!" "Yes, Nikko, I'm cooking!" Nikko kept chanting Cooking and was laughing at himself. I was happy that Nikko came over to identify what I was doing, simply to observe and not to request a darn thing. Loved it!