PECS and positive days

Nikko's school report:
OT -Ding lots of heavy work and movement activities. Afterwards worked on a target pumpkin toss activity and did a scrunch art apple activity.
Speech - Greeting and worked on "Where is ____?" Very mad at end of day. He was attached to a plastic apple and got very upset when we put it away.

For the past two days, Nikko has been very interested in eating the spinach ravioli from Costco that I've made. "Pasta." He's literally wolfing it down at dinner and lunch. Am I complaining? NO! It's the only green thing that he will ingest, at least green on the inside with a splattering of spaghetti sauce on the outside. He's even rejecting the store-bought pizza. However, I should try to make the "homemade" pizza for him, just for variety.

The school made Nikko's communication book, complete with PECS pictures and pages that have shapes, emotions (very important page), vehicles, people and food. It inspired me to get off my duff tonight and move forward on the picture schedule for the kitchen that I've been meaning to create since we got back from the retreat at the end of September. I just have to make a few more pictures for it, like Play Outside, Exercise Class, Clean Up, Mom's House, Lolo & Lola's House, and Birthday Party. These cards will help outline the day/week. It will be helpful to Nikko as well as the other kids. My only problem I foresee is that Ronin or Audrey will try to rip off the pictures and run around with them.

Nikko has had two great days of ABA in a row. He had no And upstairs, he hasn't been as volatile as he was last week. If he cries, there's a reason for it (Ronin pushed him, Audrey took away his toy). His bowel movements have been moving, more or less. Today was strange because he really didn't drink much liquid. His glass of juice from the morning sat for most of the day until school. Did he sense I had dumped MiraLAX into it? I'll try again tomorrow.

Good morning, Mommy

This morning I woke up at 7a and heard Nikko talking to himself. I got up immediately and went to his room before he started to strip down to his diaper. When I opened the door he scrambled (clothed, thank goodness!) up over the side of his bed and came to me. He said, "Good morning, Mommy." It was in his usual manner which comes out sounding like "Gooool mornig, Boppy," but the point is that for the first time ever HE initiated the greeting to me. I was thrilled! Unless he is requesting food or an object, or unless we prompt him first, Nikko has never greeted me before, so that was just an awesome thing to happen. Then I took him to the bathroom and he sat and peed in the toilet. Another good thing! Later in the morning I put the Desitin ointment (40%) on him and continued it for the rest of the day. I think it is helping, actually.

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.

Colors

I woke up at 7 and heard Nikko talking to himself so I got out of bed and went into his. I've been trying to get him on the toilet right after waking up, but since I went to bed at 3am (reorganizing the pantry) I was pretty toast. When I finally got us moving he had already filled his pull-up with pee so I just changed him on the floor. Why make him sit on the toilet for nothing, and me freezing in the bathroom? The other two kids were still sleeping, but Nikko headed toward their room saying, "G'morning, Ronin. G'morning Audrey" even before the door was opened. I told Nikko to come to the couch instead and when he saw the Hungry Hippos game still sitting there, he immediately joined me. For some reason I decided to see if Nikko knew some colors so I asked him, "What color is that?" I pointed to a hippo and at first he didn't say orange until I said it. When I pointed to the next hippo he correctly said, "Yellow." And so it was with "Green." He didn't get Pink correct but repeated it to me after prompting. I was impressed that he could answer what color something was when I pointed to it. He was also successful in the evening when I pointed to Lightning McQueen and asked what color is that. "Red," he said tentatively, but I lavished him with praise so he could be confident in his answer.

Kathy told me that Nikko was very unfocused during the session today. They completed all the drills but it was difficult to turn his attention to the task at hand. He just wanted to lay on the foof chairs. I wondered if he was thinking about the Hungry Hippo game upstairs, or if he was tired (probably not), but after she left I saw that he had a poop in his pull-up so maybe he was uncomfortable and didn't want to sit down. OH.

After snack time I took the kids to the playground at the Westbrook School. I wanted them to play in a safe and familiar environment. Audrey was new to the playground so I shadowed her more than the boys. Since I had been so awful to these kids the past two days I decided to take them to McDonald's for dinner. Denis was coming home late and I figured the segue to bedtime would be quick. The kids enjoyed the nuggets and fries, of course, and continued to carry around their Happy Meal boxes around the house. Ronin really likes his and brought it to bed.

