High pain tolerance

Nikko spent the morning of his birthday at that Illinois Experiential Program for Autism. This was his report today:

Nikko had an exceptional day today! He was greeted at the door with a "birthday boy" crown, too! Nikko has started to show his wants using a sentence strip that includes choices of preferred items. He also says, "I want_____" when constructing his phrases! Nikko excelled at a series of 10 new activities that assessed academic skills, life skills, sorting, matching, constructing and proper use of school supplies. Nikko is quite the cutter. :)

Nikko also had a blast playing in the water table! What a fun way to beat the heat!

I am very interested to see if I get a report at the end of the week regarding his progress.

In the afternoon, Denis came home early and we packed the kids into the Pilot to head out to the Wheeling Park District pool. It was at least 100 degrees outside today, so cooling off at the pool was the alternative to staying at home. It is also Nikko's preferred activity of all time. We were there for almost three hours. Toward the end, the kids wanted to play in the "playground" which was really the splash pad with slides and a huge water-dumping bucket. Nikko ran around quickly and took a spill at one point. I saw him fall at least twice but bounded up quickly. It wasn't until the third time around that I noticed Nikko kept stopping to touch his ankle. We went to inspect him and found the skin on part of his ankle and along his shin was scraped and bleeding. Time to go home! Denis took Nikko to First Aid where they cleaned the wounds and put two square band aids on them. I wondered if Nikko would rip them off right away but this time he seemed to accept the bandages. Nikko has a high pain tolerance and had I not scrutinized his behavior at the splash pad then I would not have noticed that he was mildly disturbed by something on his ankle.

After dinner this evening he came up to me and said, "Take it off" in reference to the bandages, but I refused him politely and shuffled him to his birthday cake. The kids and I had picked out a Thomas the Tank Engine Duplo blocks set, which mirrored the Sodor Island Fair set we already owned, so this ended up being in the win column. I think he'll be looking forward to playing with it the minute he wakes up tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, we have an extremely busy day. Nikko goes to school in the morning by 8:55a. From 10-11am I have to take Ronin and Audrey to their last camp class. We're homebound until Nikko comes home at 1:45pm, and then at 2:30 we'll pack up the car and head out to Speech from 3-4pm. Then I'll have to shuffle the kiddos to Arlington Pediatrics before 5pm for Nikko and Audrey's annual physicals. I have to remember to pack the electronic games and the DVD player before heading out to speech!