Rollercoaster rages

Not the greatest Mommy day, and wish it would get better. Audrey has finally stepped up to join Ronin as a whiner and drama queen. I wish it wouldn't grate on my nerves so much, but it totally does. I have got to dig deeper than China for patience. Ronin sat in time out a few times, Audrey got put in her crib yesterday and today because she wouldn't play nicely with her brothers and was wreaking havoc, and my voice is shredded again. One GOOD thing that is working is the use of a timer when Ronin and Audrey are fighting over a toy. I let one kid play with the toy for five minutes, then when the timer goes off I announce that the kid relinquishes the toy to the other kid. They do it begrudgingly at first, but I stick to it and enforce it and it's working. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Nikko yet. I feel bad that the kids have to give up a toy to Nikko, who is relentless and will shriek and howl when a toy is taken from him. I tell myself that I should teach Nikko that he can't always have what he wants, but then when I relinquish said toy from Nikko to the other kid, I always have to hold Nikko back in a death grip. I do want him to learn to share, or to give up a toy for a short period of time, but right now he's not getting it and it causes more harm according to me. We'll get there, just not today.

I've been trying to figure out why Nikko throws himself on the floor before breakfast, sometimes puts his head in a box under the kitchen table. The thoughts of anxiety, sensory and perfectionism have come through as suggestions, but I definitely need to ruminate on this more. It isn't always because Ronin just beat Nikko on the head. Sometimes things are out of alignment and Nikko may be reacting to it. Or he could be trying hard to process things around him, including the energy it takes for him to hold himself together, and one little thing could be setting him off.

Finally, at the in-law's house tonight, Nikko did not immediately eat his dinner. He was sitting at the table, then slid to lean on his chair, and ended up hanging out underneath the table. I noticed that he had picked his nose a bit and saw some remnants of blood but it wasn't a full-on bleed so I let it be. Later on, after worship in the living room, Nikko's nose let go full-force and the blood was rolling out of his nose. I got him into the kitchen because the living room has WHITE pleather couches and WHITE carpeting. I was a nervous wreck until I got a paper towel clamped on Nikko's nose and dragged him to the kitchen. The bleeding stopped after a while, but it was a long while. I worried that he swallowed some of the blood and would throw it up like he did the last time this happened. He didn't. Other than the state of humidity in their house, I don't have a reason why his nose was pre-bleeding and then bled for real. Nikko is really an enigma to me.