Bottom woes

Nikko's School Report
Speech - Greetings, vocab & requesting.
Snack - Nikko ate the insides of 2 apple slices
Bathroom - We were able to apply vaseline to the affected area. Please send in a small jar of vaseline for us to use should the need arise again. Thank you. He went poop 3x. 1 small, 2 big, solid.

As you can see, the school is helping me out greatly in keeping track of Nikko's bathroom habits. This week was a rough one because the constant wiping has made his butt red and raw. It hurts him to get wiped, as evidenced by his wincing. When he's home I put bacitracin and the Bordreaux's butt paste on him. If you recall, the Bordreaux's had a zinc oxide content of approx. 16% vs. the creamy Desitin at 12-14%. That sounds like a good deal, but the redness isn't going away right away. Since tomorrow is Friday, I'm going to give it one more try and then when he comes home from school I'm going to put the ointment Desitin on him, which is like 40% zinc oxide. It smells worse, but maybe he needs more potency. He definitely needs a barrier of some sort. I wish this didn't happen at all, and I wonder truly if it's because he sat too long in poop or if, after the week and a half of constipation with no poop at all, his skin wasn't used to having poop on it again and it reacted? Possibly. Sleuthing here, without much direction. In any event, that's my plan for tomorrow. The last time this happened, he was raw for a week before it started healing. I sure hope it will start healing faster.

Yea on the apple slices! I wonder how the teachers enticed Nikko to do that? Or did they present apple slices without any other snack so he had no choice? From what I recall, snack time nowadays at school is a choice system, instead of making them sit down at a designated time to eat. The other class calls it Open Snack, so they could play OR eat a snack at a given time. Anyway, Nikko usually doesn't eat apples. When I do get it up to his mouth, he'll nibble and then push the fruit out of his mouth with his tongue. I'm glad that the school offers him fruits to eat.

I forgot to mention that yesterday I broke open that box of vocabulary building that I got from Lakeshore Learning. It's 250 pictures of basic words categorized into things like Kitchen items, Clothing, Outdoor, House items, Animals, Food. The pictures are crisp and against plain colored backgrounds. I went through a few categories with Nikko and he was pretty successful at naming the pictures on the card. I think he wasn't sure what to call a band-aid or a clothespin or an ironing board, but he did well with the other cards. It's taken me so long to finally get to doing vocabulary building with Nikko, but I want to make it a priority now. He needs as many words as he can identify, to help him communicate.

This morning Atz came over to sit with the kids so I could go to my pre-op appointment for my eyes. Nobody cried when I left. Nikko even had therapy with Kathy. I came home a little over two hours later and the house was still standing. I am glad that the kids are used to seeing Atz and are comfortable with her. I'm comfortable in the fact that she is able to handle Ronin's drama, Audrey's feistiness, and Nikko's inexplicable tantrums because she has already seen it all. When I came back from my eye appointment I was pretty tired because I sat through a battery of optical tests using different machines, I had pupil-dilating drops in my eyes as well as remnants of a numbing agent. Driving home with dilated pupils is pretty dangerous, especially since my eyes are photosensitive and dilated pupils lets in MORE light. I had to shade one eye while driving. I've gotta stop doing that. I was able to catch a short nap while Audrey napped and the boys were at school. Despite Nikko's bottom woes, he was still in a good mood at home and even requested Watch Thomas a few times. That's the most spontaneous thing I get from him, besides Juice Please and Peaches Please.