More Nikko

It's not that there hasn't been anything going on with Nikko lately; I have not been able to carve out the time to blog. Shame shame shame! But I'll give snippets where I can.

Yesterday while going to bed my arms felt extremely tired, as if I had lifted a ton of weight while working out. The problem was that I didn't lift that evening, just ran cardio (and Jillian Michaels Shred). I realized that my arms were tired from restraining Nikko in the eye doctor's chair in the afternoon. It was his first eye exam ever and I was very anxious about how it would turn out. Armed with the iPod Touch and lollipops, we arrived late and were serviced late as to be expected. The ophthalmologist was Dr. Anderson and she was a very calm, soft-voiced, kind-hearted person. Nikko sat in my lap unwillingly for the first two minutes, and then he really started thrashing when I had to cross his arms and hold them tight while she put eye drops in his eyes to dilate the pupils. This would take around 30 minutes. When we came back to the chair, Nikko was whining and trying to pull away from my grip. I was able to hold him somewhat still while she used lenses and a flashlight to shine and look through to the backs of his eyeballs. Luckily, he doesn't need to wear glasses and we can come back in two years. Hooray! And next, I've got to prepare him somehow for a visit to the dentist next month. Or maybe I should lift weights and improve my upper-body strength to deal with the restraint I'll need for the dentist. How in the heck are they going to keep his mouth open for this?

This morning, before I changed Nikko's diaper, he came up to me and said, "Go pee pee in potty?" I took him to the bathroom, got him on the toilet, and didn't think he'd really do anything. He didn't pee. But he did eek out a little bit of poo. Hooray! I didn't notice this until after he got up, so his potty song was ill-timed. Still, I thought that was a good effort on Nikko's part. Not repeated for the rest of the day, however. I think the correlation is there, but this inability to have more solid bm's is delaying the potty training.

Nikko was approved for OT services at Arlington Pediatric Therapy. Hooray! It will start next week on Fridays with the same OT who did the evaluation on him. Another nice lady named Karen. Our insurance will run out within the next two sessions and we'll continue for the rest of the summer to see if OT makes any improvements. If so, I might consider dropping speech so that he can make improvements with his entire body, but that's a very early assumption. I'm just grateful the OT came through. Yes, I had to make my second phone call to the OT office to make it happen, but at least they called me back.

Sleeping situation hasn't improved at all. Nikko still needs help falling asleep, Nikko still wakes up in the middle of the night, looking for me to put him back to bed. He's been averaging between 1-2am for wakings, but tonight he woke up at 12 midnight.