Swim lessons

School Report. Bathroom - Nikko was wet today but also peed a lot in the toilet!
Speech - body parts - liked sticking out his tongue. :) Worked on 1-step directions, vocab & object function.

I********TMI ALERT*********
It's only been two days and Nikko was straining uncomfortably again. I felt so bad for him, hunched over the kitchen table. He put his head in my lap and seemed upset. I had to help him again, and his poop wasn't terribly hard but was big to pass. He did a second dump that looked like the rest of the blockage. I will put him back on MiraLAX, just enough to cover the bottom of the cap, once a day starting tomorrow. Something else I started with him was putting him in pull-ups. It's kind of frustrating because he is peeing in them like usual. I have to establish the routine at home first. This morning I fully intended to put him on the toilet after Ronin, and I did, but Ronin's process took so long, then Denis needed to start getting ready for work, so by the time I got Nikko on the toilet he had already peed in his diaper. He also peed mid-morning when he was wearing pull-ups and before I had to "help" him with a bowel movement. Then after breakfast he ate a ton of peaches. That is always going to result in lots of pee later, and sure enough his school report above stated as much. I am really not looking forward to cleaning up the poop smears that are going to happen as a result of the MiraLAX, especially if they get messy in his pull-up. Yuck.

After the boys came home from school, and Denis came home from work, we took Nikko to his first-ever swim lesson. Denis found a class run by the NWSRA (Northwest Special Recreation Association, www.nwsra.org) that offered individual lessons at the Kirk School in Palatine. This is the same organization that provided Nikko an aide (Melisa) for his park district camp class, so they offer programs for special needs kids. We took all the kids with us to check out the facilities as well as to scout whether or not Nikko could have lessons and then keep the other kids busy doing something else. Um, well, NO. It isn't going to work out that way. Reason being, Ronin was quite awful about not having a swim class. He was so upset about not being able to swim in the pool. He whined and cried and was so sour that I was getting mightily irritated at him. When we reached the Kirk School and located the therapy pool, Ronin wanted to go in the water and I had to haul him into the hallway, seriously considering putting the kids in the car and leaving for half and hour. A maintenance lady walked by and mentioned the playground in the back. "I have grandkids," she said knowingly and unlocked an outer door that led to the biggest playground apparatus I had ever seen. Needless to say, Ronin and Audrey were loving running up and down the equipment, going down the slides, and fidgeting with the equipment extras like musical bells and steering wheels. But when the half hour was up and we went inside, the kids became ballistic again once we went into the pool area to check on Nikko. Audrey was trying to kick off her shoes and Ronin was being restrained by Denis while Nikko was watching us from the pool, holding onto a boogie board and his instructor, Connie. I brought Audrey into the hallway screaming (Audrey, not me) and had to wait a few minutes until she calmed down enough to eat a graham cracker. There was an ocean mural on the wall that I pointed out to distract both Ronin and Audery. After Nikko's lesson was over, we left the building and I vowed never to take the little ones there again. Nikko, on the other hand, was wriggly and wanted to do his own thing in the water. Connie seemed to take his behavior in stride and tried putting him on his back for some kicks. We'll have to keep trying to see how these lessons progress, but if anything Nikko will be doing something, and maybe learning, in an environment that he absolutely loves.