Pull-ups

****TMI ALERT****
The MiraLAX is working again because throughout the day Nikko had little smeary poop. I'm glad in a way because that means his bowels are moving and he's not in a constipated state. The part that I'm not crazy about is that Nikko is wearing pull-ups now and his changes are frequent. In fact, I had to change him so many times and wipe his butt that I think he's developing a rash that's been there before. And it's painful. What gets me is that pull-ups are expensive. There are less pull-ups in a box than diapers. Each diaper change costs approx. $.27/diaper. Each pull-up change costs approx. $.37. While the pull-ups have velcro sides for easy removal, if I put an ointment on Nikko's butt then putting on the pull-up becomes a challenge of neatness. And Nikko has such easy access with a pull-up that I am constantly keeping an eye on him so that he doesn't reach in and smear.
"No hands in pants!" I'll say sharply when I see Nikko's hand creeping. He'll jolt when I surprise him, which is often. Heheheh.

Weekend

Saturday was my dad's 66th birthday. Instead of having dinner at the house, we met at Trainor Hall, the basement of my mom's church, where we'd have dinner with the family during the St. Lambert's Bratfest. It was a strange idea especially since Dad doesn't like to make a big deal about his birthday in public, but we rolled with it. The annual Bratfest used to be a three-day affair in the parking lot, complete with a huge white circus tent and live band dressed in lederhosen. But with dwindling attendance and less profits, the event was moved from August to October, and now that it's in the basement from 6-12p with a capacity of 300, I think it will find its death. The kids were hesitant at first because long tables limited their range of motion, but after we fed them the kids wandered to the dance floor in front of the stage (which had a live orchestral band) and started hopping and dancing around with other little kids. And my kids got SWEATY! There was one boy with glasses who looked like he had Downs Syndrome but could have had some other kind of disability, and he was hopping and laughing amid the kids that were as tall as his waist. The boy saw Nikko, reached out and tapped him on the shoulder, saying, "TAG!" Nikko laughed and bounded away, unfazed. When the boy turned to Ronin and held out his arms as if to embrace him, Ronin shrieked, turned around and was calling for Mommy! in a high-pitched voice. Ronin told me he was scared of the boy, so I told Ronin, "Honey, you don't have anything to be scared of. He just wanted to play tag with you. And look, Nikko's not scared of him!" Ronin seemed comforted by that so he ran back to Nikko and was holding onto Nikko's arm whenever they passed by the boy. I thought it was amusing that Nikko wasn't bothered at all by the boy's looks or invasion of space. Nikko was drenched in sweat from all his dancing and fell asleep on the way home. We woke him up to give him a shower and then put him to bed.

Sunday was going to be a busy day. We had a playdate with Anna and Jovy scheduled for after lunch, and the Penepacker girls were going to spend the day with us because Tristan was going to be in a band competition on the south side of Chicago for the afternoon. Nikko was not overly excited about all the people in the house; in the past he would be crashing and running amok. Because all the faces were familiar, he was able to play at his own pace and act comfortably as if they were all part of the furniture. I didn't notice any unusual behavior from Nikko today except for the times that he was really fidgeting with his pull-ups. When I went to change him, they were really full because he drank a lot of juice throughout the day. I think in pull-ups he is beginning to sense how uncomfortable it feels to have that weight hanging from his waist, vs. feeling the moisture. Once I changed Nikko, he was back to business as usual. I had taken everyone into the basement for some obstacle course fun, but we stayed in the living room for the better part of the afternoon, watching Disney's Cars. It was too cold outside for my kids.

Next week is going to be both mundane and interesting. Tomorrow I'll have to take the kids to Costco because we're almost out of juice. There's no school on Tuesday so I'll have to find some activity for us to do. Nikko also won't be going to his swim class because Denis has a one-time cooking class in the evening. Wednesday night I have Zumba. On Thursday morning, Atz is coming over so I can go to my pre-op appointment at North Shore Hospital in Glenview. It's going to be at least two hours so they can measure my eyes and stuff. I'll be on some kind of drops until the following Monday, when it's surgery day for my eyes. Lasik!

Talking softly

I noticed something about Nikko today that I never thought much about. When he requests things, such as food or a toy or watching a DVD, his voice is rather soft. He approaches me tentatively most of the time. When he asks for ice cream, he makes his fist wave in front of his chin and mouth, doing the sign for ice cream. He looks at me hopefully while he does this, and when I ask him loudly what he wants, Nikko will squeak Ice Cream in a soft voice as if he knows I'll say no. Which I usually do. While he sat on the toilet waiting for Ronin's bath to finish, I took the three ID tags from his hands that he was fidgeting with. I held each one up to my mouth and said, "Blue tag. Red tag. Purple tag." He repeated what I said each time in a small voice. It made me wonder if Nikko is conscious about how his voice sounds. I wonder if he is really shy, or unsure if he said the right thing when asked. It reminded me all the more to keep encouraging him to talk and give him the vocabulary he needs to make communication successful.